Cross posted to the MRC's NewsBusters blog
On Saturday's PoliticsNation show, MSNBC contributor Zerlina Maxwell made her latest foray into throwing around accusations of racism as she claimed that President Donald Trump's use of the word "Obamagate" is "the new birtherism " and suggested that the word is code for "He's black."
After conservative contributor Hugh Hewitt explained that the term "Obamagate" refers to President Trump's accusation that President Barack Obama's administration improperly unmasked former incoming National Security Advisor Mike Flynn as being the subject of government surveillance to try to undermine the Trump administration, Maxwell quickly went to race when she was asked to respond:
ZERLINA MAXWELL: There's no conspiracy if the allegations are true. Michael Flynn admitted he did what is alleged. Obamagate is essentially a new birtherism. It's essentially shorthand for trying to be opposed to Barack Obama on every single front because he is a black President.
She then added:
MAXWELL: I think this plays into the part of Trump's base that does harbor discriminatory feelings towards black and brown people, and that has shown through his policy and their support for his policy. And so Obamagate is just another distraction -- it's just another birtherism...
Host Al Sharpton then cued her up to reiterate her accusations of racism as he followed up:
AL SHARPTON: Mister Trump started his 2016 campaign as one of the faces of birtherism, so are you feeling, Zerlina, as many of us do, that Obamagate is his new birtherism hoping that he can use the same kind of using President Obama and the reference of race to try and get his campaign to in many ways incite this kind of "us against them" and forget that we're in the middle of a pandemic that he himself blundered in the middle of January till the end, and should have managed a lot differently?
Maxwell repeated her charges of racism against Trump supporters who are concerned about Flynn's unmasking:
MAXWELL: That's absolutely right, Rev. I think -- essentially what I hear when I hear Trump or anyone else articulate that there is something called Obamagate, I hear them saying, "He's black." You should pay attention to the fact that you didn't like the fact that we had a black President.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Saturday, May 16, PoliticsNation on MSNBC:
ZERLINA MAXWELL: There's no conspiracy if the allegations are true. Michael Flynn admitted he did what is alleged. Obamagate is essentially a new birtherism. It's essentially shorthand for trying to be opposed to Barack Obama on every single front because he is a black President.
I think this plays into the part of Trump's base that does harbor discriminatory feelings towards black and brown people, and that has shown through his policy and their support for his policy. And so Obamagate is just another distraction -- it's just another birtherism, Rev, and it's just completely unacceptable at a moment when we should be focused on the pandemic and dead Americans and a moment when Trump is incompetently handling that pandemic.
AL SHARPTON: Mister Trump started his 2016 campaign as one of the faces of birtherism, so are you feeling, Zerlina, as many of us do, that Obamagate is his new birtherism hoping that he can use the same kind of using President Obama and the reference of race to try and get his campaign to in many ways incite this kind of "us against them" and forget that we're in the middle of a pandemic that he himself blundered in the middle of January till the end, and should have managed a lot differently?
MAXWELL: That's absolutely right, Rev. I think -- essentially what I hear when I hear Trump or anyone else articulate that there is something called Obamagate, I hear them saying, "He's black." You should pay attention to the fact that you didn't like the fact that we had a black President.
I mean, the idea that Trump's base is upset about some circuitous path to the unmasking of Michael Flynn, I mean, unless they have been fed those talking points by the conservative media and Fox News, the average citizen is not concerned with the unmasking of Michael Flynn, who did what they alleged. So the unmasking was completely appropriate. It happens thousands of times in an administration. There is no conspiracy there.
The problem now is we are two months into quarantine, the administration has done basically nothing to ensure we have enough tests we need, that we have the number of precautions in place so that we can start to reopen parts of the economy.
