On Tuesday afternoon, MSNBC hosts Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle marveled at an unhinged diatribe delivered by left-wing Princeton University professor and MSNBC contributor Eddie Glaude during Monday’s Deadline: White House. In the nasty rant, Glaude dismissed the “myth” of American “goodness,” referred to the conservative Tea Party movement as the “ugly underbelly of the country,” and labeled President Trump the “manifestation of the ugliness that’s in us.”
Noting that the President “denounced racism and white supremacy after the recent shootings in El Paso and Dayton” during his White House address, Ruhle teed up a lengthy clip of Glaude’s outburst from the previous day and touted his argument that “it is going to take a whole lot more to solve this deep-rooted problem.”
“America is not unique in its sins as a country. We’re not unique in our evils....where we may be singular is our refusal to acknowledge them,” Glaude told host Nicolle Wallace and his fellow panelists during MSNBC’s 4:00 p.m. ET hour on Monday. He lamented “the legends and myths we tell about our inherent, you know, goodness to hide and cover and conceal so that we can maintain a kind of willful ignorance that protects our innocence.”
Glaude insisted that the racist beliefs of the white supremacist El Paso shooter had their roots in the Tea Party movement from a decade ago:
See, the thing is that when the Tea Party was happening we – people were – we were saying, pundits, “Oh, it’s just about economic populism. It’s not about race.” When people knew, people knew, social scientists were already writing that what was driving the Tea Party were anxieties about demographics shifts, that the country was changing. That they were seeing these racially ambiguous babies on Cheerios commercials. That the country wasn’t quite feeling like it was a white nation anymore. And people were screaming from the top of their lungs, “Yo, this is not just simply economic populism. This is the ugly underbelly of the country.”
He then framed the Texas shooting as the latest example of “communities that have had to bear the brunt of America confronting – white Americans confronting the danger of their innocence.”
“And so what we know is that the country has been playing politics for a long time on this hatred,” the radical leftist announced. Glaude then held up Trump as the personification of America’s supposed inherent racism:
So it’s easy for us to place it all on Donald Trump’s shoulders. It’s easy for us to place Pittsburgh on his shoulders, it’s easy for me to place Charlottesville on his shoulders, it’s easy for us to place El Paso on his shoulders. This is us! And if we’re going to get past this, we can’t blame it on him. He’s a manifestation of the ugliness that’s in us.
The clip concluded with Glaude again singling people out based on skin color:
Either we’re going to change, Nicolle, or we’re going to do this again and again and babies are going to have to grow up without mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts, friends, while we’re trying to convince white folk to finally leave behind a history that will maybe, maybe – or embrace a history that might set them free from being white. Finally. Finally.
Rather than challenge a single portion of Glaude’s racially-charged rhetoric, on Tuesday, host Ali Velshi simply praised the incendiary remarks: “Powerful words from Eddie. Hard to fathom, hard to sort of digest. But there is nothing I can debate him on that one. There is nothing I could tell him he’s wrong about.” Ruhle chimed in: “If it’s hard to digest, I recommend watching it again.”
It’s bad enough that MSNBC brings on left-wing rhetorical bomb throwers like Glaude, let alone that supposedly objective journalists like Ruhle and Velshi then endorse such language.
Here is a full transcript of the August 6 segment in which they promoted Glaude’s August 5 comments:
1:09 PM ET
STEPHANIE RUHLE: It’s been now 24 hours since President Trump denounced racism and white supremacy after the recent shootings in El Paso and Dayton and, of course, last week in California. But will condemning these forms of hate just in his words be enough? MSNBC contributor Eddie Glaude said it is going to take a whole lot more to solve this deep-rooted problem.
EDDIE GLAUDE [8/5 DEADLINE: WHITE HOUSE]: America is not unique in its sins as a country. We’re not unique in our evils, to be honest with you. I think where we may be singular is our refusal to acknowledge them. And the legends and myths we tell about our inherent, you know, goodness to hide and cover and conceal so that we can maintain a kind of willful ignorance that protects our innocence.
See, the thing is that when the Tea Party was happening we – people were – we were saying, pundits, “Oh, it’s just about economic populism. It’s not about race.” When people knew, people knew, social scientists were already writing that what was driving the Tea Party were anxieties about demographics shifts, that the country was changing. That they were seeing these racially ambiguous babies on Cheerios commercials. That the country wasn’t quite feeling like it was a white nation anymore. And people were screaming from the top of their lungs, “Yo, this is not just simply economic populism. This is the ugly underbelly of the country.”
See, the thing is this. And I’ll say this and take the hit on it. There are communities that have had to bear the brunt of America confronting – white Americans confronting the danger of their innocence. And it happens every generation. So somehow we have to kind of, “Oh, my god, is this who we are?”
And just again another, here is another generation of babies. Think about it, a two-year-old had his bones broken by two parents trying to shield him from being killed. A woman who has been married to this man for as long as I’ve been on the planet almost lost her husband. For what?
And so what we know is that the country has been playing politics for a long time on this hatred. We know this. So it’s easy for us to place it all on Donald Trump’s shoulders. It’s easy for us to place Pittsburgh on his shoulders, it’s easy for me to place Charlottesville on his shoulders, it’s easy for us to place El Paso on his shoulders. This is us! And if we’re going to get past this, we can’t blame it on him. He’s a manifestation of the ugliness that’s in us.
I’ve had the privilege of growing up in a tradition that didn’t believe in the myths and legends because we had to bear the brunt of them. Either we’re going to change, Nicolle, or we’re going to do this again and again and babies are going to have to grow up without mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts, friends, while we’re trying to convince white folk to finally leave behind a history that will maybe, maybe – or embrace a history that might set them free from being white. Finally. Finally.
ALI VELSHI: Powerful words from Eddie. Hard to fathom, hard to sort of digest. But there is nothing I can debate him on that one. There is nothing I could tell him he’s wrong about.
RUHLE: If it’s hard to digest, I recommend watching it again.
VELSHI: Yeah.
