Life under the segregationist Trump regime is horrible enough. But it threatens to get even worse!
Soon, large swaths of the population will be incapable of reading about just how horrible things are . . . because they will be incapable of reading at all!
That is, if you buy into MSNBC's doomsaying.
NAACP president Derrick Johnson was a guest on Sunday's edition of MSNBC's The Weekend, and much of the hand-wringing focused on the Trump administration's efforts to say sayonara to the Department of Education.
Attempting to broaden his scaremongering beyond African-Americans and Latinos, and induce whites to also dread the end of the DoE, Johnson said:
"In Alabama in 1965, when you went to the polls to vote, white folks would go vote and they voted on symbols, because the illiteracy rate of white Alabamians at the time was so high they could not read a ballot. If we continue down this road, it's not only going to have a disastrous impact on African Americans and Latinos, it's going to have a disastrous impact on working class whites."
Yup, by 2028, those darn Trumpists will replace the Republican presidential candidate's name on the ballot with an angel emoji, and the Democrat's with a devil!
During his spiel, Johnson also managed to slur William F. Buckley Jr., someone dear to our NewsBusters' hearts. Not only is WFB credited as the innovator of modern conservatism, but he was also the uncle of L. Brent Bozell III, the founder of the Media Research Center.
In describing the line of those pushing back against FDR's New Deal policies, Johnson said they included: "[The] John Birch Society, and they later connected with William F. Buckley, and then they hooked up with George Wallace."
By associating him with the John Birch Society and George Wallace, Johnson slandered Buckley. WFB famously expelled the Birchers from the conservative movement over their conspiracy theories so extreme that they even accused President Eisenhower of being a "dedicated, conscious agent" of the Communists.
As for Wallace, Buckley was a harsh critic of his segregationist views. Buckley even brought Wallace onto his famous show, Firing Line, for what was later described as a "takedown" of the Alabama governor.
Co-host Michael Steele also got into the act. He approvingly read a statement by a "real dear buddy" who wrote:
"Jim Crow has left the South and now roams the country as his grandson, James E. Crow, Esquire. The segregationists played the long game while we were asleep at the wheel."
This is a stale echo of Biden's ranting about the Republicans representing "Jim Crow 2.0." If Trump is such a racist, why did he receive a higher percentage of the black vote than any Republican presidential candidate in 48 years?
The outrageous irony is that nowadays, the real segregationists aren't the Jim Crow 2.0 crowd. They're the people behind graduation ceremonies, university classes, college dorms, scholarship programs, government contracts, etc. that exclude people of pallor.
At my Cornell alma mater, there was even a rock climbing class that was initially labeled as exclusively for “people who identify as Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, or other people of color.”
Guess Cornell didn't want people of color to be caught between a rock and a white place.
Note: Co-host Symone Sanders approvingly quoted someone who criticized Democrat elected officials for "bringing a pillow to a gunfight." And liberals accuse conservatives of fomenting a climate of violence?
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
The Weekend
3/23/25
8:43 am EDTDERRICK JOHNSON: This goes well beyond just the black community. In Alabama in 1965, when you went to the polls to vote, white folks would go vote and they voted on symbols, because the illiteracy rate of white Alabamians at the time was so high they could not read a ballot.
If we continue down this road, it's not only going to have a disastrous impact on African Americans and Latinos, it's going to have a disastrous impact on working class whites. And unfortunately, they're using the tools of race to distract as they redefine the role of government for everybody.
. . .
SYMONE SANDERS: President Johnson, I'm just kind of like, I'm rarely without words. But it just seems as though that, I think I heard a voter describe this the other day at a town hall that Ali Vitali covered, that our elected officials are bringing, Democratic elected officials are bringing a pillow to a gunfight, if you will.
. . .JOHNSON: Everyone has been caught flat-footed. No one thought that this level of attack would be here, but we've seen this before, and there's gonna be
harm. And so we have to gear up and be in the fight that we're actually in and not the fight we think we're in.The fight we're actually in goes back to 1932 New Deal policies and the role of government and the redefining of the government, when John Birch Society and those, that elite class, and they later connected with William F. Buckley and the intellectual class, and then they hooked up with George Wallace, and they had a populist movement. And now they, then they created the Heritage Foundations, Cato Institute, Enterprise, and all of the think tanks in '80, then they created ALEC, all of which was around trying to push back against that original set of policies to redefine the role of government by taxing the ultra wealthy.
This is not just a civil rights fight. This is not just a populist
or economic fight. This is a fight around the definition concerning the role of government and how we show up as a nation.. . .
MICHAEL STEELE: President Johnson, you have just in this moment crystallized, and I'm going to give you the last word on this point, a conversation I was having with a real dear buddy of mine. I'm just going to read this little bit because, I just can't believe how you put this.
He said to me, "I feel we are at the end of the second Reconstruction: 1964 to 2024. Jim Crow has left the South and now roams the country as his grandson, James E. Crow, Esquire. The segregationists played the long game while we were asleep at the wheel."
