Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder has a question for Trump supporters: “Exactly when did you think America was great?”
Holder appeared on MSNBC on Wednesday and host Ari Melber asked him: “There is a lot of talk about America being a leader as a democracy, quote unquote, in the 1800s when women and African-Americans couldn’t vote. What kind of democracy is that?”
Not much of a question, really, but Holder took the bait.
“That’s exactly right. And that’s what I hear these things about ‘let’s make America great again’ and I think to myself, ‘exactly when did you think America was great’?” he said. “It certainly wasn’t when people were enslaved. It certainly wasn’t when women didn’t have the right to vote. It certainly wasn’t when the LGBT community was denied the rights to which it was entitled.”
Melber, not exactly a “journalist,” then asked Holder if he thought Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan — Make American Great Again — was racist.
“Does that phrase echo as discrimination in your ears?” Melbert asked.
“It takes us back to what I think, an American past that never in fact really existed. This notion of greatness,” Holder said. “You know, America has done superb things. It has done great things. And it has been a leader in you know, a whole range of things. But we are always a work in process and … looking back, ‘Make America Great Again’ is inconsistent with who we are as Americans at our best where we look at the uncertain future, embrace it and make it our own.”
Holder’s view was reminiscent of Michelle Obama, who dissed America as her husband was running for president in 2008.
“For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country,” Michelle said. Cindy McCain, wife of Sen. John McCain, who was running against Barack Obama, quickly told reporters, “I have and always will be proud of my country.”
Holder’s comments also mirror those of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who last year declared that America “was never that great.”
“We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great,” Cuomo said last August. “We have not reached greatness, we will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged, we will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women, 51 percent of our population, is gone and every woman’s full potential is realized and unleashed and every woman is making her full contribution,” he continued.
So perhaps we’re seeing the birth of a new slogan for Democrats, who have pushed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders to the top of the heap for 2020 and who widely praise Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“America Was Never That Great” might soon be on bumpers all across the country. And really, it’s not a bad slogan — since that’s exactly what Democrats really think.
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