Corbin Trent
Role at the time: Democratic communications strategist; former AOC communications director
Statement summary
Corbin Trent, a former communications director for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called Vance's line "a strange sentence to string together" and said that if Vance's explanation for why the country had become poorer and dirtier was "Black and brown people," then "that probably is racist."
“that's a strange sentence to string together, you know? I'm called racist because I'm talking about how dirty and poor and, you know, well, how were you called racist for that? What were you saying that made that comment racist? It's -- if it was because of Black and brown people was your assessment of why we've become poor, why we're dirty, then that probably is racist.”
CNN's rush transcript of the Politics Lead panel on The Lead with Jake Tapper. After Tapper played Vance's line about being "called racists for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier," Ashley Davis answered first and praised Vance's speech, and Corbin Trent then questioned the logic of the line. CNN labels the text a rush transcript that may be updated.
Why we used this label
Trent reasons through the remark's implication and concludes it 'probably is racist,' a condemnation of the remark under scrutiny.