In the most bizarre and deranged take you’ll hear all day, MSNBC’s All In host Chris Hayes accused Republicans of being racist for being willing to work with Democrats on an infrastructure bill. On Thursday night, after Senate Republicans and Democrats met with President Biden on the White House driveway to announce their infrastructure compromise, Hayes used the opening segment of his show to rant about how Republicans were “radicalizing against democracy while moderating on some elements of policy.”
Hayes seemed bewildered why some Senate Republicans would be willing to work with Biden and Senate Democrats on an infrastructure package while having refused to work with former President Obama during his administration on other legislation.
The conclusion Hayes took away from this was that Republicans hated Obama because he was black and that Republicans are more willing to work with Biden because he’s white.
All the rhetorical fire has moved away from the deficit and on to some random, school superintendent in Maine after his district dared to denounce white supremacy after the murder of George Floyd. Now, those are the kind of lines Republicans cannot cross. But spending hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure? Whatever, no problem.
Then, of course, I mean, we got to talk about the obvious, right? The additional, glaringly obvious aspect of all this. When you compare the first six months of the last Democratic president's administration, to this one...Barack Obama faced total opposition, on the right, from the outset. Now, Joe Biden has faced a lot of opposition, too. But there is just no universe, as someone who covered this from Washington, D.C. up close, in which 11 Republican Senators would have come out, posed on that driveway, to strike a deal like this with Barack Obama in his first six months in office. No universe.
The hatred of Barack Obama was so boiling hot from the base. The base doesn't hate Joe Biden. And we've seen it over and over, since the campaign. When t-shirt vendors at Trump rallies couldn't sell any derogatory Joe Biden shirts. The Barack Obama? The Hillary Clinton stuff, however? That, still, sold like hotcakes. Huh. Boy, look at those three faces. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. Now, what could it possibly be about Joe Biden that does not inspire the same visceral ire of the Republican base? That doesn't render him toxic and threatening, in the same way as those other two figures? Joe Biden. The 78-year-old, white man, is not a living embodiment of the existential threat that the Republican base fears.
Republicans are racist for opposing Obama’s so-called stimulus bill and for supporting Biden’s infrastructure bill? News flash to MSNBC: not everything is about race! Many Republicans opposed Obama’s stimulus bill because it was never going to save the economy in 2009, and the vast majority of the money went to pay off the unions who bankrolled the Democrat’s campaigns the previous year.
One reason why some Senate Republicans are more willing to support an infrastructure bill is that President Trump tried to get an infrastructure bill passed during his time in office. It has absolutely nothing to do with race.
Chris Hayes also mocked Republicans for focusing more on so-called “culture war” issues like critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, and transgender issues, instead of traditional conservative priorities like fiscal policy and tax rates.
What Hayes doesn’t get is that ordinary people, and especially conservatives, worry about whether their kids are being indoctrinated with transgender ideology or whether their kids are taught to hate their country and their skin color through a critical race theory curriculum.
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Read the transcript below by clicking "expand"
All In With Chris Hayes
6/24/2021
8:01 PM
CHRIS HAYES: Good evening, from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. You know, it's the kind of thing we really do not see happen often, anymore. This afternoon, the President of the United States, President Joe Biden, walked out to the White House driveway. Surrounded by Democratic and Republican senators. To announce they have a deal. A big, bipartisan, legislative deal on infrastructure.
[Cuts to video]
JOE BIDEN: This reminds me of the days we used to get an awful lot done up in the United States Congress. We actually work with people -- we have bipartisan deals. Bipartisan deals means compromise.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Are you confident that you are going to have all the Democrats' support in the Senate?
BIDEN: I'm not confident of anything except (unintelligible).
[Cuts back to live]
HAYES: Now, we're going to get into the details of the deal, which includes $579 billion in new spending on new projects across the country. And a somewhat complicated two-track strategy, in which Democrats would, also, pass a supplemental package alongside that. In fact, I am going to talk to Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut about all of that, in just a moment. But first, I just want to take a step back to put this deal in context with the very strange politics of this particular moment. Back in the beginning of February, you know, after the insurrection. And -- and sort of, taking in the aftermath of the election. I published this piece in the "Atlantic." In which, I made the argument that the Republican Party was radicalizing against democracy, even as it was moderating on some core elements of policy. And the events of the past few days have, I think, borne out that thesis. I mean, remember. Just-48 hours ago, I was sitting at this desk, talking to you, right?
Senate Democrats attempted to expand voter access. To create a kind of, nationwide floor of voting-rights standards. And that bill, the “For The People Act”, faced uniform-total opposition from Republicans. Who used the filibuster to block it. Not a single Republican would vote to even start debate on the bill. And senate-minority leader Mitch McConnell made it clear that there's, basically, nothing Democrats can do to, ever, get any Republican support on any part of that bill. Certainly, not on things, like, for instance, changing the standards for partisan gerrymandering. Or even reinstating the parts of the Voting-Rights Act that the John Roberts Supreme Court gutted. Let's keep in mind, this is the same Voting Rights Act which was last reauthorized in 2006 with a massive bipartisan majority in the house and a unanimous vote in the senate. In fact, the person who got all the Republican Senators to vote for it was then-majority whip, Mitch McConnell. That same Voting-Rights Act now faces essentially implacable Republican opposition.
