White House senior adviser to the President of the United States, Jared Kushner, refused to comment on whether Donald Trump's birtherism claims and the Muslim ban were racist during an interview with Axios.
In the interview with Axios' Jonathan Swan, released on Sunday, Kushner defended his father-in-law from accusations made by Democrats and other public figures — including Trump's own former attorney and personal fixer Michael Cohen — that the president is racist.
"Have you ever seen [Trump] say or do anything you would describe as racist or bigoted?" Swan asked Kushner.
"The answer is no, absolutely not," Kushner responded. "You can't not be a racist for 69 years then run for president and be a racist."
"When a lot of the Democrats call the president a racist I think they're doing a disservice to people who suffer because of real racism in this country," the White House adviser added.
Swan then asked Kushner about Trump's championing of the birther movement, a conspiracy theory which claims that former President Barack Obama was born outside America. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961.
"Was birtherism racist?" he asked, to which Kushner hesitantly replied: "Um, look, I wasn't really involved in that."
"I know you weren't," Swan said. "Was it racist?"
"Look, I know who the president is and I haven't seen anything in him that I believe is racist. So again, I was not involved in that," Kushner responded.
"Did you wish he didn't do that?" Swan pressed.
"Like I said, I was not involved in that. That was a long time ago," Kushner answered.
When asked whether Trump campaigning on a Muslim ban was religiously bigoted, Kushner deflected the question yet again. "I think he is here today and I think he's doing a lot of great things for the country and that's what I'm proud of," he said.
Last January, Trump signed an Executive Order banning foreign nationals from seven predominately Muslim nations from entering the U.S. for 90 days. The order also sought to suspend all Syrian refugees from visiting America indefinitely and block refugees in other countries from entering for 120 days.
The ban, which was widely criticized for being unconstitutional and discriminatory against Muslims, was challenged numerous times in lower U.S. courts before the final version of Executive Order 13769 was upheld by the Supreme Court last June.
According to State Department data, over 37,000 visa applications were denied last year due to Trump's travel ban.
Kushner's interview with Axios also involved talks about Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman, who's a friend of Kushner's, and whether he should be held to account for the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Watch a segment of Kushner interview on Axios below:
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