MSNBC's PoliticsNation host Al Sharpton must be really proud of himself for nicknaming Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “Baby Trump” during a Wednesday protest, he traveled over to The Late Show on CBS on Thursday to tell host Stephen Colbert that DeSantis is “trying to use the race wedge” to become president and that his education policies are no different than birtherism.
Colbert began by referencing Sharpton’s latest rally and dishonestly asking, “I know you just came back from Florida, from an event down there, protesting the attempts to ban black history from classrooms in Florida. Do you have a message for DeSantis and others who are trying to control that curriculum?”
Nobody’s banning black history, what they’re banning is hyper-partisan versions of history, but naturally Sharpton took Colbert’s dishonest framing and ran with it:
Well, I think that we are to have the country, to become the nation that it proposes to be, we need to know everybody's history and we need to celebrate everybody's history and not censor it and what the governor is trying to do there, Governor DeSantis, is he’s trying to use cultural war to run for president, us against them. ‘I'm going to do this to the LGBTQ community. I'm going to do this with women's rights. I'm going to fly migrants out of Florida, send them to Martha's Vineyard. I'm going to decide what makes whites uncomfortable in black history’ rather than saying the more we learn about the truth about all of us, it brings us all together.
Of all the people to bring us together, Al Sharpton is near the bottom of the list. Still, he claimed that, “It's supposed to be the United States, but he thinks because his mentor and political daddy, Donald Trump, used race to go into politics because don't forget Donald Trump started with birtherism, Obama was not one of us. He’s trying to use the race wedge, so Baby Trump, that you call DeSantis, is trying to use Black History Month to run for president and some of us are saying that our history is too important to us to let that happen.”
After the cheers from the audience subsided, Colbert then asked, “are you surprised that in this case Critical Race Theory, or CRT, as its abbreviated, is just being used as sort of a catch-all for anything that people don't like on the farthest right reaches of the Republican Party? Everything gets dumped in there, it’s used as a byword for divisiveness. Are you surprised that it's being used as quite such a cudgel?”
Despite it being a softball, Sharpton didn’t exactly answer the question, instead choosing to tout his own importance, “I think that I'm not as surprised as I am trying to make sure we dramatize that that’s happening. That's why we did the march yesterday, the rallies, we’ll be doing others because I think that they are—the surprise I think they have is that many people of different communities are now beginning to come together.”
Sharpton then recalled how some of his rallies have more white people than black people and that, in 2021, he preached at the funeral of a white 17-year old who was killed by police which has nothing to do with DeSantis’s education policies.
This segment was sponsored by Tylenol.
Here is a transcript for the February 16-taped show:
MSNBC The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
2/17/2023
12:06 AM ET
STEPHEN COLBERT: I know you just came back from Florida, from an event down there, protesting the attempts to ban black history from classrooms in Florida. Do you have a message for DeSantis and others who are trying to control that curriculum?
AL SHARPTON: Well, I think that we are to have the country, to become the nation that it proposes to be, we need to know everybody's history and we need to celebrate everybody's history and not censor it and what the governor is trying to do there, Governor DeSantis, is he’s trying to use cultural war to run for president, us against them. “I'm going to do this to the LGBTQ community. I'm going to do this with women's rights. I'm going to fly migrants out of Florida, send them to Martha's Vineyard. I'm going to decide what makes whites uncomfortable in black history” rather than saying the more we learn about the truth about all of us, it brings us all together.
It's supposed to be the United States, but he thinks because his mentor and political daddy, Donald Trump, used race to go into politics because don't forget Donald Trump started with birtherism, Obama was not one of us.
He’s trying to use the race wedge, so Baby Trump, that you call DeSantis, is trying to use Black History Month to run for president and some of us are saying that our history is too important to us to let that happen.
COLBERT: Well, are you surprised, again, talking about momentary victories and ongoing battles, are you surprised that in this case Critical Race Theory, or CRT, as its abbreviated, is just being used as sort of a catch-all for anything that people don't like on the farthest right reaches of the Republican Party? Everything gets dumped in there, it’s used as a byword for divisiveness.
Are you surprised that it's being used as quite such a cudgel?
SHARPTON: I think that I'm not as surprised as I am trying to make sure we dramatize that that’s happening. That's why we did the march yesterday, the rallies, we’ll be doing others because I think that they are—the surprise I think they have is that many people of different communities are now beginning to come together.
I remember when George Floyd happened and I went to do the funerals and work with the family and some of the rallies and marches. I went to some rallies, there were more whites than blacks, saying that this is wrong.
I remember that there was a young white 17-year-old young man in a place called Beebe, Arkansas, that was killed by police, his family called me and attorney Ben Crump to come in. Ben Crump became the lawyer for the family, I preached his funeral, they don't put that on right-wing news. I won't call their name because I don't advertise on your platform my adversaries.
