“There is nothing you are ever going to do that is going to make them stop calling you a racist,” said Breitbart News’s Sonnie Johnson, asking, “Why do we care?” in a Monday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.
Johnson offered her comments regarding news media focus on President Donald Trump’s characterization of Baltimore, Maryland, as “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”
“There is one-party rule in Baltimore,” said Johnson of the Democrat Party’s control of Maryland’s most populous city. “If that doesn’t change, nothing on the ground is going to change. I don’t care how much Trump tweets. I don’t care how much Elijah Cummings and his ilk come back against him. The simple fact of the matter is, we are a republic.”
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Improving Baltimore’s conditions must come from local governance, said Johnson, listing a litany of corruption scandals related to the city’s authorities.
“The decisions that most affect the citizens on the ground are the decisions made by their local government,” Johnson stated. “In Baltimore, I have been following the last three or four years, now — as corruption scandal after corruption scandal has broken off in that city, including recently, Mayor Pugh, their mayor had to step down for corruption charges; she was trying to sell her books out of her office.”
Johnson added, “In addition to that, multiple police officers have been arrested. They have been convicted for planting false evidence — drug and weapons — on citizens in Baltimore. Not only that, but taking confiscated drugs and sending them to other American cities to be sold, like Philadelphia.”
Johnson continued, “This past year, the school system was both shut down in the winter time because they did not have heat, and it was shut down in the spring — closer to summer time — because there was no air conditioning.”
“In the last year, they were throwing citizens out of the hospitals still in their hospital gowns,” recalled Johnson, “in almost below freezing temperatures. This city is corrupt. It is death, poverty, and destruction, and that is what you get when you have one-party progressive rule for 60-plus years.”
Baltimore’s problems relate to the deindustrialization of of America via the outsourcing of jobs to countries with lower operational expenses, noted Johnson.
“This started before Elijah Cummings,” Johnson remarked. “This started before the idea of globalization. This started with the idea of packing all these powers in these unions that forced our companies out of this country. This started a long time ago, and it will not be solved with a tweet from Donald Trump, and there’s really nothing Elijah Cummings can accomplish to fix this. It is going to take a competing ideology to get on the ground, and actually trust the American people to vote for something different. “
Democrat control of Baltimore is a function of Republican failures to espouse the values of conservatism to the city’s residents, estimated Johnson.
“We cannot say that they’re just stupid for voting for Democrats when we give them no option,” Johnson determined. “We give them no platform to stand against. We don’t give them the chance to actually air their grievances and actually listen.”
Baltimore’s residents suffer from “failing schools, a lack of jobs [and] economic opportunities, and an overbearing, overregulating, overtaxing government that has this boot on their neck,” Johnson said. “They have legitimate concerns that cannot be rooted out at the federal level.”
Johnson went on, saying, “The only way we are going to solve Baltimore, Ferguson, Compton, Chicago, New York City, is if we are actually on the ground competing in these areas. If we, as a political party, do not start that engagement, we are going to lose our country to democratic socialism.”
“We have to win the people,” declared Johnson. “The biggest obstacle to us in winning the people is actually trusting that they can be won and actually believing that if you go to an American city and actually offer them conservative principles, that you can actually get buy-in.”
“Progressive” ideology, said Johnson, is ubiquitous among black Americans.
“We are in a capitalist switch in the black community where we have lived under progressivism,” Johnson stated. “A big portion of us — 50 to 60 percent of us — were literally brought up in nothing but progressivism. We went to progressive schools. We have progressive churches. We are surrounded by progressive culture. We have progressive news channels. We have progressive Hollywood and movies. Everything around us is progressivism. There is no entry for conservative ideology to compete with it.”
Johnson continued, “We have to trust our ideology. We have to trust our principles. We have to trust what we believe in. We have to trust our Constitution. We have to trust our republic. If we believe these things are the best answer to save America, then we have to trust that American people will actually choose them, and that means getting on the ground — getting on the battlefield of ideas — and presenting what we stand for … so that we can give them answers they have not received under this progressive Democratic machine in the last 60 to 70 years”
Johnson went on, “We have to trust our fellow American citizens. They are American citizens. Can you trust them to hear your ideology and your principles? I don’t care what the Democrat pundits say. I don’t care what they call you. I am talking in Andrew Breitbart’s spirit: So what? Can you speak to your fellow American citizens? That is our biggest roadblock.”
Leftists regularly accuse conservatives of being “racist,” noted Marlow.
“What is new?” asked Johnson in response. “This is what they’ve been doing since I entered politics. What about this is new? Nothing about this is new. This is all they have. This is all the Congressional Black Caucus has. This is all the NAACP has. This is all those white progressives who believe in white privilege and white guilt, that’s all they have. Why do we care? This has to be our point.”
Johnson advised conservatives not to worry about left-wing derision while reflecting on Andrew Breitbart’s legacy.
“I miss Andrew Breitbart so much, because he was the one who made me feel like someone understood it and got it,” shared Johnson. “So what? They’re never going to stop. There is nothing you are ever going to do that is going to make them stop calling you a racist. There is nothing you are ever going to do that is going to make them stop calling you a sexist.”
Johnson concluded, “You’re going to be a xenophobe. You’re going to be a homophobe. You’re going to be whatever freakin’ name they can call you. It is never going to change. My question remains: Can you win the American people? Because if you win the American people, those things don’t matter, anymore.”
Breitbart News Daily broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.
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