Accomplished race-hustler, Al Sharpton may have guaranteed the Donald Trump presidency when he promised to leave the US if Trump won the White House. That was a huge incentive to bring out the votes for Trump. But alas, he changed his mind and now he’s indulging in fighting talk.
In a fiery speech at the Harlem Headquarters of his National Action Network, The Rev. Al Sharpton excoriated President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions for U.S. Attorney General —warning the incoming commander-in-chief and his Cabinet picks “better worry about me.”
Maybe Sharpton should heed his own warning,
“If Donald Trump is the nominee, I’m open to support anyone, while I’m also reserving my ticket to get outta here if he wins, only because he’d probably have me deported anyway,” he said.
The Observer reports,
Sharpton recalled how allegations that Sessions had spoken favorably the Ku Klux Klan, called a black prosecutor “boy” and called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People “un-American” derailed the Southerner’s nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986 under Ronald Reagan. The controversial civil rights leader paralleled those proceedings before the Senate with his own activism at the time in Howard Beach, Queens, where an Italian-American mob had chased a black man into a deadly collision with a car on Cross-Bay Boulevard—and Trump and his father’s legal battles against discrimination suits.
He contrasted this with the record of former Attorney General Eric Holder and current Attorney General Loretta Lynch, respectively the first and second African-Americans to lead the Department of Justice, and their work probing police departments and combating restrictive voting laws.
“Thirty years later the same Donald Trump nominates this man Sessions to succeed Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder as Attorney General of the United States,” Sharpton railed, noting the Justice Department investigation of the killing of black Staten Islander Eric Garner is still underway. “All of that will now be handed over to a man who jokes about the Ku Klux Klan and calls black federal prosecutors ‘boy!’”
The NAN head declared it was “fighting time” and reminded the audience of his rally planned in Washington D.C. on January 14, ahead of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Trump’s inauguration. He also lashed out at Trump’s selection of Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen Bannon—who has advertised his affinity for the racist, anti-Semitic “alt-right”—to a top White House role.
“The appointment of Bannon, who ran the Breitbart, and the appointment of this man to be attorney general, Mr. Sessions, shows that there is a clear path to the far-right and the suspension of rights,” Sharpton declaimed, mocking the president-elect’s calls for national unity as hollow. “Whatever trick you playing, we’re going to fight every step of the way.”
Sharpton demanded that the 48-member Senate Democratic Caucus, led by Sen. Charles Schumer, attempt to obstruct the confirmation of Trump’s Cabinet choices—much in the way Republicans stalled the appointment of Lynch, and blocked the ascension of President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick Merrick Garland. Under current filibuster rules, 60 votes are needed to close discussion of most matters.
Read the full story at The Observer
