On The Sunday Show, MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart demonstrated a repugnant, vile, and a frankly racist hostility that some liberals feel toward black conservatives as he closed his show by decrying South Carolina Senator Tim Scott (R) as a "fool," suggesting that he is a black man who should be silenced because, in Capehart's mind, he's given aid and comfort to white supremacy.
The vitriol came in response to the South Carolina Republican responding to race-obsessed MSNBC host Joy Reid dismissing him as a "token" because he is black in spite of his experience and knowledge of critical issues.
At 11:54 a.m. Eastern, Capehart -- who is also a Washington Post editorial board member and a newly-minted regular commentator on the PBS NewsHour -- began his closing commentary:
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt," the famous saying goes. During an interview on Fox News last week, Senator Tim Scott proved it to be true, to stunning effect. The South Carolina Republican didn't like how our very own Joy Reid said his presence at a recent press conference with conservative colleagues gave it, "the patina of diversity."
Capehart then teed up a clip from March 8's Fox News Primetime by attacking Scott's friend and stand-in host and former Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) as no more than "a Fox News malcontent."
In said segment, Gowdy had played a soundbite of MSNBC's ReidOut host Joy Reid suggesting that Republicans only included Senator Scott in a recent press conference because he is black to give it a "patina of diversity." After Gowdy called on him to respond, Scott insisted: "Woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy. We need to take that seriously."
What Capehart didn't mention was that Gowdy also played a clip of Reid from several years ago calling Scott a "token," or Gowdy's explanation that Scott was included in the press conference (which was about taxes) because he is one of the Senate's leading experts on the issue.
Capehart reacted with nothing but disgust as he started unspooling his argument about Scott being a betrayal to his race, arguing that "white supremacy" in the U.S. results in African Americans being "viewed with suspicion and being held at the bottom of the social order no matter our education or the state of our finances."
The MSNBC host then invoked the Capitol Hill riots and several high-profile examples of white women being recorded calling the police unjustifiably on black Americans before concluding his commentary by denouncing Scott as racially insensitive. He added that Scott should speak to black families that have experienced such a loss at the ends of "white supremacy" (which Capehart used as a stand-in for police) (click "expand"):
I defy Senator Scott to ask the families of those murdered in that 2015 slaughter if something as ridiculous as woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy.
I defy Senator Scott to ask the families of those murdered in that 2015 slaughter if something as ridiculous as woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy. I defy him to ask the families of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Jordan Davis, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Sandra Bland, Elijah McClain, Rayshard Brooks, Ahmaud Arbery, Atatiana Jefferson, Daniel Prude, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, to name a few, if the pernicious power of white supremacy contributed to the loss of their loved ones.
Tim Scott has nothing to say to them. Given his track record, this is one time a black man's silence is golden, lest he prove himself a fool again.
I'm Jonathan Capehart, and this has been The Sunday Show.
Capehart deserved a pants-on-fire ruling for this nonsense. Scott has not only spoke out on many of these shootings (meaning Capehart should try using Google), but he has repeatedly paid tribute to those lost in the church shooting. Worse yet for Capehart's strawman, Scott knew the late Rev. Clementa Pinckney and even texted him to ask if he had survived the shooting
On Fox News Primetime, host Gowdy had explained the practical reasons why Scott had been included in the press conference for his expertise, demonstrating that it was MSNBC's Reid who prejudicially dismissed the South Carolina Senator's qualifications because he is black.
This episode of MSNBC's The Sunday Show was sponsored in part by Fidelity. Their contact information is linked.
To see the transcript, click "expand."
MSNBC's The Sunday Show
March 14, 2021
11:51 a.m. EasternJONATHAN CAPEHART: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt," the famous saying goes. During an interview on Fox News last week, Senator Tim Scott proved it to be true, to stunning effect. The South Carolina Republican didn't like how our very own Joy Reid said his presence at a recent press conference with conservative colleagues gave it, "the patina of diversity." Have a listen to how the only black Republican in the U.S. Senate responded after a customary tirade by a Fox News malcontent.
SENATOR TIM SCOTT (R-SC) [on Fox News Primetime, 03/08/21]: Woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy. We need to take that seriously.
CAPEHART: What in the sunken place? Woke supremacy ranks up there with that tired crutch of the right known as cancel culture. The purpose of both phrases is to shield folks from criticism when they're called out for their actions or their deeply ignorant musings that peddle in racism, xenophobia, or misogyny. It's also used to deny dignity to those of us who rise up and demand it in defiance of a dominant culture that depends on our silence. Or, in the case of Senator Scott, complicity in maintaining that silence. Woke supremacy is not real, but white supremacy is very real.
Brian Stephenson of the Equal Justice Initiative once told me that the racial inequity white supremacy fosters has created a kind of smog that we all breathe in, and it's prevented us from being healthy. Isabelle Wilkerson writes in her book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, that the caste system white supremacy constructs is unyielding in its durability because "its very invisibility is what gives it power and longevity." The result is African Americans being viewed with suspicion and being held at the bottom of the social order, no matter our education or the state of our finances.
What is not invisible is the impact of white supremacy and those who enforce it. The clearest example is the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by white supremacists, egged on by a white supremacist President intent on overturning the election he lost. But we have borne witness to myriad other manifestations of white supremacy. Last year, a white woman called the cops, falsely claiming a black man was threatening her in Central Park after he asked her to follow the rules and put her dog on a leash. Barbecue Becky called the cops in 2018 on two black men grilling in an Oakland, California park. Permit Patty called the cops that same year on an eight-year-old black girl selling bottled water outside her own home in San Francisco.
Between 1916 and 1970, six million African-Americans fled the racial terror lynchings of the South in the great migration North and West. And in Tim Scott's own state, an avowed and unrepentant white supremacist walked into Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, to murder nine black parishioners as they prayed. I defy Senator Scott to ask the families of those murdered in that 2015 slaughter if something as ridiculous as woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy.
I defy him to ask the families of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Jordan Davis, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Sandra Bland, Elijah McClain, Rayshard Brooks, Ahmaud Arbery, Atatiana Jefferson, Daniel Prude, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, to name a few, if the pernicious power of white supremacy contributed to the loss of their loved ones. Tim Scott has nothing to say to them. Given his track record, this is one time a black man's silence is golden, lest he prove himself a fool again.
I'm Jonathan Capehart, and this has been The Sunday Show.
