Bette Midler under fire after accusing Trump campaign of paying black people to attend rally

Actress Bette Midler has been accused of racism after she shared a tweet calling African American supporters of Trump "blackground".

She shared the missive on Wednesday morning, which included an image of a handful of African American men in the background of a Trump re-election rally, asking how much they were paid to be there.

In the tweet, she wrote:

Look, there are African American men in this shot! How much did he pay them to be ‘blackground’?

Many people on Twitter immediately seized on the tweet, calling it 'racist'.

The tweet remained on Middler's profile Friday morning, and Midler has not issued an apology. The actress is a vocal critic of president Trump, and the two often clash.

On 5 June, Trump took to Twitter to call Middler a "washed up psycho" after the actress shared a tweet with a quote falsely attributed to him.

Midler apologised on Twitter for sharing the quote, which called Republicans:

The dumbest group of voters in the country.

In response, Trump said:

Washed up psycho @BetteMidler​ was forced to apologize for a statement she attributed to me that turned out to be totally fabricated by her in order to make “your great president” look really bad. She got caught, just like the Fake News Media gets caught. A sick scammer!

In response, Midler hit back at Trump again, saying:

Yes, one must always check the quotes. That should take up, oh, maybe 23 of the 24 hours in the day? Because there are SO MANY LIES, most of them generated by Trump himself, that the task of separating the truth from the lies is impossible. Which is just how he likes it. #CHAOS

HT New York Post

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