‘Just Try Racism’: MSNBC Guest Claims GOP Used ‘First Instinct’ Against Kamala Harris
'All that is a dog whistle'
New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay suggested on Thursday that some of the Republicans opposing Kevin McCarthy's bid for the House speakership were elected due to racism.
During an appearance on MSNBC, Gay claimed that some of the Republican figures were "elected based on a litmus test to stop the tide of diversity in the country, the browning of America, the fears that surround that."
Earlier in the segment, host Nicolle Wallace had described the deadlock as a "tragedy for American democracy."
\u201c"Some of these individuals were people who were really only elected based on a litmus test to stop the tide of diversity in the country, the browning of America, the fears that surround that. So, they were not elected to go do the work of government"- @MaraGay w/ @NicolleDWallace\u201d— Deadline White House (@Deadline White House) 1672963836
While a significant majority of the House GOP has been backing McCarthy, more than a dozen Republicans have been been opposing him, preventing McCarthy from gaining the speaker's gavel. So far, McCarthy has come up short in a whopping 11 votes, including three on Tuesday, three on Wednesday, and five on Thursday. Democrats have been voting for Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
In many of the votes this week, the Republicans opposing McCarthy have voted for Byron Donalds of Florida, who is black — Donalds voted for McCarthy twice, but has since been voting against him.
Democrat Cori Bush of Missouri, who is black, has described Donalds as a "prop."
"FWIW, @ByronDonalds is not a historic candidate for Speaker. He is a prop. Despite being Black, he supports a policy agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy. His name being in the mix is not progress—it's pathetic," Bush tweeted on Wednesday.
Former President Donald Trump has called for Republicans to rally around McCarthy, but Matt Gaetz of Florida asserted that Trump's support for McCarthy represents "the worst Human Resources decision President Trump has ever made," while Lauren Boebert of Colorado has said that Trump should call on McCarthy to withdraw from contention. Gaetz voted for Trump to be House speaker during some of the votes on Thursday.
A New York Times editorial board member said that she was "disturbed" upon seeing "dozens of American flags" on Americans' vehicles over the weekend and insisted that the country needs to "separate America from whiteness."
Mara Gay, also an MSNBC analyst, appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Tuesday, where she recalled the concerning moment a summer weekend turned into a horror movie.
"The reality is here that we have a large percentage of the American — I don't know how big it is, but we have tens of millions of Trump voters who continue to believe that their rights as citizens are under threat by simple virtue of having to share the democracy with others," Gay told "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski. "I think as long as they see Americanness as the same as one with whiteness, this is going to continue. We have to figure out how to get every American a place at the table in this democracy, but how to separate Americanness, America, from whiteness. Until we can confront that and talk about that, this is really going to continue.
"I was on Long Island this weekend, visiting a really dear friend, and I was really disturbed," Gay continued.
Gay said that she became "disturbed" when she saw vehicles sporting American flags, and vocal support for former President Donald Trump — including outright disdain for President Joe Biden.
"I saw, you know, dozens and dozens of pickup trucks with expletives against Joe Biden on the back of them, Trump flags and in some cases, just dozens of American flags, which is also just disturbing, because essentially the message was clear: It was 'This is my country. This is not your country. I own this,'" Gay continued.
She added that what's even more concerning, perhaps, is the "large percentage of Americans" who are insistent on pretending that "this isn't the threat that it is."
"[U]ntil we're ready to have that conversation, this is going to continue," she insisted. “What really is concerning to me as well is, it's not just Democrats in Congress. I think there's a large percentage of Americans, even some of my colleagues in journalism, who are invested in some way in pretending that this isn't the threat that it is. That is the real concern. Because, you know, the Trump voters who are not going to get on board with democracy, they're a minority. You can marginalize them, long-term. But if we don't take the threat seriously, then I think we're all in really bad shape."
This clip needs to be savoured from start to finish https://t.co/2uleoEvvZ2
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) 1623149982.0
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