Posted on 03 August 2020
MSNBC’s rushed to label a new Trump administration housing policy racist, but then actually admitted that it was not based on race. On Saturday morning’s AM Joy, guest host Jonathan Capehart said “Trump is taking a page straight out of George Wallace’s playbook,” and brought on two fellow race-baiters, Heather McGee and Nikole Hannah-Jones, in an attempt to accuse the President of racism.
Capehart was disgusted by Trump appealing to suburban voters, so he decided to frame it as Trump using “coded language” to appeal to white voters. Trump used the word “suburban,” with no mention to race, but the leftist media hack decided that this was a race issue: "Donald Trump is taking a page straight out of George Wallace's playbook, using barely coded language to promise white suburban voters that he'll protect their neighborhoods from integration."
However, just seconds later, the host specifically pointed out that America’s suburbs are racially diverse: “Data from Catalyst, suburban non-white voters, 13%, they’re 13% share of the electorate urban non-white voters are just 9%. So this notion that the suburbs are the haven of white people is so old, no not true.”
Without Capehart even realizing it, he nullified his entire argument that Trump was using racist tactics to go after white voters. Trump obviously wants all suburban voters, regardless of race, to feel safe in their homes and neighborhoods, but the leftist media cannot swallow that truth.
McGhee, co-chair of the left wing group Color of Change, described this as a “dog whistle” and then made the insulation that Republicans, and white people at large, are racists:
But let's be very clear, this is a dog whistle. It's not meant to act at the level of literal communication. It's supposed to invoke an image, which suburban still does and what he’s doing is putting himself in a long line of Republicans who have used white fear and resentment of black people to get the majority of white people to vote for Republicans for president, which has happened every single time since Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.
Leftists, like McGee, enjoy twisting history to make it look like anyone who has ever voted Republican has never supported black people. McGee must have forgotten that Democrats were the leaders against the Civil Rights Act, and by percentage more Republicans voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act than Democrats.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the infamous 1619 Project, doubled down on the claims made by Capehart and McGee:
I don't think it's effective anymore because we know that suburbs are very diverse. There are rare things as all-white suburbs as ringing urban areas.
The funniest part about this entire segment was that these members of the far left have no idea that they were contradicting themselves the entire time. They tried to twist an obviously non-racist policy into something racially-charged just to fit their narrative, but ultimately failed.
The leftists at MSNBC need a reality check, and understand that suburban families, regardless of race, do not want to see their neighborhoods look like the violent cities created by Democratic politicians.
MSNBC’s flawed race-baiting message was sponsored by Verizon and Sleep Number. To fight back against MSNBC, go here to contact their advertisers.
Read the full transcript below:
MSNBC’s AM Joy
08/01/2020
11:47:15 AM
JONATHAN CAPEHART (MSNBC HOST): Donald Trump is taking a page straight out of George Wallace's playbook, using barely coded language to promise white suburban voters that he'll protect their neighborhoods from integration. Joining me now, Heather McGee, co-chair of Color of Change and Nikole Hannah Jones, Pulitzer Prize winning staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, thank you both very much for being here. Can we just, I want to put up a statistic just so we are operating from the same set of facts, that apparently the President of the United States doesn't know. And here it goes. Data from Catalyst, suburban non-white voters, 13%, they’re 13% share of the electorate urban non-white voters are just 9%. So this notion that the suburbs are the haven of white people is so old, no not true. I think as we all know, I am blanking on her name right now, because I'm on live television, but I’ll spit it out later. But she said to me, you know black people are in the suburbs because they kicked us out of the cities. And so Heather McGee, take that and run with it. This notion that the suburbs are still havens of whiteness.
HEATHER MCGHEE (CO-CHAIR COLOR OF CHANGE): I think anybody hearing Donald Trump needs to be under that impression. But let's be very clear, this is a dog whistle. It's not meant to act at the level of literal communication. It's supposed to invoke an image, which suburban still does and what he’s doing is putting himself in a long line of Republicans who's have used white fear and resentment of black people to get the majority of white people to vote for Republicans for president, which has happened every single time since Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. Right? What we are suing right now however, is that moment may be coming to an end. As of the current polling Joe Biden for the first time in multiple generations, has the support of the majority of white voters. And why is that? Because of those scary black people. Because the rioters and protesters. Because black lives matter has created a moral moment in this country that now the majority of Americans are supporting. And so I think that means something very, it's a wake-up call for Democrats as well as Republicans that we no longer have the old Clintonion calculus of we have as to hang on to white voters and sort of put limits on what we do for black Americans and for racial justice in general, in order to do that. Because the suburbs are with racial justice now, and so there is now a truly multi-racial coalition asking and demanding for change.
