Sunday, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) called on Gov. Ralph Northam (D-VA) to resign over his blackface and Ku Klux Klan yearbook photo that surfaced this month, also suggesting Virginia lawmakers move to impeach the embattled governor.
“Well, [Northam] did engage in the twin sins of blackface as well as Klan regalia,” Green explained on MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation.” “He initially said that he was in the photograph and then he retracted that statement. That is not an indication of someone who wants to repent. He wants to remain in office at the expense of others. I don’t think that we can allow him to do so. I think that the demand for his resignation is still in order. It means something to us and the people that we represent to know their public officials who will take a stand against this. We cannot allow this because if we allow it, then we allow other things that are equally as dastardly to take place.”
He continued, “We don’t want to see persons in Nazi uniforms in yearbooks, we don’t want to see persons with nooses in yearbooks. These things go back many years, but they still are things that are painful and hurtful, and this governor was not a person without knowledge because he was in medical school. This is in his medical school yearbook — not in something that happened when he was in grade school. I believe that we have to demand his resignation. I still stand by that. And I think that the good people of his state can look into the possibility of impeachment. I would leave it to them as to whether they would do so, but I would hope they would think through it and give some considerable thought to the constitutional permission to do so.”
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