So, that's what I mean by radicalizing against democracy. And we're watching this radicalization happen at the state level, of course. Where Republican-controlled governments are passing restrictive voting laws. Multiple states are now trying to follow Arizona's lead and launch an audit of the 2020 election results. In fact, new polling -- get this -- shows 46% of Republicans, almost half, believe it was appropriate for Republican legislators in states where Joe Biden won to just ignore the popular vote. And to try and assign their state's electoral votes to Donald Trump. That is about as radicalized against democracy as you could possibly get. Now, two days later, what do we have in the White House driveway? We have an old-fashion, sausage-making infrastructure deal announced on the White House driveway with a bipartisan group. Including 11 Republican Senators. How do we make sense of this?
Well, the Republican Party's ideology on core matters of governance has dissipated into incoherence. I mean, really, core questions about political economy, specifically, right? Free enterprise and the market. Are so detached from the actual-material interests of its base. Those policies that they have been championing, forever, right? Tax cuts for the rich. You're-on-your-own economics. They've become so unpopular. They have been surely, but slowly, walking away from it all, at least in rhetoric and messaging. Because here's the thing. They -- they've lost the ability to rile the -- the base. The current base. The Trump base. They have lost the ability to rile them up on those core issues, anymore. It doesn't work. The base doesn't care. I mean, compare that, right, to where we were 12 years ago. And the unrelenting backlash against the Obama stimulus. Which came, in response to the great recession. In 2009, the American Recovery Act, which was less than a trillion dollars, was passed with zero Republican votes in the house.
[Cuts to video]
JOHN BOEHNER: The bill that was supposed to be about jobs, jobs, jobs, has turned into a bill that's all about spending, spending, and spending.
RUSH LIMBAUGH: Do you know that, in this Porkulus bill, it has been learned, in addition to everything else, illegal immigrants will, also, be given checks?
SEAN HANNITY: I look at this as smother the private sector in terms of a stimulus package. I don't see this as a stimulus package.
RUDY GIULIANI: And if -- if you think you are going to get your way out of this recession by all kinds of social programs, welfare programs. You're just going to make it much worse.
[Cuts back to live]
HAYES: Right? Oh, the immigrants getting free checks. Welfare. Social programs. Look at Barack Obama just spending that money around. Okay. Compare that to, back in March, when Joe Biden signed the COVID-stimulus package. Right? Because for the second time, in two transitions, a Democrat had to take over from a Republican that had left the republic in ruins, right? So apples-to-apples comparison. Biden passes the American Rescue Plan, right? No-Republican votes. I’ve barely heard a word from Republicans about that package, twice as big as the stimulus.
Nearly $2 trillion package that passed on a party-line vote in the senate more than three months ago. I haven't heard a word, except to praise aspects of it they want their constituents to take advantage of. There’s nothing there to mind! What riles up the Republican base, now, is fear of multiracial democracy. Cancel culture. George Floyd protests. Black Lives Matter. Censuring Dr. Seuss. Critical-race theory. A constant, constant, moral panic about the threat of those other people, who either do not look like you. Or do not share your values taking power and wielding power, the way that they dominate the institutions of American life outside of politics. That's what it's about. That culture war. Whose culture it is, whose America it is, is what the base cares about. They could give…
(laughs)
about inflation or taxes or even welfare. I mean, all this stuff that's been tried and true, Republican reactionary rhetoric for literal decades. All the rhetorical fire has moved away from the deficit and on to some random, school superintendent in Maine after his district dared to denounce white supremacy after the murder of George Floyd. Now, those are the kind of lines Republicans cannot cross. But spending hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure? Whatever, no problem. Then, of course, I mean, we got to talk about the obvious, right? The additional, glaringly obvious aspect of all this. When you compare the first six months of the last Democratic president's administration, to this one...
Barack Obama faced total opposition, on the right, from the outset. Now, Joe Biden has faced a lot of opposition, too. But there is just no universe, as someone who covered this from Washington, D.C., up close. In which 11 Republican Senators would have come out, posed on that driveway, to strike a deal like this with Barack Obama in his first six months in office. No universe. The hatred of Barack Obama was so boiling hot from the base. The base doesn't hate Joe Biden. And we've seen it over and over, since the campaign. When t-shirt vendors at Trump rallies couldn't sell any derogatory Joe Biden shirts. The Barack Obama? The Hillary Clinton stuff, however?
That, still, sold like hotcakes. Huh. Boy, look at those three faces. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. Now, what could it possibly be about Joe Biden that does not inspire the same visceral ire of the Republican base? That doesn't render him toxic and threatening, in the same way as those other two figures? Joe Biden. The 78-year-old, white man, is not a living embodiment of the existential threat that the Republican base fears. And that existential threat. That fear, of the country being governed by people, other than them, broadly construed, that's what they really care about. The rest? They couldn't care less.
