Michael Avenatti's 'it better be a white male' comments on 2020 Democrat nominee causes huge backlash

Michael Avenatti, the lawyer best known for representing Stormy Daniels in her bid to sue Donald Trump, managed to put his foot in it on Thursday. Big time.

During an interview with Timemagazine, the 47-year-old commented on who the Democrats should put forward as their presidential nominee in 2020.

Now, there are plenty of good candidates currently working for the Democrats including Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kamala Harris and even, at a stretch, Michelle Obama.

If you wanted to go down the celebrity route, you could mention names like Oprah Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson - but at this stage, that looks unlikely.

Avenatti, who also represented Julie Swetnick during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, had a suggestion which wasn't exactly the most intelligent thing he's ever said.

He told Time:

I think it better be a white male.

When you have a white male making the arguments, they carry more weight.

Should they carry more weight? Absolutely not.

But do they? Yes.

Now, the Democrats do have some strong white male candidates in their ranks like Bernie Sanders and Beto O'Rourke, but that is beside the point in this instance, especially because of Avenatti's choice of words.

To make matters worse, he then chose to explain why he felt that being a white male carries more credibility, which has allowed him to be more successful when defending women and immigrants in court.

As you can imagine, Avenatti's poor choice of words has seen him suffer a widespread backlash online with a lot of people choosing to criticise him.

You could say that this is surprising, given who Avenatti has chosen to represent in cases against white men in positions of substantial power.

In a spot of damage limitation, Avenatti posted a tweet attempting to clarify what he said and why white men should be called out for sexism and bigotry.

Avenatti who has been linked to a presidential run of his own, further attempted to rectify his quotes in an interview with CNNwhere he claimed he had been misquoted:

I was misquoted, and it was taken out of context.

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.

HT Daily Dot

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