Sen. Wyden: Trump has ‘never been interested’ in doing the work to root out systemic racism

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon joins Yahoo News Editor in Chief Daniel Klaidman and Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff to discuss President Trump’s handling of tough issues such as systemic racism.

Video Transcript

DANIEL KLAIDMAN: What evidence is there that local authorities and leadership there have been able to kind of move beyond this cycle of protests and violence and get on to a more productive path?

SEN. RON WYDEN: As I said, I think we've got big challenges to root out systemic racism. We've got to advance peaceful, non-violent approaches. What has happened, however, is a challenging situation has been dramatically inflamed, needlessly, in an unconstitutional way, by the Trump forces.

So what's really happened in the last couple of days, is the moms and the dads, and now they're bringing their children, are locking arms and they're downtown, and they're making it clear that they're interested in peaceful dialogue.

Now, remember guys, Donald Trump has never been interested-- ever, ever, ever-- in doing the tough, hard work to deal with big issues like rooting out systemic racism. He likes to get up in the morning, look in the mirror and say, I'm a tough guy. And then he orders some paramilitary squads to go out and carry out his orders. I'm not telling you this is a piece of cake here. I just spent--

DANIEL KLAIDMAN: Yeah.

SEN. RON WYDEN: --a lot of my time last week working on these kind of approaches that'll reduce tension in the street. But what I do know, is every time I turn around, Donald Trump and his lieutenants have inflamed things even more. And it is bringing out more peaceful, non-violent protesters that at some point I think with that force we're going to kind of overwhelm everything.