'Bonkers' Trump comments will 'lead to his demise in November': former GOP lawmaker

Speaking with CNN's Jim Accosta on Monday, former Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX) suggested comments Donald Trump made over the weekend — which the CNN host called "bonkers" — are exactly why the former president has been ducking debates with former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC).

Acosta shared a clip of Trump telling a predominately Black audience over the weekend that Black voters identify with him due to his criminal charges and bizarrely added, "The mug shot, we’ve all seen the mug shot, and you know who embraced it more than anybody else? The Black population. It’s incredible. You see Black people walking around with my mug shot, you know they do shirts."

That led the CNN host to comment, "He's saying bonkers stuff like this all the time. If somebody on a park bench said this to you, you'd get up and move. But he says this stuff and he's way out in front in the Republican contest."

Asked for his reaction, Hurd dryly replied, "Well, my reaction to what Trump said is it's absolutely ridiculous."

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"And guess what?" he continued. "When Joe Biden cuts that into an ad and runs that in Georgia, in Michigan and places around the country, these gaffes are going to continue."

"You know we talk a lot about Joe Biden's age, but Donald Trump is getting up there too," he pointed out. "And the more he starts having to show up, he's been ducking — this is one of the reasons he's ducking doing a debate with Ambassador Haley, is he knows that these kinds of things are going to continue and that's going to lead to his demise in November."

Trump has also been in the spotlight for other comments he's made about Black voters. Blinded by the lights while gazing into the crowd assembled as part of Friday night's Black Conservative Federation Gala, Trump tried to say he truly sees black people.

"These lights are so bright in my eyes that — I can't see too many people out there," he chafed. "But I can only see the black ones. I can't see any white ones. You see."

The attendees in the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center erupted in applause.

"That's how far I've come; that's how far I've come," he added. "That's a long, that's a long way — these eyes; we've come a long way together."

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