Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) addressed accusations of racism on Thursday, one day after a heated exchange on the issue erupted during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing featuring Michael Cohen.
Meadows, who was accused of a “racist act” at the hearing, was asked about a resurfaced video from 2012 in which he said he wanted to send former President Obama “home to Kenya.”
“Anyone who knows me knows that there is not a racial bone in my body,” Meadows told CNN.
{mosads}“It was early on in a primary and certainly didn’t indicate any personal malice that I would have toward any president,” he added.
A video shows that while he was campaigning for his congressional seat, Meadows told a crowd that he wanted to “take back our country.”
“What we’re going to do is take back our country; 2012 is the time that we’re going to send Mr. Obama home to Kenya or wherever it is,” he said in the video.
Twitter users posted the video after a heated exchange between Meadows and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) during Cohen’s explosive congressional appearance.
President Trump used to be one of the most vocal proponents of the so-called birther movement, which falsely held that Obama, who was born in Hawaii, is not actually an American citizen.
Tlaib on Wednesday denounced Meadow’s assertions that Trump is not racist because he is supported by a black official within his administration.
“Just because someone has a person of color, a black person working for them does not mean that they aren’t racist,” Tlaib said at the hearing. “And it is insensitive … the fact that someone would actually use a prop, a black woman in this chamber, in this committee, is alone racist in itself.”
Meadows fired back at Tlaib and asked that her statement be stricken from the record.
“To indicate that I asked someone who is a personal friend of the Trump family, who has worked for him, who has worked for this particulate individual … that she’s coming in to be a prop, it’s racist to suggest that I asked her to come in for that reason,” Meadows said.