On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “MTP Daily,” House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said that the problem with President Joe Biden saying that opponents of his position on voting legislation are on the same side of Bull Connor isn’t that comparing Republicans and some Democrats to Bull Connor goes too far, it’s that “most Americans have no idea who Bull Connor was, unfortunately.”
Host Chuck Todd asked, “Do you agree with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) that President Biden might have gone too far with some of the Bull Connor references in Atlanta?”
Hoyer responded, “It wasn’t so much he went too far. I think — I know Bull Connor. I watched Bull Connor on television set dogs loose on six, seven, eight-year-old children, and I got really angry. So, I know the Bull Connor reference, but I think most Americans have no idea who Bull Connor was, unfortunately. But I — so, I think what he really needed to appeal was not — in the language of what was done, not who did it. Because the names don’t really mean something, I think, to people, like Bull Connor, but I think that the actions do mean something. The actions that were taken, setting dogs on children so that they would not try to go into a public accommodation, setting dogs on children so they could discriminate against them on voting, discriminate against them on housing, on education, separate but equal educational facilities which were not equal at all. Bull Connor, in the face of children complaining about that, set dogs on them.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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