Huh? Ronald Reagan is responsible for last week's terrible shooting in Atlanta? Leave it to the lunatics at MSNBC to come up with that. On Saturday, LA Times contributor Kurt Bardella proclaimed on PoliticsNation that former President Ronald Reagan was “a racist” and is to blame for the purported uptick in discrimination toward Asian Americans.
MSNBC’s race-baiting host Al Sharpton invited Bardella and Black Lives Matter activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham on to assist him in his routine demonization of conservatives.
The tax-evading Reverend prefaced the segment by baselessly linking the purported increase in “anti-Asian hate” to his favorite scapegoat: Donald Trump. Bardella began his ineloquent response by blaming not just the 45th President but also the 40th President. According to the left-wing shill, the rhetoric used by Reagan and other conservatives has led to “extreme acts of violence.”
Without providing any examples or evidence, Bardella also claimed that the “face of the [Republican] Party” is comprised of racists:
“You know, Rev, we got here, in my opinion, in part, because of the Republican Party. This is a party – and this is well before Donald Trump ever arrived on the scene—you can go back to what used to be their standard bearer, Ronald Reagan. Reagan, who, in my opinion, was a racist, who used policies such as the war on drugs, welfare demonization, the term “welfare queens,” pandering to the Christian right to cater to the most extreme elements of the Republican party base and cloaked racism in public policy. It's no coincidence that when you look at where the Republican Party is today, now the racists are the face of the party. What Donald Trump did was he gave license and permission to those group of people that Reagan and other Republicans pandered to for so long to come out into the open with their racism and their rhetoric. And it's manifested itself, now, into violence. It's no surprise that we've gone from extreme rhetoric to extreme acts of violence. They are linked; they are connected; and part of the solution is to start calling it out for what it is and to be aware and mindful of the context of how we got here, and it's been going on for a very long time.”
Ironically, Sharpton completely undermined Bardella’s unsubstantiated charges of racism against Reagan by reminding him and viewers that the 40th President actually provided immigration amnesty to roughly three million people in 1986.
Bardella went on to assert that Republicans use “code words” to perpetuate “more racist policies,” and he accused conservatives of “leading a race war on America”:
“Republicans have shown for decades now that they have no desire, no interest, no will to take any meaningful action on immigration. They just see the issue of immigration as another frontier in their race war they've perpetrated on the rest of us. That's all that this is for them. The code words, “border security,” “national security,” “amnesty,” those are code words for more racist policies that we've seen from them time and time again. It's ironic that the last time there was an amnesty in this country, it was from their so-called hero, Ronald Reagan. For all the times you hear them quote Ronald Reagan, let’s be very clear, Ronald Reagan couldn't get elected dog catcher in today's Republican Party. There's no place for someone like that in today's Republican Party. It just shows how fringeworthy they are, how they cater to the bottom dwellers of their party, in a craven attempt to hold on to power. Because, as Brittany just said, they know that if we all show up, they will lose, we will win. That is driving every single decision they're making right now, and that's why they're leading this race war on America.”
Any and all acts of violence are reprehensible and should be unequivocally condemned — irrespective of political ideology. However, trying to exploit acts of violence in a desperate attempt to score political points against your opponents is truly despicable.
MSNBC’s unruly smearing and inexorable blaming of conservatives was brought to you, in part, by Allegra. Contact this advertiser and others via the Media Research Center’s Conservatives Fight Back website, conveniently linked here.
Please click “Expand” to read the entire March 20 transcript:
PoliticsNation
03/20/2021
5:33PM Eastern
AL SHARPTON: Over the last year as former President Trump refused to temper his racist language surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic, incidents of anti-Asian hate increased into the thousands, with other two-thirds of reported incidents targeting Asian and Asian-American women. Those numbers don't include the killings in Georgia this week, where eight people were gunned down. To discuss this topic and much, much more, joining me now is my panel, Brittnay Packnett Cunningham, Black Lives Matter activist and an MSNBC contributor, and Kurt Bardella, former spokesman for the House oversight committee and an LA Times and USAToday contributor. I want to cover a lot of topics, but, Kurt, let me start. As an Asian American and a former Republican, you have been tweeting about this incident and we hear about hate and terrorism all the time, even the director of the FBI, Chris Wray said, yesterday, that he considers Trump supporters who’ve attacked the Capitol on January 6thto be a form of domestic terrorism. And now, as we have the families and the communities of the victims in Georgia mourning their loss, how did we get here, and what can be done about it?
KURT BARDELLA [LOS ANGELES TIMES CONTRIBUTOR]: You know, Rev, we got here, in my opinion, in part, because of the Republican Party. This is a party – and this is well before Donald Trump ever arrived on the scene—you can go back to what used to be their standard bearer, Ronald Reagan. Reagan, who, in my opinion, was a racist, who used policies such as the war on drugs, welfare demonization, the term “welfare queens,” pandering to the Christian right to cater to the most extreme elements of the Republican party base and cloaked racism in public policy. It's no coincidence that when you look at where the Republican Party is today, now the racists are the face of the party. What Donald Trump did was he gave license and permission to those group of people that Reagan and other Republicans pandered to for so long to come out into the open with their racism and their rhetoric. And it's manifested itself, now, into violence. It's no surprise that we've gone from extreme rhetoric to extreme acts of violence. They are linked; they are connected; and part of the solution is to start calling it out for what it is and to be aware and mindful of the context of how we got here, and it's been going on for a very long time.
[…]
5:41PM Eastern
SHARPTON: Last question. Two immigration bills passed the House this week with bipartisan support, but both face deeply uncertain futures in the Senate, because far-right Republicans continue to insist any path to citizenship for any of the millions of undocumented immigrants living in this country amounts to amnesty. Kurt, amnesty has been a dirty word in the Republican circles for decades, even though their hero, Ronald Reagan, gave amnesty to nearly 3 million people. Isn't this language a way to avoid any compromise whatsoever on the immigration issue?
BARDELLA: Republicans have shown for decades now that they have no desire, no interest, no will to take any meaningful action on immigration. They just see the issue of immigration as another frontier in their race war they've perpetrated on the rest of us. That's all that this is for them. The code words, “border security,” “national security,” “amnesty,” those are code words for more racist policies that we've seen from them time and time again. It's ironic that the last time there was an amnesty in this country, it was from their so-called hero, Ronald Reagan. For all the times you hear them quote Ronald Reagan, let’s be very clear, Ronald Reagan couldn't get elected dog catcher in today's Republican Party. There's no place for someone like that in today's Republican Party. It just shows how fringeworthy they are, how they cater to the bottom dwellers of their party, in a craven attempt to hold on to power. Because, as Brittany just said, they know that if we all show up, they will lose, we will win. That is driving every single decision they're making right now, and that's why they're leading this race war on America.
SHARPTON: All right. Brittany Packnett Cunningham and Kurt Bardella, thank you both for being with us.
[…]
