MSNBC’s tradition of having Republicans who fail to articulate Republican points of view continued on Tuesday’s Ana Cabrera Reports as former RNC chairman Michael Steele accused GOP Presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott of playing to the “white male vote” for not affirming the company line that America is a racist country.
Cabrera set up Steele by first playing a clip of Scott on Fox News from Monday that featured the following exchange:
JOHN ROBERTS: There are a lot of people on the left who say that this idea of up from the bootstraps, which you promote, that everybody can do it if they work hard enough really is ignoring the basic racial history of this country. What do you say to those criticisms?
TIM SCOTT: Well, just one word: hogwash. It’s the simplest word I can use, it’s just hogwash. The truth of my life disproves the lies of the radical left. What they hate the most is a candidate like me who actually disrupts their narrative.
Steele shot back at Scott, “I appreciate Tim, I’ve known Tim. I got, you know, I helped get him elected in 2010 to Congress, I was part of our team then, but the reality of it is, it’s not hogwash.”
Scott has talked about how he has faced racism on the individual level and therefore knows that racism is very real, but he has refused to smear entire institutions and the entire country as it is in 2023 as racist, which is something Steele simply couldn’t understand:
Whatever that is, it's not that. The reality of it is you cannot say in the one hand that the story of your life is about, you know, something other than race, and then talk about and tell us stories about how you've been racially profiled or how, you know, you’ve run and met people who had to deal with racism, how do you explain their stories? Because that's part of their life too.
Steele further argued that “Tim has got to figure out a way in which he can authentically speak about both things at the same time because you can. Most black people can. They can express to you a hope in the country that enslaved their great-great grandparents, right? So you can have that -- you can have that conversation.”
Yet, he also claimed “You don't have to play to that white male vote to try to, you know, prove, “oh, the country is not racist” when, in fact, that is not the experience of a lot of people of color, even to this day.”
What makes Steele’s accusations especially sad is that the current accusations he is hurling at Scott were exactly the same kind that were hurled at him before his MSNBC days and instead of defending Scott, he attacks a straw man in order to please MSNBC’s viewers who apparently believe that not smearing people or trashing the entire country is just a cynical attempt to win white male voters.
This segment was sponsored by Angi.
Here is a transcript for the July 11 show:
MSNBC Ana Cabrera Reports
7/11/2023
10:33 AM ET
ANA CABRERA: Listen to how he responds to some criticism he’s been facing when it comes to the issues of race.
JOHN ROBERTS: There are a lot of people on the left who say that this idea of up from the bootstraps, which you promote, that everybody can do it if they work hard enough really is ignoring the basic racial history of this country. What do you say to those criticisms?
TIM SCOTT: Well, just one word: hogwash. It’s the simplest word I can use, it’s just hogwash. The truth of my life disproves the lies of the radical left. What they hate the most is a candidate like me who actually disrupts their narrative.
CABRERA: Michael, your reaction or your response to those comments?
MICHAEL STEELE: I appreciate Tim, I’ve known Tim. I got, you know, I helped get him elected in 2010 to Congress, I was part of our team then, but the reality of it is, it’s not hogwash.
Whatever that is, it's not that. The reality of it is you cannot say in the one hand that the story of your life is about, you know, something other than race, and then talk about and tell us stories about how you've been racially profiled or how, you know, you’ve run and met people who had to deal with racism, how do you explain their stories? Because that's part of their life too.
So, Tim has got to figure out a way in which he can authentically speak about both things at the same time because you can. Most black people can. They can express to you a hope in the country that enslaved their great-great grandparents, right? So you can have that -- you can have that conversation. You don't have to play to that white male vote to try to, you know, prove, “oh, the country is not racist” when, in fact, that is not the experience of a lot of people of color, even to this day.
