During Monday’s edition of MSNBC Live With Craig Melvin, the panel attempted to smear President Trump as a racist by pointing to his recent tweet about LeBron James and his repeated description of Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters as a “low IQ individual.”
Fill-in host Chris Jansing opened the segment by hyping there being a “[n]ew controversy today over race and the President” and read aloud the Trump tweet blasting James and CNN host Don Lemon. She then played a clip of the interview where James referred to the President as divisive, thus causing President Trump to respond on Twitter.
Jansing brought in panelists Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons, Never-Trumper Charlie Sykes, and The Washington Post's Cindy Boren. Jansing read aloud an excerpt from an article by Politico's Annie Karni, alleging that “the experience of Charlottesville, as well as his ability to recover from any short-term crisis, has been empowering for Trump and his allies. Three former aides said the takeaway from Charlottesville is the nihilistic notion that nothing matters except for how things play.”
She teed up Sykes to respond with some predictable analysis:
Yeah, there’s no question he’s playing to his base, which by the way, is a reflection of how much contempt he has for his own base that he thinks these kinds of, these kinds of, you know, this kind of language, actually will stoke up the white working class. Look, these are no longer racial dog whistles. These are foghorns. And it is very, it is very clear that it is calculated; it is part of his strategy to stoke divisions in the country and unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve seen the end of it.
Jansing then brought up the President’s criticism of black NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem as she continued her attempt to portray him as a racist. She played a clip of President Trump referring to Waters as “a seriously low IQ person” and asked Simmons: “When people say this is racism pure and simple, do you agree with that?”
Not surprisingly, Simmons argued that the President’s criticism of black people are “not just strategy.” He believed that “the President really does harbor these feelings,” bringing up his treatment of the Central Park Five, a group of African-American men accused of raping a woman in Central Park in 1989.
Simmons also used recent examples to prove his case that President Trump is a racist; pointing to his comments about the Khan family, a Muslim family who spoke at the Democratic National Convention, and Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the judge who oversaw the litigation related to Trump University.
The media will continue to paint President Trump as a racist; apparently forgetting that the President hasn't hesitated to pick fights with anyone he views as an adversary, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, or political party. Perhaps the media neglects to point this out because it throws a wrench into their “racism” talking points.
A transcript of the relevant portion of MSNBC Live With Craig Melvin is below. Click “expand” to read more.
MSNBC Live With Craig Melvin
08/06/18
01:28 PM
CHRIS JANSING: New controversy today over race and the President. Almost one year after white nationalists and Black Lives Matter protesters clashed in Charlottesville, Virginia, President Trump continues to stoke racial tensions. On Friday, he tweeted “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!” In that interview, Lebron called out the President for being divisive.
LEBRON JAMES: What I’ve noticed over the last few months, that he’s kind of used sport to kind of divide us and that’s something that I can’t relate to. Sports has never been something that divide people, it’s always been something that brings someone together.
JANSING: With me now, Jamal Simmons, Democratic Strategist and host of Hill TV, Charlie Sykes, Contributing Editor to The Weekly Standard and an MSNBC Contributor, Cindy Boren is Washington Post Editor of “The Early Lead,” covering sports at the intersection of politics and has just written about this controversy so let’s go back if we can to almost a year ago now, Charlottesville, President Trump refuses to condemn white nationalists. Politico’s Annie Karni writes this. “In some ways, the experience of Charlottesville, as well as his ability to recover from any short-term crisis, has been empowering for Trump and his allies. Three former aides said the takeaway from Charlottesville is the nihilistic notion that nothing matters except for how things play.” Charlie, do you think that’s what’s going on here? The President was emboldened, he didn’t really pay a price for Charlottesville, and he’s playing to his base.
CHARLIE SYKES: Yeah, there’s no question he’s playing to his base, which by the way, is a reflection of how much contempt he has for his own base that he thinks these kinds of, these kinds of, you know, this kind of language, actually will stoke up the white working class. Look, these are no longer racial dog whistles. These are foghorns. And it is very, it is very clear that it is calculated; it is part of his strategy to stoke divisions in the country and unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve seen the end of it.
JANSING: And of course, Jamal, his tweet says basically Don Lemon, Lebron are really dumb and previously, he slammed black NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem. He had, you know, choice things to say about that. Of course, on Saturday, at his rally, he called his supporters the smartest people in the world while continuing to slam Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Let me play it.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Maxine, she’s a real beauty. Maxine. A seriously low IQ person. Seriously.
JANSING: When people say this is racism pure and simple, do you agree with that?
JAMAL SIMMONS: Yes. Listen, Donald Trump…I would love to say, I agree with Charlie, that there is strategy involved here. But it’s not just strategy. It appears that the President really does harbor these feelings. They go all the way back to his treatment of the Central Park Five and even though those people were found not guilty, he still wanted them to go to jail. It goes to now him taking on, remember when he took on the soldier’s mom who spoke at the, the husband spoke at the Democratic Convention? They were…
JANSING: The gold star parents.
