Michael Avenatti, the attorney known for representing the controversial adult movie actress Stormy Daniels, and widely believed to be a 2020 presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, has sparked massive outrage this week after a Time report quoted him saying that the next Democratic candidate should "better be a white male," Thursday.
"I think it better be a white male," Time quoted him saying about the Democratic party's next presidential nominee. "When you have a white male making the arguments, they carry more weight. Should they carry more weight? Absolutely not. But do they? Yes."
Unsurprisingly, the report sparked a massive backlash.
The thing about this bad take, which I hear all the time from all sorts of people, is that the last Democratic nominee to lose the popular vote was a white male. The black man and white woman who've run since then both won the popular vote. https://t.co/JU5ksqmOvT
— Nick Baumann (@NickBaumann) 25 октября 2018 г.
Avenatti is clearly trying to appeal to Never Trumpers because he thinks they won’t be comfortable with electing another person of color as president.
— Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 (@AngryBlackLady) 25 октября 2018 г.
He’s outright advocating for maintaining white male supremacy.
You perpetuated a myth of supremacy, do you get that? Do you understand how that makes nonwhite males feel?
— Bakari Sellers (@Bakari_Sellers) 25 октября 2018 г.
Your theory of white male supremacy is easily disproved. Who is a better lawyer, Cochran or Avenatti? A better politician Obama or Avenatti?
I’m furious and disappointed. https://t.co/XugOrhHxBA
"Michael Avenatti has apparently said that he believes Democrats should support his 2020 presidential bid for one particular reason: He is a white man," and Independent report reads.
The Daily Caller apparently was the first one to contact the attorney for comment, and Avenatti's comments were rather emotional.
"I never said that, that's complete bulls**t. That's my comment, complete bullsh**t," he told the Caller.
After the reporter read Avenatti's alleged comments to him, the attorney reportedly replied "No, that's not what I said" before hanging up the phone.
Politico had more luck, as Avenatti's comment for this edition turned out to be more detailed, if still not entirely printable.
"It's a f****** outrage," he told Politico about the the Time article. "I was misquoted and taken out of context."
"Anybody who has seen any of my speeches would know I call out white males for not doing their part," Avenatti continued. "And I say that especially white males need to step up and be heard and defend women, minorities and people of color because they can't do it alone. I usually get standing ovations for it. That's what I meant, I've been applauded for it…. I'm not going to have people turn this into something that it's not."
"A big tenet of my speeches is that we need more white men standing up and speaking up to defend women and minorities. When they do that, it carries weight among other white men," Avenatti told CNN.
This week has been particularly unfortunate for Avenatti, as he has reportedly been hit a multimillion dollar judgement for failure to pay to a former partner, and on Thursday, the same day Time published its interview, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley referred Avenatti and his client Julie Swetnick to the Justice Department for a possible criminal investigation over allegations they brought against now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
