Media mogul Russell Simmons, who has been friends with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for 30 years, recently opened up about their relationship to Fortune.
Simmons said in a recorded interview that Trump always treated him and his family well. “Despite people’s political beliefs, I can believe in them. I can like them,” he said.
But Trump, he said, isn’t “suitable for the presidency.” Simmons has been saying that since June.
During their times together, Simmons said Trump often would make off-color remarks, including hurtful things that seemed racist or Islamaphobic. Sometimes Trump said “anti-Semitic things, not blatant but pretty clear,” Simmons said.
Simmons’ final statement in the interview echoed concerns he expressed to Trump in an open letter late last year:
“The fear is that his statements would take people who would never even admit to having those seeds of hate in them and water those seeds. And then those people would say things they would never even imagine saying, and then it became the norm.”
Watch the video of Simmons’ interview with Fortune above.
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Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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