MARTHA MACCALLUM (CO-HOST): So, I watched a couple of these interviews, and I also saw the comments that were made about you this morning on another network, everybody shaking their head, they are just appalled at you, appalled that you would retweet this cartoon that shows Hillary Clinton in blackface. What was your intention when you did that and when you spoke out about her policies? 

MARK BURNS: Well obviously, it was never my intention to cause some type of a controversy or to cause offense as it has to many people in this country, to those in the African-American community, and to just people who just think it is offensive. The blackface imagery has been used in the past, and it is offensive to African-Americans in this community. But my message, I stand behind it, the methodology I would do differently, but the message is still my belief,which is I believe Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party has pandered after the African-American community and has used that voting bloc just to get elected while giving policies that are color specific, but not creating policies that will create prosperity in these community. And for that I think it -- that's the real offense. That's the real problem. We want to draw all attention in the world due to a cartoon, but in reality, many African-Americans can't afford to send their children to college. Many minorities in this country, Hispanic minorities, Appalachian white families in this country, poor families, underprivileged families in our country can't afford to -- don't know where the next meal is coming from from day to day, can't afford to pay their mortgage. This is the real offense that we have as Americans, and especially to the voting bloc of the African-American community. Many of our own families are in this same status, and yet we have been voting en masse Democrat Party, and I believe Hillary Clinton will say and do whatever she needs to say and do to win the vote, but then disappear and see you again in the next four years. That's the real offense.

MACCALLUM: I thought it was interesting, in those interviews that you did subsequent to this cartoon, all they wanted to talk about was the blackface part, and you used that blackface, which you explained, to say that you thought that she, in this case, was pandering to black voters, and that's a pandering image obviously, which has a lot of negative connotations. So the underlying stuff of what you are talking about, the violence that exists in our inner cities, the fact that more black people are killed by members of their own black community in our inner cities, that that's the issue that plagues them more than any other. This is a quote from Donald Trump, he says -- and this is back during the convention, which you were a part of -- he says, “Our job is to make life more comfortable for the African-American parent who wants their kids to be able to safely walk the streets and walk to school, or a senior citizen waiting for a bus, or a young child walking home from school. For the sake of all, but most especially for the sake of those living in the affected communities.” And even that comment got jumped all over by Van Jones who called it “despicable” and others who called it a mash up of Hitler and George Wallace. What is the disconnect between what you are discussing and what Donald Trump is discussing and Democrats coming back at you with this divisive, hateful language? 

BURNS: Well I just think it's just so amazing and horrible that it seems like anyone that's a Trump supporter, anything that we say is offensive. Anything that we declare is offensive, like we don't have a right to our own opinions, and that's not true. We all have the First Amendment right, but yet liberals will treat us as though -- because they are playing the race card. That's the only way to control that voting block, the African-American voting bloc. And it happens every two to every four years. They play on what has taken place during the civil rights movement, and they connect it all the way up until today, and they are keeping us divided, focusing on these race issues and not the real issues. Like here we are discussing a cartoon, where the cartoon can't feed nobody. It can't solve -- it can't pay for nobody's education.

MACCALLUM: There are definitely channels and places in this country where you, sir, are not allowed to speak your mind as a member of the black community who is supporting Donald Trump. They have written you off and they have decided that anything you have to say is not worthwhile, despite your years of experience and your own personal experience. Let's put up on the screen the number of murders in Chicago in the month of August, which I want to point out to our viewers at home is the highest in 20 years. Seventy-eight in the month of August. Now, the spike in Chicago murders is up 49 percent over the course of the year. Something is clearly going on in Chicago and many other cities, as Heather Mac Donald points out in her Wall Street Journal piece, that have seen huge spikes in violence, and unemployment is also – the numbers are starkly stronger for black unemployment in this country than they are for white unemployment. So, the leadership has not served your community well, according to these numbers.

Related: 

CBS News: Pro-Trump pastor regrets cartoon of Clinton in blackface, but “not the message”

Previously: 

On Fox, Trump Surrogate Pushes Conspiracy That Abortion Clinics Are “Strategically” Placed To Target Black Communities

On MSNBC, Trump Surrogate Says Trump Will Not Allow Businesses To Continue To “Rape” America

Wash. Post's Eugene Robinson: Trump's Minority Outreach “Would Have To Deepen Considerably To Be Considered Shallow”