New York Times columnist Mara Gay said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that she noticed trucks with American flags and was “disturbed” by what she saw.
During a conversation about the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Gay said that she also saw trucks with anti-President Joe Biden messages and Trump flags and advised that the message she got from the American flags was: “This is my country. This is not your country.”
“You know, it’s really concerning to me that the Democrats haven’t just gone ahead at this point and said, ‘We’re doing this on our own in terms of getting a commission together to explain to the American people how we allowed the insurrection to take place in the Capitol.’ I think that really needs to move forward swiftly,” Gay stated. “You know, the reality is here that we have a large percentage of the American population — I don’t know how big it is, but we have tens of millions of Trump voters who continue to believe that their rights as citizens are under threat by simple virtue of having to share the democracy with others. I think that as long as they see Americanness as the same as one with whiteness, this is going to continue. We have to figure out how to get every American a place at the table in this democracy but how to separate Americanness, America, from whiteness.”
“Until we can confront that and talk about that, this is really going to continue,” she warned.
“I was on Long Island this weekend, visiting a really dear friend, and I was really disturbed. I saw, you know, dozens and dozens of pickup trucks with [expletives] against Joe Biden on the back of them, Trump flags, and in some cases, just dozens of American flags, which is also just disturbing, because essentially the message was clear, it was: ‘This is my country. This is not your country. I own this,’” Gay continued. “And so until we’re ready to have that conversation, this is going to continue. What really is concerning to me as well is, it’s not just Democrats in Congress. I think there’s a large percentage of Americans, even some of my colleagues in journalism, who are invested in some way in pretending that this isn’t the threat that it is. That is the real concern. Because, you know, the Trump voters who are not going to get onboard with democracy, they’re a minority. You can marginalize them long-term. But if we don’t take the threat seriously, then I think we’re all in really bad shape.”
“Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski added, “Totally agree.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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