WATCH: CNN’s Jake Tapper Destroys Republican Silence Over ‘Openly, Hideously, Shamelessly Racist’ Rhetoric – Blames Trump
CNN’s Jake Tapper absolutely destroyed Republicans over their silence in the face of “Openly, hideously, shamelessly racist” rhetoric from within their ranks — and placed the blame on former President Donald Trump.
On Thursday night’s edition of CNN Tonight with Jake Tapper, the host led off his show with a blistering video essay on a phenomenon that other political media figures have observed as well — the “tolerance of intolerance,” as he put it, among Republicans.
Tapper traced the phenomenon to his own interview with Trump on the subject of David Duke:
It’s weird to think it was only three years ago when the House Republican Party itself took steps to ostracize proud white nationalist Congressman Steve King of Iowa. King never failed to come up with new and inventive ways to be racist. He wants riffed poetically about the cantaloupe-sized calf muscles of pot-hauling Mexicans.
King eventually made just too many comments like this one:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FMR. REP. STEVE KING (R-IA): If you go down the road a few generations or maybe centuries with the intermarriage, I’d like to see an America that’s just so homogeneous, that it — we look a lot the same.
This is an effort on the left, I think, to break down the American civilization and the American culture and turn it into something entirely different. I’m a champion for Western civilization.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: King was eventually punished and essentially excommunicated from the party by the party.
But Republican leaders have of late developed quite a tolerance for intolerance. Listen to these insightful, pithy observations on the notion of reparations for the descendants of slaves from Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-AL): They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.
Bullshit!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Openly, hideously, shamelessly racist.
And the response from Republican leaders has been…
(CRICKET NOISES PLAYING)
TAPPER: Why? How did this happen? Who invited all these extremists into the Grand Old Party?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Will you unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you don’t want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election?
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke, OK? I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: In her new book, “The New York Times”‘ Maggie Haberman writes that, after that exchange happened here on CNN in 2016, Chris Christie warned Trump he needed to distance himself from white supremacists.
Trump basically said, sure, but not right now.
Why? Because, Trump said — quote — “a lot of these people vote.”
A lot of these people vote.
These extremist views are making the American experiment difficult to achieve. How can you work on legislation with someone who pushes messaging and seems to subscribe to QAnon, a group that accuses Democrats of being part of a satanic pedophilic cult that eats babies, that casts their political opponents not just as wrong, but as evil?
And that’s how you get this:
(JAN. 6 VIDEO)
TAPPER: January 6, 2021.
Tapper concluded his video essay by playing the memorable clip of the late Senator John McCain rebuking a woman at a 2008 event when she said “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s not — he’s a — he’s an Arab.”
“Republican Senator and presidential nominee John McCain took that woman’s microphone. Political leaders today in the Republican Party seem more inclined to turn up the volume,” Tapper said.
Watch above via CNN Tonight with Jake Tapper.
