Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore: White supporters of President Trump are like whites in South Africa during apartheid

Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore said white supporters of President Donald Trump are like whites in South Africa during apartheid in a Tuesday interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews.

What was said?

Matthews asked Moore why working-class white voters "stick with Trump" — and Moore said the reason is "racial."

"Well, you said the key word — 'white,'" Moore noted. "Sadly, I think it is a racial thing on some level with a lot of people. But ... let me say it in a different way: I think that white guys, the lunch-bucket Joes ... they can see the writing on the wall. The women are coming. They've arrived last November ... this is the eighth September in a row where the majority of first graders in this country ... were not white."

Moore added the projection that “white people will be the minority" in the U.S. by 2040 and that “there's some level of fear about that probably in the way that ... white people in South Africa were afraid [of] what's gonna happen with [late South African President Nelson] Mandela and the black majority."

Mandela was imprisoned for decades under apartheid, which kept whites ruling in South Africa despite being in the minority. But after he was released from prison, Mandela went on to become president of South Africa and saw the end of apartheid there.

Matthews seemed to draw a contrast between racism in South Africa and racism in America by telling Moore that South African whites “really earned the trouble they got" under apartheid. But Moore pressed on:

MOORE: But here we have African-Americans who are still on the bottom rung of the ladder —
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
MOORE: — after all these years. And those of us who are white, especially white guys, still having that door opened just a little bit easier for us, and we know it.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
MOORE: We know we're not followed around when we go to the department store. ...
MATTHEWS: Look, I know what you're talking about.
MOORE: Yeah, we're not being pulled over by cops.
MATTHEWS: Nobody's looking at you in the restaurant. Nobody's looking at you.

Moore added that "black Americans still have it pretty damn rough," and Matthews offered that it all "spreads into a white voter, and he votes white," NewsBusters reported.

Moore concurred, saying that "some white voters are afraid" to "lose" their "power," the outlet added.

But Matthews pushed back again, asking Moore if he'd say that white, working-class men “struggling along" have that perspective of losing power, NewsBusters said. And the filmmaker agreed — albeit with a caveat, the outlet said: "They've been told to fear the other. 'The other is coming to take it from you,' and that's not true."