On Friday night and on Saturday, several MSNBC shows threw around charges of racism by Georgia Republicans as the liberal news network continued hyping the story of 53,000 new voter registrations being held in a "pending" status until those voters verify their information.
Even though verification should be simple for most to do on Election Day, MSNBC hosts and contributors repeatedly made charges of racism by Republicans across several shows, including All In, The Last Word, and AM Joy.
Referring to these "pending" registrations and also other voters who were purged from the voter rolls after many years of not voting, All In fill-in host Joy Reid referred to the situation in Georgia as "an old-fashioned Southern Strategy" and charged Georgians face "a white population of conservative Christians who say 'We are gonna rule this state, this county, this city, this country, and it really doesn't matter who becomes the majority, or what they want. You will be ruled by us, period, end of story."
New York Times columnist and MSNBC contributor Michelle Goldberg described Republicans passing stricter voting laws as the "legislative version" of the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville shouting, "You will not replace us."
The fact that the registrations can be fixed when voters show up on Election Day was usually buried well into the segments, and, like previous coverage of the story from Thursday and early Friday, it was not mentioned that the reason a disproportionate number of minorities were affected was allegedly because a limited number of liberal groups that focused on registering minorities had completed forms incorrectly.
On her AM Joy show on Saturday, Reid proclaimed that "we are facing a tidal wave of voter suppression efforts" that are "aimed at students and voters of color," and later again claimed that "voters of color are being targeted."
Reid proclaimed "The reason [GOP gubernatorial nominee and Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp] has been sort of bio-engineering an electorate that will be whiter, an electorate that will be Republican, an electorate that won't have Asian Americans and Latinos and African Americans with the same degree of access, is because he can see that this is not going to be easy" to win. The latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll had Kemp leading by 1.4 points.
MSNBC contributor Cornell Belcher declared that Republicans "are becoming less able to compete for minority voters and have no choice but in fact to deny these voters their rights. We're fighting the remnants of the Civil War here." Frequent MSNBC guest and Bustle contributor Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that "it is pure racism," and "blatant racism," garnering agreement from host Reid.
And in his new time slot on Saturday at 5:00 p.m. Eastern, PoliticsNation host Al Sharpton declared that "Jim Crow himself would blush" about Georgia.
