On Saturday's PoliticsNation show, MSNBC host Al Sharpton presided over a discussion of the Donald Trump administration delaying the release of the new $20 bill replacing President Andrew Jackson's image with iconic anti-slavery activist Harriet Tubman.
Obviously, the MSNBC group painted the delay as racially motivated, and Sharpton made clear that he does not know the difference between Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson as he TWICE claimed Jackson succeeded President Abraham Lincoln.
At 5:39 p.m. Eastern, after anti-Trump Republican panel member Sophia Nelson railed against Republicans for not getting the new $20 issued more quickly and taking credit for it, the historically challenged Sharpton turned to liberal comedian Dean Obeidallah and posed:
SHARPTON: The blatant thing here is you're talking about a black woman abolitionist that is going to replace a slave owner who was one that fought against many of the things that his immediate predecessor, Abe Lincoln, stood for. And you're going to delay it, and then after only some very skillful questioning by a member of Congress.
In fact, Andrew Jackson succeeded John Quincy Adams as President in 1829 and left office in 1837 -- which was 24 years before Abraham Lincoln was sworn in.
Why doesn't anyone correct the man? Obeidallah did not correct Sharpton's mistake as he began his response by cracking: "Absolutely. I think -- I'm not kidding -- I think there's more of a chance he'd put David Duke on the $20 bill before he'd put Harriet Tubman."
A bit later, after Nelson went on another rant in which she claimed Trump has made the Republican party into a party that is no longer the party of Lincoln and abolitionism, Sharpton turned to panel member Michael Hardy and repeated his claim that Jackson was President after Lincoln: "They used to call it the party of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, both of whom were opposed to what Jackson ended up doing after Lincoln's assassination, and both of whom were allied and stood with Harriet Tubman."
In fact, Jackson did not do anything after President Lincoln's 1865 assassination since the former President passed away 20 years earlier in 1845.
Hardy, who is executive vice-president of Sharpton's National Action Network, began his response by sucking up: "That's exactly right."
At no point did any of the panel members correct Sharpton's very basic error about who the person was that they were discussing and what his role was in American history. So laugh at the idea that liberal news networks are very careful with basic facts.
