Less than an hour before news broke that the FBI found no evidence of a hate crime against NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, MSNBC's John Heilemann and Eddie Glaude were lamenting those conservatives who had questioned whether the official story that someone had hung a noose in Wallace's garage was authentic.
At 4:49 p.m. Eastern, on MSNBC's Deadline: White House, as Glaude discussed the current debates over racial issues, he brought up the story about the noose that was allegedly used to target Wallace after he lobbied for a ban on the confederate flags at NASCAR events:
EDDIE GLAUDE, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR; So the fact that we have a noose in the garage of Bubba Wallace -- that's just one indication that there's going to be a pushback. But, as we challenge these old views of who we take ourselves to be, we're going to be moving into these spaces -- country music, NASCAR, the South generally. And there we're going to have to confront our ugliness directly. It's not going to be easy, but we're going to have to do it.
Heilemann, acting as fill-in host, then brought up conservative skeptics on the issue:
JOHN HEILEMANN: One of the things that happened I found just as striking in some ways in the other direction was the reaction among some conservatives to the Bubba Wallace story. … inevitably, you have people like Dinesh D'Souza and Mark Dice and others who came out immediately and said, you know, that they think that this is all made up, that the noose -- we didn't get to see the noose -- we didn't get to see a picture of the noose -- the picture we saw isn't -- basically questioning the legitimacy of the story -- claiming somehow this is a Jussie Smollett thing.
After he expressed shock that conservatives would doubt the story in spite of reports that black men have been found hanging in different parts of the country, he added:
HEILEMANN; Tell me a little bit about what you think about that and whether the same way that I found the support and the solidarity so moving, I find the reaction incredibly infuriating, and partly because it's kind of inevitable that's the world we now live in this polarized political environment.
Glaude began complaining:
GLAUDE: You know, John, it's infuriating, but it's very familiar. Jimmy Baldwin -- the late American writer and critic -- once said, "One of the most difficult and frustrating experiences of being black in this country is that we're constantly having to convince white America that what is happening to us is real." And one could just simply substitute conservative America, right? That we always have to convince a certain segment of the population that the hell that we're catching is actually real.
He then added:
GLAUDE: And the reason why we have to do that is because we have to confront this world of make-believe, this willful ignorance, this innocence that so much of the country inhabits. And the reason why we inhabit that bubble of innocence, John, is because we don't want to confront what these events might say about us, right?
But, less than an hour later at 5:34 p.m., on MSNBC's MTP Daily, correspondent Pete Williams announced breaking news that the FBI found that no hate crime had happened, and that the noose was just a rope used to close the garage door that had been there since long before Wallace started using the space..
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Tuesday, June 23, 2020, Deadline: White House on MSNBC:
MSNBC
Deadline: White House
June 23, 2020
4:49 p.m. Eastern
EDDIE GLAUDE, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR; So the fact that we have a noose in the garage of Bubba Wallace -- that's just one indication that there's going to be a pushback. But, as we challenge these old views of who we take ourselves to be, we're going to be moving into these spaces -- country music, NASCAR, the South generally. And there we're going to have to confront our ugliness directly. It's not going to be easy, but we're going to have to do it.
JOHN HEILMANN: So, Eddie, you know, one of the things that happened I found just as striking in some ways in the other direction was the reaction among some conservatives to the Bubba Wallace story. There's kind of, I guess, inevitably, you have people like Dinesh D'Souza and Mark Dice and others who came out immediately and said, you know, that they think that this is all made up, that the noose -- we didn't get to see the noose -- we didn't get to see a picture of the noose -- the picture we saw isn't -- basically questioning the legitimacy of the story -- claiming somehow this is a Jussie Smollett thing.
That was obviously the right-wing reaction on social media was to cast doubt on this even at a time when we've seen six black people who've been found hanging from trees around the United States -- California, Georgia, New York, Oregon, Texas -- and a lot of them inexplicable, unexplained, not investigations ongoing, some of claims to suicide that have been cast doubt upon.
But even as we're seeing six African Americans hanging from trees in the last couple of weeks, you have a conservative reaction to Bubba Wallace which says, "Well, obviously this is obviously fabricated -- it's obviously fantasy." Tell me a little bit about what you think about that and whether the same way that I found the support and the solidarity so moving, I find the reaction incredibly infuriating, and partly because it's kind of inevitable that's the world we now live in this polarized political environment.
GLAUDE: You know, John, it's infuriating, but it's very familiar. Jimmy Baldwin -- the late American writer and critic -- once said, "One of the most difficult and frustrating experiences of being black in this country is that we're constantly having to convince white America that what is happening to us is real. And one could just simply substitute conservative America, right? That we always have to convince a certain segment of the population that the hell that we're catching is actually real.
And the reason why we have to do that is because we have to confront this world of make believe, this willful ignorance, this innocence that so much of the country inhabits. And the reason why we inhabit that bubble of innocence, John, is because we don't want to confront what these events might say about us, right?
If we admit that what's happening in the country is real, we have to confront what we have done to allow it to happen. So this is a part of that American ritual -- that American theater of race. Something ugly and barbaric and cruel happens, we deny it in order to protect our innocence, and then we move forward. This is what we've done since our founding, and here we are in this inflection point. We have to challenge it for what it is so that we can imagine ourselves other.
HEILMANN: Eddie Glaude, there was no one I wanted to hear from more about this topic than you, and you delivered as always. Thank you, my friend.
