Wednesday on MSNBC, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) discussed the controversy over recently elected House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) speaking at a gathering of a white supremacist organization over a decade ago and said Scalise should have known “any organization that was affiliated at that time with David Duke is obviously the Ku Klux Klan” and “it was not in the dark ages he made the speech. It was a few years ago.”
Jackson Lee called it “enormously disappointing.
“It was not 50 years ago,” she said. “It was 12 years ago, and every member knows what David Duke stands for. Any organization that was affiliated at that time with David Duke is obviously the Ku Klux Klan. We know what the Ku Klux Klan stands for— for hate, for the killing of Jews, African-Americans, Catholics. I’m enormously disappointed and I believe it is important for further statements to come from the whip. He’s the majority whip. He’s the whip of all the nation even as he’s leadership of the United States Congress. Why doesn’t he take the leadership of reauthorizing the voting rights act working in a bipartisan manner of moving forward on criminal justice reform, or even working to pass immigration reform? I think it’s got to be more than words. And I think it’s got to be action. And the Republican leadership, the republicans in the house and the senate have a huge mountain to climb because it was not in the dark ages he made the speech. It was a few years ago when everybody has known and lived through the damaging actions of the Ku Klux Klan.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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