SIMMONS: The gold star parents and he attacked them for their religion. He went after Judge Curiel for being Mexican even though he was from Indiana. This is a repeated pattern that he does where he others people and goes after them. Listen, Lebron James, you can say a lot about him. You can argue about who’s the greatest. I’ve been on the phone with my parents and my brothers for the whole weekend talking about this, right? But nobody can argue, I think, that Lebron James has done more off the court than any athlete at the height of his career, maybe since Muhammad Ali or Jim Brown.
JANSING: Yeah, I mean, that’s kind of the crazy thing about this, Cindy. I mean, you have the President, who’s about to go to Ohio, going after Lebron James, I’m from Cleveland, my family still lives in Cleveland. We weren’t really happy with him the first time he left town but I can tell you that going to L.A., most people all throughout Ohio wish him well, they admire him for what he’s doing. He has been a positive force in the community. He opened this school for at-risk kids which, by the way, maybe we can contrast it with Trump University; where the President had to make a big settlement. So give us a sense of just who Lebron is, what he stands for, even apart from being, again, as a Clevelander, the greatest basketball player ever to live.
CINDY BOREN: Well, you are out on a limb there, aren’t you?
JANSING: Yeah.
BOREN: You’re going to be hearing from the Michael Jordan people.
JANSING: Even Michael Jordan, by the way, because we think that “I Like Mike” was for Michael Jordan, he even tweeted for Lebron James.
BOREN: Yeah, you know, I…it takes a lot to get Michael Jordan involved in politics. He came from a different era than the people you mentioned before, Jim Brown, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, you know, the guys who were activists along with Muhammad Ali, in the 1960s. And it’s sort of, you know, we’re kind of going into an era like that, I think, where athletes are getting involved and speaking up. And, you know, Lebron has always been I think…I trace it back to around the time of the Trayvon Martin killing in 2012 when he really began to be active and speak out.
JANSING: And I think he said that, hasn’t he? He has said that that was really sort of a tipping point for him.
BOREN: Yeah, you know, I mean, look at Lebron, he’s what, 33 now and that was six years ago, you know, he was young. I mean, Lebron came into the NBA out of high school. This is a guy who was raised by a single parent, he is married, he has three kids; he is by all accounts a responsible parent. You know, he’s with the boys when they’re playing basketball. You see their highlight films everywhere.
JANSING: Yeah.
BOREN: You know, and he started the school. He talked once about not being able to get to school for a long stretch of days. He didn’t have a bike. And so everybody who is in this school and lives, you know, beyond, I think, a two mile radius gets a bike, gets a free bike. I mean, who thinks about things like that? Only someone who has been in that position of not having things.
JANSING: And hasn’t forgot where he’s come from. Go ahead, Jamal.
SIMMONS: Let’s not forget this, too. Lebron James is also an extraordinary businessman. He didn’t go to college. I mean, we kind of don’t talk about that. He started in basketball when he was in high school. I talked to people that known him since he first went to Cleveland at a professional level. He’s an incredible student who learned how to make millions of dollars as a businessperson as well as an athlete and now he’s an activist and an educator. I think it speaks for itself.
JANSING: Yeah, and Melania Trump broke with her husband on the Lebron controversy; this is what the Spokesperson wrote in a statement. “It looks like Lebron James is working to do good things on behalf of our next generation, and just as she always has, the first lady encourages everyone to have an open dialogue about issues facing children today.” And then she added that she would be open to going to Akron, Charlie, not the first time the First Lady has shown her independence. Right? We remember her statement condemning white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, she visited those detention centers near the border amid all that early family separation controversies and again, now she says she’d go to Akron. I don’t remember Charlie, have we ever seen a first lady break so publicly with her husband repeatedly? I know there are people who think she should go even further but this is, really, I think, unprecedented in the history of first ladies.
SYKES: It is unprecedented and it really is fascinating because she was not required to make a statement about this at all. There was no obligation on her part to comment on Donald Trump’s gratuitous, petty attack on Lebron James. She chose to do this. So I think this was a pretty aggressive move by Melania Trump to say “Okay, you know what, I am drawing the line here.” Is she now basically saying that she is going to speak out every time she thinks that the President does something she disagrees with?
Because the other things you could say, well, these were a part of her duties as first lady and, you know, she was in the news. She was going to be asked about it but this was very much her choice. This was a controversy that she did not have to get involved with. And I thought that was, of all the aspects of this, personally, that was one of the most fascinating because Donald Trump, you know, having racist comments, we’re kind of used to that. But Melania going out of the way to slap him on the wrist, extraordinary.JANSING: Yeah, and just the idea of a President calling anyone dumb, a fellow American dumb and lots of women, too. We didn’t even get to that. Jamal Simmons, Charlie Sykes, thank you. Cindy Boren, people should read what you wrote about this in The Washington Post, thank you for being here.
