On Thursday, MSNBC's Deadline: White House show again demonstrated that it's the place for political trash talk that panders to liberals rather than a place for serious discussion of current events. MSNBC contributor and frequent guest Jason Johnson actually claimed that, if Republicans are not stopped, they will eventually bar anyone other than straight Christian white men from voting.
His comments came during a discussion of a current push by Republicans for voting reform in Georgia that Democrats have been freaking out about, and moves by congressional Democrats to federally ban some of the safeguards against voter fraud.
After recalling that for most of U.S. history, most Americans were not allowed to vote, making the last several decades of greater voting rights historically unusual, he then warned:
And if we aren't vigilant -- if we don't hold these people accountable -- if we don't listen to their crazy conspiracies -- we don't allow people to get on television and say, "Well, there's voter fraud" -- you don't allow Ted Cruz or anyone else to get on television and say, "I don't know if Joe Biden is really President of the United States" -- we have to stop these people at every single turn because they will take America back to he 1930s, '40s, and '20s, and make sure that nobody who's not a straight white male Christian is actually able to vote and exercise their right in this country.
A bit earlier, Johnson likened the thinking of Republicans to that of al-Qaeda terrorists. After declaring that Republicans might have gotten "dumber" in the last decade because polling suggests more believe the presidential election was stolen than believed in birtherism, he then added:
And, at some point, you have to recognize that when people worship white supremacy -- when people worship Trump -- when people worship whatever kind of Qanon conspiracy they want, it is now a cult not radically dissimilar from al-Qaeda -- at least from what we've seen so far. -- as far as the belief system. And when you deal with a cult, you can no longer defeat those people with logic. You just have to defeat them with law and you have to allow people to live in whatever kind of crazy fantasy world they want as long as they're not harming other people.
Johnson has such a history of making incendiary comments about race that, about a year ago, he was not only suspended from MSNBC, but lost his political editor position at The Root and had to relocate to the The Grio where he currently contributes.
This episode of MSNBC's Deadline: White House was sponsored in part by Clear Choice. Their contact information is linked.
Transcript follows:
MSNBC
Deadline: White House
March 18, 2021
4:12 p.m. Eastern
JASON JOHNSON, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: This is the thing that's even more scary for me, right? You've got 62 percent of self-identified Republicans in 2021 who are saying, "Hey, I think the election was rigged." I looked back at 2011 and you had 45 percent of Republicans in 2011 who thought Barack Obama was born in Kenya. So literally the Republican party has gotten dumber or crazier or more conspiracy-oriented in the last decade. I mean, it should be easier to convince people that Obama was born in Kenya than it should be to think that Joe Biden and somehow a collection of Democrat and Republican state senators and secretaries of State managed to rig an entire election.
But that is what we're facing right now, It's not just a crisis of confidence. It's not just a crisis of competence. It's a crisis of truth, And, at some point, you have to recognize that when people worship white supremacy -- when people worship Trump -- when people worship whatever kind of Qanon conspiracy they want, it is now a cult not radically dissimilar from al-Qaeda -- at least from what we've seen so far. -- as far as the belief system. And when you deal with a cult, you can no longer defeat those people with logic. You just have to defeat them with law and you have to allow people to live in whatever kind of crazy fantasy world they want as long as they're not harming other people.
(...)
NICOLLE WALLACE: And, Jason, this is, I think, the frame that is urgently needed -- that these aren't about -- there is no fraud. So these are not about election security -- this is about the preservation of democracy and making it -- this isn't right-left -- this isn't about who wins in 2020 or who wins in 2022 -- this is about, "What kind of country do you want to live in?"
Yeah, and, Nicolle, and I think historic context is important here. We've really only had free elections in this country for about 50 years anyway. This is actually the norm. Until you go to the activism of the 1960s, it was routine for large swaths of Americans to just be locked out of voting. Black people were locked out of voting -- women were locked out of voting -- Asian people were locked out of voting. What we're seeing the Republican party do now is actually go back to the norm of voting behavior -- the norm of American voter suppression. So we are fighting for a future that we really have only had for 40 or 50 years.
So when Senator Warnock is talking about, "Hey, this is for democracy -- this is for our future," he's not just speaking pie in the sky. He's literally saying, "I live in a state where this was the history of the state. i am in the state where the blood of John Lewis is in the ground from people who fought to make sure that everybody has a right to vote." And that's what I think people have to remember -- that this is not some new thing -- that we have a history of this in our country.
And if we aren't vigilant -- if we don't hold these people accountable -- if we don't listen to their crazy conspiracies -- we don't allow people to get on television and say, "Well, there's voter fraud" -- you don't allow Ted Cruz or anyone else to get on television and say, "I don't know if Joe Biden is really President of the United States" -- we have to stop these people at every single turn because they will take America back to he 1930s, '40s, and '20s, and make sure that nobody who's not a straight white male Christian is actually able to vote and exercise their right in this country.