On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), who has repeatedly claimed that the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election was “stolen” from Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams, said that “MAGA Republicans” “feel that only their way can be considered, and, as Joe Biden said, if they’re not the winners, then somebody cheated them out of something. I don’t understand that kind of a concept.” Clyburn also argued that “the MAGA Republicans, they should not be allowed to serve in public office. They should not be allowed appointments to boards and commissions.” And “if you do not admit that there’s a place in our electoral system for someone to win and then the other person loses, if you feel that the only way for you to win an election is to deny me the vote, no, there should be no place for you in government.”
Clyburn stated, “[W]e’ve always had what I call fair-weather small-d democrats. I think, back in the 1770s, when the country was trying to give birth to itself, Thomas Paine called them summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. We, back in the 1960s, saw people who really disagreed on how the country should move forward. But they maintained their pursuit of perfection. They may have disagreed on how best to do it, but they remained loyal to the country. Today, we seem to call these fair-weather small-d democrats, MAGA Republicans, people who feel that only their way can be considered, and, as Joe Biden said, if they’re not the winners, then somebody cheated them out of something. I don’t understand that kind of a concept. We have contests in this country all the time. We have school board elections, legislative elections at the state level, and you cannot have two people holding the same office. So, when these elections are over, we tend to come together as Americans and find out how we can work together, how can we find common ground in order to keep moving this country forward. And that’s what the president was talking about tonight. He does work well with Republicans.”
Clyburn then laid out pieces of legislation Biden passed that got support from Republicans, but not MAGA Republicans, rather, Republicans “who see the country as a whole that all of us should be working together to find common ground.”
Later, after talking about the positive relationship he has with South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R), he said, “no, we aren’t calling out all Republicans, but the MAGA Republicans, they should not be allowed to serve in public office. They should not be allowed appointments to boards and commissions. We should relegate them to a place in our society that we do for people who are summer soldiers and sunshine patriots.”
Host Lawrence O’Donnell then asked, “And just to clarify, so that Fox doesn’t try to grab that and use that, you mean the Republicans who are election deniers, the Republicans who do not want to count all of the votes in our elections, you’re not talking about all Republicans when you say that?”
Clyburn answered, “Absolutely not, absolutely not. As I said, I work very closely with Republicans. My father was a Republican. So, I don’t have anything against Republicans, but if you do not admit that there’s a place in our electoral system for someone to win and then the other person loses, if you feel that the only way for you to win an election is to deny me the vote, no, there should be no place for you in government. If you’re going to set up a committee of people that can dilute the results of an election, they should not be allowed to serve in government.”
In October of 2020, during an appearance on CNN, Clyburn said, “I don’t know of anybody who believes that Stacey Abrams did not win Georgia. It was stolen from her, just like they stole these seats on the Supreme Court from Obama.”
In March of 2021, Clyburn told MSNBC, “Nobody believes that [Gov. Brian Kemp (R)] did not steal the election fair and square from Stacey Abrams.” And Kemp “took so many people off the roll. And I guarantee you that was the difference in his having won that election and having stolen it fair and square.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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