Billy O‘Reilly interrupted presidential candidate Donald Trump on The O’Reilly Factor to make a sweeping claim: that many African-Americans “ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads.”
The remark came as the host questioned the Republican frontrunner on how he would win minorities if he wants to compete in the general election. Trump responded that he was going to win by making it about economics:
“It’s an economic message,” Trump said. “If you look at President Obama, he’s been a president for almost 8 years, it will be 8 years, you have with black youth, with African American youth, you have a 59 percent unemployment.”
O'Reilly cut Trump off:
“But how are you going to get jobs for them? Many of them are ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads, and I hate to be generalized about it, but it’s true. If you look at all the educational statistics, how are you going to get jobs for people who aren’t qualified for jobs?”
Trump stuck with his message, keeping the conversation about jobs:
“We’re going to bring jobs back,” Trump responded. “We’re going to have Apple computers made in this country, not just…”
Again, O'Reilly cut Trump off, grilling the frontrunner:
“It’s more challenging for a poor child in Harlem without parental guidance in a school that’s falling apart than it is for some white kid out in Garden City,” he continued. “You say you can bring jobs back, but if the kid isn’t qualified to do the job and can’t do the work – I mean – you’ve got to get into the infrastructure of the African-American community.”
Trump conceded that that jobs creation was about education, but pivoted to a broader message about the American spirit, pointing out that both African-American and white communities lack spirit:
“Well it is true. It’s about education, but it’s also about spirit,” Trump said. “A lot of people don’t have spirit. Not only African-Americans, but we don’t have spirit in our country. I can tell you—plenty of white people that go to college, they borrow a lot of money, they get out, they can’t get a job.”
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