On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, race-baiting Reverend Al Sharpton came up with an excessively belligerent and hateful reason for why Democrat prosecutions of former President Donald Trump were not affecting his support among voters in the Republican primary.
Sharpton argued that the reason why all these indictments brought by Trump’s political enemies right before the election, was in fact because Trump appealed to the Republican electorate who just hated blacks, women, and gays, and wanted to oppress them.
The segment was dedicated to The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, who argued that even if Trump ended up being forced out of the race, the Republican Party would just turn to whoever best imitated Trump. Sharpton contributed with his take that the indictments weren’t eroding Trump support because Dems were “misreading why they support Donald Trump”.
He continued on saying that Trump “has hit a nerve, a feeling that was always there, that others would not address.” That feeling, according to Sharpton, was “this old notion they have of supremacy of blacks, of women, of gays,” meaning that Republicans supported Trump because they wanted to return to the time when they had supremacy over blacks, women, and gays; essentially implying that the “72 percent” of the Republican electorate Miller cited as not concerned about the Trump indictments were really just a bunch of KKK members.
Sharpton’s race-baiting could not be more obvious. Because Republicans weren’t falling for the indictments that were an obvious political hit job meant to damage the GOP in 2024, he had to go after the voters. How could people support this guy who we, the liberal media, think is evil and racist? Well, they all must be racist too! It couldn’t possibly be true that they recognize the legal attacks on Trump were just political. It couldn’t be possible that people liked Trump for his record, or opposed Biden. No, the only explanation for Sharpton was that Republicans only cared about attacking women and minorities.
He added that Trump was a “crime boss.” Sharpton argued that “It was Trump that had a crime attorney, Roy Cohen, who represented outright mafia chiefs. That was Donald Trump's lawyer. I mean if anyone was a crime boss and is a crime boss, it would be Donald Trump. And if you think it's an overstatement, get the calendar of court dates he has coming up the rest of the year.”
It should be noted that none of the Trump indictments were about mafia activities or organized crime, and hiring a very well-known attorney that happened to represent mafia members in the past does not prove that Trump was a mafia member.
Sharpton’s accusation was bluster to hide the fact that the media narrative around the Trump indictments has crumbled. Republican voters weren’t scheming racists, they just didn’t give credibility to the Democrat legal war on Trump.
Al Sharpton’s fearmongering was sponsored by ADT and Skechers. Their contact information is linked.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
MSNBC’s Morning Joe
07/26/23
7:07 AM ET
(…)
TIM MILLER: The Republican Party -- I just spent a month listening to the Candace Owens podcast, and that’s the people who listen to Candace Owens- those are the Republican primary voters. They don't care about Tim Scott and Glenn Youngkin. Those names don't even come up. Right, like these are this a MAGA party. They want Donald Trump.
If something happens to Donald Trump, that prevents him from being the nominee, they will turn to a MAGA imitator, whether that be Vivek Ramaswamy, whether that be Ron DeSantis recovers, you know whether his campaign turns it another direction, though they like RFK Jr., that is what the party is right now. And, you know, having these conferences of donors trying to pretend like it's something that it's not is only serving I think to muddy the waters and make people not recognize the reality of where the GOP is and what's happening in this primary.
WILLIE GEIST: So Rev, there is, as Tim said, this wish casting by Republicans who don't like Donald Trump, hoping something might happen that these indictments will weigh heavily on him, that the fact that he's sitting on trial during a presidential campaign might cost him the nomination. But if you look at that Monmouth poll, go inside another number, only 27 percent of Republicans are either very concerned or even somewhat concerned about all of the legal peril he's in.
And again, we're talking about an attempted coup against the United States government, trying to overturn a 2020 election. We're talking about taking classified material to his beach club, about nuclear information, about war planning. Twenty-seven percent and 72 percent are either not concerned or not at all concerned about that. So in other words, it just doesn't matter. So the idea that this stuff is going to take him down, inside a primary, we're only talking about the primary, may hurt him in a general election, it's just not born out by what we're seeing.
AL SHARPTON: I think the reason that it's not born out is that we are misreading why they support Donald Trump. Donald Trump has hit a nerve, a feeling that was always there, that others would not address. And I think that once they come to terms, they're not supporting him to be Mr. Clean. They knew he wasn't Mr. Clean. He stood up and said, “I could stand up and shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and my voters wouldn't go anywhere.”
Well, we should’ve believed him. Because he hits a certain fear and a certain kind of emotion that they've felt that America has been taken from them and this is yours and you're supposed to have it, and you're superior to everybody else. And as long as he does that, they will go in and out of those trials with him, not only during the primaries, they're ready for him as President of the United States to go through two or three trials. Because he preserves this old notion they have of supremacy of blacks, of women, of gays.
And that's more important to them than having him, a literal crime boss. You know, one of the tabloids in New York calls Biden the crime boss. It was Trump that had a crime attorney, Roy Cohn, who represented outright mafia chiefs. That was Donald Trump's lawyer. I mean if anyone was a crime boss and is a crime boss, it would be Donald Trump. And if you think it's an overstatement, get the calendar of court dates he has coming up the rest of the year.
GEIST: And talking like one too when he says “my people will be very upset if you indict me, if you put me on trial.” Kind of a veiled threat about what perhaps a return to what we saw on January 6.
(…)
