Is It OK to Call the President Racist? 'New York Times' Columnist and Former Donald Trump Adviser Battle On-air

The suggestion Donald Trump is racist sparked an on-air clash between New York Times columnist Charles Blow and presidential ally Steve Cortes Monday.

The men went head-to-head on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 after a number of Trump critics openly accused the president of racist tendencies on this year's Martin Luther King Day.

Read more: Bernie Sanders slams Donald Trump in MLK day speech

"I'm vexed by the whole idea we keep coming back to this question about whether or not the man is a racist when it is clear his pattern of behavior over his entire life suggests that he is," Blow said. "The fact that we keep discussing this as if it is an arguable point does damage to the truth." Cortes, a former Trump campaign adviser, suggested the comment was "slander."

"They're trying to marginalize him and our entire movement," Cortes said, referencing comments made by New York Democrat Rep. Hakeem Jeffries earlier on Monday. Jeffries called Trump the "hater in the White House" and "the Grand Wizard of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

Cortes said: "They're trying to say, 'You have no standing in polite society.' Why? Because you're disrupting the system that we have built which was built on identity politics which serves the interests, yes, of a lot of politicians who happen to be of color but not communities of color."

Blow, who listened quietly to Cortes's comments, countered: "Never say on television that I tried to slander anybody. I'm telling you the truth and you're lying as you normally do."

"I'm not knocking you for supporting his racism," Blow later added after criticizing Cortes for interrupting him. "I'm just saying that that's what you're doing. I have eyes and I have ears, and I can see you doing it and you can see yourself doing it and you just need to own it."

During the segment, Cooper noted how President Trump had previously complained about immigrants coming into the U.S. from so-called shithole countries.

The host also referenced Trump's reaction to the August 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which resulted in the death of counterprotester Heather Heyer, 32. Despite the attendance of white supremacists, Trump said "both sides" were to blame for violence.

During his election campaign, Trump called Mexican immigrants "rapists." In November last year, he was criticized for lashing out at three black reporters for asking questions. Trump previously spread the false conspiracy theory that ex-president Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.

Also on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders publicly slammed Trump during an NAACP rally.

"Today we talk about justice and today we talk about racism, and I must tell you it gives me no pleasure to tell you that we now have a president of the United States who is a racist," he said.

"We have a president of the United States who has done something that no other president in modern history has done, Sanders continued, adding: "What a president is supposed to do is to bring us together. And we have a president intentionally, purposely, is trying to divide us up by the color of our skin, by our gender, by the country we came from, by our religion."

Newly elected Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made similar claims earlier this year. "The President is racist. And that should make you uncomfortable," she asserted on Twitter.