On Friday, MSNBC’s Morning Joe kept pushing left-wing hysteria about Republican voting reform laws in states across the country and cheering on the scheme by Democrats to have the federal government take over elections nationwide. One pundit even went so far as to vilely compare legislation by GOP lawmakers in various states to the brutal 1955 murder of black teenager Emmett Till.
Co-host Joe Scarborough direly warned of “threats to democracy” that included “making it more difficult for people to vote, especially people of color” and Republican state legislatures “going to just take over the counting of the voting.” In response, leftist author and New York Times columnist Caroline Randall Williams predictably repeated worn-out Democratic Party talking points: “And it’s sort of this radical act of erasure that is a marked regression that is just reminiscent of, to me, Jim Crow, right.”
She went on to demand that if efforts by Democrats in Congress to take over and rig elections failed “that maybe we’re just facing a moment when it’s time to start marching across bridges again....there’s some machinery that’s been activated that is going to require other kinds of activism to navigate.”
Turning back to Williams later in the 7:00 a.m. ET hour discussion, Scarborough pushed a wild conspiracy theory that Republicans were plotting to illegally tamper with ballots in future elections: “...you have Republicans who are now talking about an actual subversion of the election by taking over the voting rooms and fixing the counts the way they want to fix the counts.”
It was then that Williams recalled the brutal killing of 14-year-old Emmett Till during the height of the Jim Crow era and suggested Republican voting laws were somehow equivalent:
I’ve spent a lot of time in the last year thinking about Emmett Till and about how, you know, when the trial came after the men who killed him, Milam and Bryant, the guys that voted them – you know, the guys on the jury that exonerated them – they said after the fact, “We just couldn’t imagine sending a man to jail for killing” – you know, insert the word that I won’t use on television – “we wouldn’t send them to jail for that”....America has a long practice and precedent of not protecting the rights and will of its citizens of color, of its citizens of different abilities, of its citizens who are women. And I think that we just have to be on guard about the fact that an old practice is being reactivated.
There was not one word of protest against that disgusting comparison. Instead, Williams was allowed to continue her partisan rant: “The federal government has to be able to intervene to stop state’s rights from exercising their right to be racist....this sort of anti-democratic, extremely racist practice that is totally familiar to how this country’s always been.”
Democrats and left-wing media spewing outrageous lies about Republican voting reform bills has become so routine that pundits have to find a way to out-do all the nasty falsehoods that have already been said.
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Here is a transcript of the July 30 exchange:
7:41 AM ET
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JOE SCARBOROUGH: So, Caroline, there are really two sort of baskets of threats to democracy. One is making it more difficult for people to vote, especially people of color. And that’s the beginning of the process. I think, actually, even far more dangerous than that are these types of pieces of legislation or these proposals where even after the vote you have legislatures – Republican legislatures that say, you know what, we’re going to just take over the counting of the voting in Georgia, in Texas, in Arizona, maybe up in Michigan. In all of these swing states, Republicans want to take over, fire election officials, and then determine who gets the electoral votes from those states.
CAROLINE RANDALL WILLIAMS [WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY]: Right. And it’s sort of this radical act of erasure that is a marked regression that is just reminiscent of, to me, Jim Crow, right. And I’m not the first – I’m not remotely the first person to be talking about this. But I think that we should all be frightened by that because it’s an active step back from our access to democracy, our access to the tools of suffrage that allow us to move America in the direction that is the will of the people. For example, the outcome of the 2020 election. And I think that this resistance to helping and allowing America to enact the laws that are the will of its people, is the danger inherent in those kind of choices is so stark.
And I think that – you know, I’m thinking about what happens if these bills don’t pass. And I think that maybe we’re just facing a moment when it’s time to start marching across bridges again. And I think that we’re facing a moment when we're looking at a country that doesn't want the will of the people to manifest itself. Where the leadership is not enabling the will of the people to manifest itself. And I think we have to pick up our sword and our shield, as Congressman Allred said, and figure out what we’re going to do next. Because I think that there are some – there’s some machinery that’s been activated that is going to require other kinds of activism to navigate.
