HeatStreet

Former national security adviser Susan Rice has called President Trump’s response to a question posed by a black journalist during Thursday’s dizzying press conference “notably offensive.”

During the conference, April Ryan, White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, asked President Trump whether he was planning on including the Congressional Black Caucus—which she initially referred to by its acronym ‘CBC’—and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in his conversations on ‘inner cities’ and his broader urban agenda.

A visibly flummoxed Trump retorted: “Am I going to include who?”

After Ryan repeated her question, Trump aggressively suggested she should go and set up the meeting herself, despite her insisting that although she knew some of its members, she was “just a reporter,” and as such had no affiliation with the organization.

“Are they friends of yours?” he asked “Let’s go. Set up a meeting. I would love to meet with the Black Caucus. I think it’s great, the Congressional Black Caucus. I think it’s great.”

Susan Rice, who served as national security adviser in the Obama administration and was also the first black woman to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, retweeted a post from Vox editor Ezra Klein pointing to a piece criticizing Trump’s monolithic treatment of all people of color.

“This is a cogent summary of why @realDonaldTrump’s answer to April Ryan was so notably offensive” she wrote on Thursday evening.

The article in question highlighted Trump’s repeated use of the determiner “the” when talking about ethnic minorities—”the blacks,” “the Latinos,” “the African Americans” —as if all of them formed an uniform and dangerous cabal.

Following the second presidential debate in October, during which the then candidate had said that Hillary Clinton had “done a terrible job for the African-Americans” the hashtag #TheAfricanAmericans began trending on Twitter, with many sarcastic takes on Trump’s use of words.

At the time, educator and activist Kelly Wickham Hurst wrote: “Wondering if #TheAfricanAmericans are meeting up tomorrow somewhere in the inner city. Let a sister know where to be. I’ll keep the minutes.”

In his Thursday tweet, Ezra Klein called Trump’s comments on race “the lowest moment” of his press conference.

This sentiment was widely echoed elsewhere, including by Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland:

“I don’t think he [Trump] knew what the CBC was” the Democratic lawmaker told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Thursday evening in response to Trump’s remarks.

“A lot of people assume that all black people know all black people” he added “But the idea that the president would ask somebody in the press pool to set up a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus… he’s the President of the United States of America. He can make that phone call himself.”