Reverend Al Sharpton has been a frequent guest on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," where he often discusses race issues, usually from a perspective that serves a leftist narrative. Earlier this week, during Tuesday's episode, he appeared on the program to talk about last weekend's shooting at a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, New York, where 18-year old Payton Gendron allegedly shot multiple people, killing 10. The crime occurred in a predominantly black neighborhood and Gendron had written up a racist manifesto.
Co-host Joe Scarborough chimed in to denounce his former political party, joining the rest of the mainstream media in blaming Republicans for the shooting, which is being investigated as a hate crime.
"Reverend, of course, it's hard to always monitor every dark corner of the internet, of social media," Scarborough said. "But we do know that there are Republican leaders in the House, the United States Congress. We do know there's a powerful news network. We do know that there are powerful voices on the Trump right that are pushing the great replacement theory," he charged.
"There have been studies, there have been articles, it's not hard to see if we open our eyes that you actually have people that are doing everything they can to get more viewers, to make more money, to get more people listening to their podcasts, to get more followers online by pushing white grievance against brown and black people. Turning whites against blacks, whites against Hispanics, whites against Muslims, whites against Jews," Scarborough continued on with.
Not only was Scarborough a Republican, he was a Republican congressman representing Florida's 1st Congressional District from 1994 until he announced his resignation in 2001.
On March 8, 2000, Scarborough even sponsored a resolution that was for the purpose of "Condemning the racist and anti-Semitic views of the Reverend Al Sharpton."
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The text of the resolution referenced how:
Whereas the Congress strongly rejects the racist and incendiary actions of the Reverend Al Sharpton;
Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as ‘bloodsucking [J]ews’, and ‘Jew bastards’;
Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has referred to members of the Jewish faith as ‘white interlopers’ and ‘diamond merchants’;
Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton was found guilty of defamation by a jury in a New York court arising from the false accusation that former Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones, who is white, raped and assaulted a fifteen year-old black girl;
Whereas, to this day, the Reverend Al Sharpton has refused to accept responsibility and expresses no regret for defaming Mr. Pagones;
Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton’s vicious verbal anti-Semitic attacks directed at members of the Jewish faith, and in particular, a Jewish landlord, arising from a simple landlord-tenant dispute with a black tenant, incited widespread violence, riots, and the murder of five innocent people;
Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton’s fierce demagoguery incited violence, riots, and murder in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, following the accidental death of a black pedestrian child hit by the motorcade of Orthodox Rabbi Menachem Schneerson;
Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton led a protest in the Crown Heights neighborhood and marched next to a protester with a sign that read, ‘The White Man is the Devil’;
Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has insulted members of the Jewish faith by challenging Jews to violence and stating to Jews to ‘pin down’ their yarmulkes; and
Whereas the Reverend Al Sharpton has practiced the politics of racial division and made inflammatory remarks against whites by characterizing the death of Amadou Diallo as a ‘racially motivated police ‘assassination’...
The resolution was also to resolve that the House
(1) condemns the practices of the Reverend Al Sharpton, which seek to divide Americans on the basis of race, ethnicity, and religion;
(2) expresses its outrage over the violence that has resulted due to the Reverend Al Sharpton’s incendiary words and actions; and
(3) fervently urges elected officials and public servants, who have condoned and legitimized the Reverend Al Sharpton’s incendiary words and actions, to publicly denounce and condemn such racist and anti-Semitic views.
It was ultimately not adopted.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was also on the program. The Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) noted in a report from July 2, 2020 by Jackson Richman about how "ADL CEO under fire for partnering with Sharpton in pushing for Facebook boycott."
Richman, who referenced Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s associate dean and director of global social action, said "the idea of partnering with someone like Sharpton, who has a history of anti-Semitism and other bigotry, is hypocritical, if not counterproductive," according to Jewish groups. Rabbi Cooper also raised issue with how the reverend had not apologized for his remarks.
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