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7:47 AM ET
SCARBOROUGH: And we talk about these two baskets. Basket number one, the obstacle to voting, which is these Republican legislatures trying to make it more difficult for people of color to vote. That’s basket number one. Again, it’s terrible, but some people believe that eventually that can be worked through. Basket number two, though, is far different. And it is the basket where these Republican legislatures are trying to take over, trying to seize, through I think improper legislation, the actual rooms where the votes are counted. That’s the ball game and that’s what they’re trying to do here. That’s what they’re trying to do in Texas, that’s what they’re trying to do in Georgia, that’s what they’ve been trying to do in Arizona. So talk about that and how it’s very calculated that they want to take over those voting rooms so they can rig, really rig, the vote count.
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7:50 AM ET
JOHN HEILEMAN: But the more important, more insidious parts of these laws is what they now refer to as voter subversion laws, election subversion. And one of the things that they’re negotiating over on the Hill now is Democrats woke up to the fact that a lot of the laws that they wanted to pass a year ago didn’t have provisions to deal with electoral subversion, so now they’re trying to get those things into the bill because that is the ball game, right?
SCARBOROUGH: That’s the ball game.
HEILEMAN: It’s bad, obviously, to try to suppress the vote. But it’s worse if it doesn’t matter. I mean, the White House and some people say, “Well, you’re putting in all these obstacles to voting, but if we have enough voter mobilization efforts and enough get out to vote, we can overcome all of the hurdles to voting. But if the counting rooms are corrupt and controlled by partisan state level Republicans, it doesn’t matter what happens on the front end because they’re just gonna to fix the thing on the other side. And I think it is that blatant. That’s what we’ve seen, these laws are a direct response, how did we lose in 2020? So this, to me, it’s the most important thing about what has to happen in the laws that you have been arguing for, has to happen now going forward in these voter protection laws. They’ve got to fix the electoral subversion question and they’ve got to make sure the counting rooms stay fair and neutral.
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7:54 AM ET
SCARBOROUGH: And Caroline, again, we’ve been taking about these barricades to voting for people of color. But again, as John Heileman’s talking about, the members of Congress are talking about, you have Republicans who are now talking about an actual subversion of the election by taking over the voting rooms and fixing the counts the way they want to fix the counts. It seems to me that this is audacious by any standard. By not only for our time, but going back, going back decades.
RANDALL WILLIAMS: Yeah, you know, I think, I mean I’ve spent a lot of time in the last year thinking about Emmett Till and about how, you know, when the trial came after the men who killed him, Milam and Bryant, the guys that voted them – you know, the guys on the jury that exonerated them – they said after the fact, “We just couldn’t imagine sending a man to jail for killing” – you know, insert the word that I won’t use on television – “we wouldn’t send them to jail for that.” America has a practice of ensuring that – America has a long practice and precedent of not protecting the rights and will of its citizens of color, of its citizens of different abilities, of its citizens who are women. And I think that we just have to be on guard about the fact that an old practice is being reactivated.
And I think that we have to – what I take heart in is, you know, I’m getting to be on – sharing screen time with the people who are working hard in Washington, D.C. to figure out how to stop states. The federal government has to be able to intervene to stop state’s rights from exercising their right to be racist. Right? We have to intervene on behalf of all the American citizens who occupy these states. Because we do have a precedent of it.
We had the unprecedented Voting Rights Act that has been, that we’re trying to, you know, reinstate. But I think that we are watching this wild intersection of the end of a term of an act that was so important coincide with this rise and a will to reactivate this sort of anti-democratic, extremely racist practice that is totally familiar to how this country’s always been. And I think that when we are in denial about that, that’s when we’re in danger most. Because we have to just remember that we’ve done this forever. And that we have to remember that what we’re doing now is new, it was reminding America to lean into its promise instead of regress into its past practices.
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