MSNBC host Al Sharpton said Monday on “The Reid Out” that President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance inviting Marine veteran Daniel Penny to their box at the Army-Navy football game was insulting and showed the administration views black people “as animals.”
Sharpton said, “It is amazing to me that you would have someone that choked to death an unarmed man who had mental problems and act as though he’s some kind of hero. The clear message is that you are now giving legitimacy to vigilanteism, and it could make others feel that they can take the law into their own hand. ”
“The jury spoke, you have to accept the verdict of the jury but to make a folk hero or a political star out of someone that killed an unarmed man, who didn’t physically assault anybody, who didn’t threaten anybody, he was acting unruly. He might have been something that made people uncomfortable but to kill him and then to honor this person that did this choke hold, that caused the death and bring him to the President-elect’s box at the Army-Navy game, a president that was president when George Floyd happened, Breonna Taylor happened, Ahmaud Arbery, happened he never said a word of comfort to the families of the victims there. But he’ll make this guy, whose only claim to fame is that he choked to death an unarmed man with mental issues. It ought to be insult to all Americans beyond race. If the race was the other way around, would the reaction be the same? I think Donald Trump is clearly sending a racial signal here. I think a lot of those that have fell in line are comfortable with that. That’s frightening.”
He added, “You have to ask yourself, is that not a purposeful signal? This is the same Donald Trump that claimed black men were going to vote for him but look at what he did to a homeless black man, what Penny did to a homeless black man with mental problems.”
Sharpton added, “Lets not forget JD Vance accused black Haitians of eating the pets of people in the city in Ohio when he was a senator so he sees us as animals and he sees us as less than human.”
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