Monday on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time,” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) argued that President Donald Trump had “combined” the worst of segregationist former Alabama Democrat Gov. George Wallace and former President Richard Nixon.
Cuomo said, “Let’s start with your reaction to what the president said. “No mention of abuse of force by police. The issues that minority communities face that obviously are a big part of fomenting what’s happening and reverberating around the country and then going and holding up the Bible and saying that states like yours need to come in and dominate and stop this movement before it grows.”
Harris said, “I think that Donald Trump has combined the worst of George Wallace with Richard Nixon. You know, when he talks about ‘end it now’ and then ‘dominate the streets,’ you know, dominate, it literally — one iteration of dominate is about supremacy, and that’s what Donald Trump is about.”
She continued, “Let’s be clear about it, he has spent full time from the time he ran for president throughout his term in office, full time trying to sow hate and division among the American people. What he is right now doing in terms of invoking the American military, threatening the American people with the American military, the use of the American military against its own people. He is not a commander in chief. He is a divider. He is clearly scared. And — and he cannot meet this moment that he has partly created because of his inability to understand the pain and the suffering. Right now, America is raw. Her wounds are exposed. And instead of having a president who understands it, who empathizes, who lifts up the spirits and acknowledges the pain, we have someone who chooses to hold up the Bible like a prop for his own political gain and for a photo op. And that’s just the reality of where we are.”
She added, “Look, in the history of America, we have to have leaders who acknowledge black people have been treated as less than human in the history of our country and presently when you look at what happened to George Floyd. And America has never fully addressed the historical and systemic racism that has existed. And instead of having a president that does that, we have someone who fans the flames.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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