Daytime TV star and radio host Steve Harvey ripped Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R- KY) over his dismissal of reparations Wednesday, calling him a “hillbilly.”
On Wednesday’s The Steve Harvey Morning Show, Harvey responded to McConnell’s dismissal of issuing reparations, calling him a “hillbilly” and asserting that America’s election of a black president meant nothing.
“The Civil War broke out because you wanted to keep slavery,” Harvey argued. “Because you 13 southern states wanted to keep slavery.”
It is unclear who Harvey is referring to there, as McConnell’s state – Kentucky – did not join the Confederacy.
“You weren’t with this message that came from the North to free slaves,” Harvey said. “The second thing, we tried to correct its passage with Civil Rights laws. Y’all fought us on every tooth and nail, you sent guard dogs on us, firehouses, you killed Martin Luther King.”
“‘We’ ain’t elect no-damn-body. I promise you, your ass did not vote for him,” Harvey said in response to McConnell’s reminder that America elected a black president – Barack Obama – twice.
“You did nothing but try to destroy him,” he continued. “So, what would you expect this hillbilly to say other than what he said?”
“You say that you don’t want to be responsible for something that happened I think he said 150 years ago,” Harvey added. “Well, you weren’t there when they wrote this Constitution that you love to throw up in everybody’s face.”
On Tuesday, McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill that paying reparations for “something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us currently living are responsible” is a bad idea.
We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We’ve elected an African-American president. I think we’re always a work in progress in this country, but no one currently alive is responsible for that and I don’t think we should be trying to figure out how to compensate for it.
McConnell added that issuing reparations would be logistically impossible.
It’s hard to figure out who to compensate,” the Republican leader said. “Waves of immigrants who’ve come to the country as well and experiences dramatic discrimination of one kind or another. So no, I don’t think reparations are a good idea.”
Mitch McConnell on why he opposes reparations for slavery: "No one currently alive was responsible for that." pic.twitter.com/e3hFHQQke9
— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) June 18, 2019
On Wednesday, former Oakland Raider Burgess Owens testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee and blasted the Democrat Party for its role in slavery, segregation, and the systemic oppression of black Americans.
“Let’s pay restitution,” Owens said. “How about the Democratic Party pay for all the misery brought to my race?”
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