CAPEHART: The person whose name I blanked on is Christina Greer at Fordham University, who’s the one who said that black people are in the suburbs. Nikole Hannah Jones, amplify that what Heather was just talking about in terms of the history of using that dog whistle of suburbs as a way of signaling to white people that they're going to be protected from African-Americans.
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES (THE 1619 PROJECT): So, let's be clear, one, it's impossible to argue against Donald Trump with facts because he doesn't care about the facts, but if you look at the history of the Fair Housing Act. The Fair Housing Act was the last of the great civil rights legislation to get passed for a reason, and that's because even progressive white Americans or white Americans who believe they were progressive responded to the idea of their housing being integrated. Because outside of the south, housing segregation was a way that Jim Crow was largely accomplished. You don't have to bar black people from attending school with your kids or going to the same restaurants and parks as you if they don't live in your neighborhood. So he at least understands tactically that this is something that has worked in the past. But I agree with Heather. I don't think it's effective anymore because we know that suburbs are very diverse. There are rare things as all white suburbs as ringing urban areas. But also I think it is important to point out most people in this country have no idea what affirmatively furthering fair housing means, they have no idea there was a rule telling you how to affirmatively further fair housing and even when he rescinds that rule, affirmatively furthering fair housing is mandated by the Fair Housing Act. All the Obama administration was doing was clarifying how communities were to enforce this mandate. You cannot ask the President to rescind a Congressional mandate that is in the 1968 Civil Rights Act, so we should also be clear about that. What he's doing is largely performative which is not surprising.
CAPEHART: Right, right because that's what he does. Another factoid that I put on Twitter, but somehow a lot of people didn't know this but I know y'all two do. No Democrat running for president has won the white vote since 1964 and I'll make this a jump off. What happened in 1964?
MCGEE: Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. You know, I think it's so -- it's an important context. There are so many white Democrats who really don't understand how central the southern strategy has been to the Republican Party, and what an effect that's had on the ceiling of democratic commitments to racial justice. I said before that I think that what the movement for black lives has done in creating a moral polarizing moment has been a washed in our history because we are now seeing the majority of Americans supporting the movement for black lives and the majority of white people supporting Joe Biden for president. That is huge. Now, I think we should talk a little bit about what's actually going on in fair housing in America, especially at a time when one out of three Americans is struggling to pay their rent when we have record homelessness and housing insecurity because wages are too low to keep up with the rising cost of housing and people, white, black and brown, are finding unaffordable housing to be one of the most pressing issues. And why is that? It is because of the kinds of covenants which are basically the rules that suburbs put on themselves to say, you know what, we can't have any apartment buildings in this neighborhood. We only want big single family housing which means there's less housing, it's less affordable. It's one of the ways that racism has been baked into our rule-making and that's actually hurting people of all races right now who are working and middle class and struggling to keep the lights on and keep a roof over their head. So honestly the Obama era rule was important but it was very modest and so I am hoping that by putting this issue back into the political conversation, we get, you know, the next administration hopefully to do something much more concrete to undo what the federal government did to explicitly segregate the suburbs and to make housing unaffordable for millions of Americans.
CAPEHART: Nikole Hannah-Jones, I want to in the ninety seconds we have left, I want to get you to respond to Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and what he had to say about the 1619 Project. He introduced a bill last week to prevent federal funds from going to teach the 1619 Project in schools, and the bill is called, quote, Saving American History Act of 2020. Your response?
JONES: I don't even know how one responds to an act that believes that it needs to save American history from a project through journalism. What I will say is that every American should be deeply concerned when the federal government wants to interfere in the First Amendment rights of our communities. What this is basically saying is that he wants to prohibit public schools from teaching a work of journalism because he doesn’t like it. Even as he unwittingly confirmed the entire thesis of the project when he said that slavery was a quote on quote necessary evil that the nation was built upon, well, that's actually what the project argues, so I think it's not going to be successful. There's no way to enforce it, but they're clearly really buckling down in the culture wars as a last resort.