Charlie Crist, the former Florida
governor who’s now running as a Democrat to get his old job back, said Tuesday that “a big reason” he left the GOP was the racist views held within the party.

In an interview, Crist said the Republicans have gone “off
a cliff” in their tilt to the right and he implied that some within the party
had an “intolerable” racially-motivated bias against President Barack Obama. 

“They’re perceived now as being anti-women, anti-immigrant,
anti-minority, anti-gay, anti-education, anti-environment,” Crist
told Fusion’s Jorge Ramos Tuesday while discussing his decision
to leave the GOP in 2010. 

Ramos pushed back, insisting Crist, now a Democrat, left
the GOP because he was going to lose to Marco Rubio in the 2010 primary for an
open U.S. Senate seat. 

“No, I left the Republican Party because Republican
leadership went off the cliff,” he said. “They’re so hard right now they won’t
cooperate with the president on anything.”

“It was because I couldn’t be consistent with myself and
my core beliefs and stay with a party that was so unfriendly toward the
African-American president. I’ll just go there.” he continued when pressed
again.

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