On Sunday morning, two MSNBC hosts -- Ali Velshi and Jonathan Capehart -- promoted a discredited smear against Texas Republicans that they have moved to bar schools from condemning the Ku Klux Klan. Ali Velshi -- who is also a senior business correspondent for NBC News -- brought up an NBCNews.com story hyping the issue.
Speaking with race-obsessed contributor Eddie Glaude, Velshi recalled:
We talked about the 1619 Project and Nikole Hannah-Jones and a sort of fuller look at American history. And then it became an attack on Critical Race Theory, and now, in Texas, the Senate has passed a bill that would remove a requirement for public school teachers to teach that the Ku Klux Klan is morally wrong.
He then added:
We're going down some weird roads in this country, and part of me doesn't want to take something like that seriously because we have books and we have the internet. Except we've got books and we've got the internet, and we've got vaccine deniers. We've got people denying women their rights. And so I don't know. What do you do with this stuff?
Glaude fretted that, because Texas is such a populous state, school textbooks of other states might also be influenced by decisions made in Texas, and then tied the issue to an alleged fascist menace in America:
Look, there are folks screaming, "You will not replace us!" There are folks worried about -- Tucker Carlson and others who are worried about demographic shifts, and they're panicking. And they're also worried about kind of being displaced in history -- being made to be monsters. This is the stuff -- the logic of fascism. We need to understand it.
In fact, National Review editor Rich Lowry earlier last week already exposed the dishonesty by liberals on the matter since the issue was that Democratic state legislators wanted to make changes to the state's education curriculum while Republicans argued that the curriculum was already adequate and opted not to change it. The state will not suddenly start barring schools from teaching about such important parts of U.S. history which are already being taught.
About an hour later on The Sunday Show, as Capehart interviewed civil rights attorney Lee Merritt, who is also running for attorney general of Texas as a Democrat, the MSNBC host also misleadingly brought up the issue by citing a Huff Post article on the subject:
You talked about, you know, setting sights on the books that, you know, students consume. There's a study in Huff Post: "Texas Senate Bill Drops Requirement That Ku Klux Klan Is 'Morally Wrong.'" I would love -- as a permanent civil rights attorney, just hold forth on your feelings about that particular bill.
Capehart gave no pushback when Merritt suggested that Republicans are trying to "promote the Ku Klux Klan."
The distortion of reality is reminiscent of the liberal media a decade ago repeating dishonest claims by liberal activists when Texas education leaders revised the state's curriculum for its primary schools.
This dishonesty from MSNBC was sponsored in part by Generac. Their contact information is linked.
Transcripts follow:
MSNBC's Velshi
7/25/2021
9:56 a.m. Eastern
ALI VELSHI: Eddie, I want to go back to your initial comment about an assault on seriousness. You know, we first, at first, we talked about the 1619 Project and Nikole Hannah-Jones and a sort of fuller look at American history. And then it became an attack on Critical Race Theory, and now, in Texas, the senate has passed a bill that would remove a requirement for public school teachers to teach that the Ku Klux Klan is morally wrong.
We're going down some weird roads in this country, and part of me doesn't want to take something like that seriously because we have books and we have the internet. Except we've got books and we've got the internet, and we've got vaccine deniers. We've got people denying women their rights. And so I don't know. What do you do with this stuff?
EDDIE GLAUDE, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Well, you have to take Texas very seriously, Ali, because of the size of the state and its impact on school textbook purchasing. It has an impact on content on school books in McMillan Press and the lot, so this is really, really key. Look, there are folks screaming, "You will not replace us!" There are folks worried about -- Tucker Carlson and others who are worried about demographic shifts, and they're panicking. And they're also worried about kind of being displaced in history -- being made to be monsters. This is the stuff -- the logic of fascism. We need to understand it.
And I want to be very, very clear here, Ali. The problem isn't just simply loud racists -- those folk are easily identifiable. The problem rests with those of us who are willing to be silent in the face of all of this, going back to our last segment. So this is just simply another front being opened where folks are trying in some ways to reassert the lie -- the lie about this country -- the lie that it must remain in the vein of old Europe to maintain their hold on power. That's all it is, Ali.
(...)
MSNBC
The Sunday Show
7/25/2021
10:52 a.m. Eastern
JONATHAN CAPEHART: You talked about, you know, setting sights on the books that, you know, students consume. There's a study in Huff Post: "Texas Senate Bill Drops Requirement That Ku Klux Klan Is 'Morally Wrong.'" I would love -- as a permanent civil rights attorney, just hold forth on your feelings about that particular bill.
LEE MERRITT, TEXAS DEMOCRATIC ATTORNEY GENERAL CANDIDATE: Listen, I want people outside Texas to understand how dangerous this is. One out of 10 children in America are educated in Texas. It leads the nation in our education, and right now it's trying to wash -- I'm sorry, it's trying to whitewash our history, promote the Ku Klux Klan as an organization that I guess was of neutral morality when it wasn't. We should be able to teach in our history what was evil. And I come from a classroom setting. I began my career as an educator with Teach for America in Hoboken, New Jersey and Atlanta. And to have this kind of governmental, partisan influence over what we teach our children is the height of anti-democracy.
