CNN’s Bakari Sellers Hits Back at ‘Privileged’ Critics of Voting Rights Rhetoric in Exclusive Interview
Bakari Sellers speaks at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. Saul Loeb/Getty Images.
Bakari Sellers, CNN political commentator, attorney and best-selling author, is my guest on this week’s episode of The Interview podcast.
Sellers got his start in politics early: He was elected to the South Carolina legislature at the age of 22, making him the youngest African American elected official in the country. He is the son of civil rights leader Cleveland Sellers, who was good friends with Martin Luther King Jr.
I wanted to speak to Sellers about his new children’s book, Who Are Your People?, which was inspired by his three-year-old twins. Our interview happened to land the day after MLK Day, and during a week when Democrats made a last-gasp attempt to pass voting rights legislation in an effort to protect elections against Republican restrictions to voting.
I asked Sellers if he thought it was a mistake for Democrats to make a big push for a voting rights bill that was always doomed to fail in the Senate, setting up a raft of headlines and commentary noting yet another “failure” of the Biden administration.
“Getting them on the record is important,” Sellers said of lawmakers who voted to block the bill. “I would have the vote every 30 days if we’re being honest. I think you have to put as much pressure on these folks as possible.”
He invoked King’s warning against the “white moderate” to make a case against preserving the filibuster.
“In [King’s] Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he talked about the white moderate and how the white moderate was the greatest impediment to Negro success in this country, even greater than the White Citizens’ Council or the KKK. Because they wanted to preserve order over justice.”
“I mean, what is the filibuster? Preserving order over justice,” he continued. “And it’s not as if the filibuster is something that’s untouchable. They just narrowed the filibuster to pass an increase in the debt ceiling. We know what [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell has done with the filibuster to appoint three Supreme Court justices. If we don’t do it for voting rights, what are we really doing?”
I asked Sellers about arguments from some that the rhetoric from Democrats surrounding voting rights is extreme (see: referring to Georgia’s voting laws as “21st Century Jim Crow“).
“I think that that is a privileged statement to make,” Sellers said. “The impediments that people make to casting a ballot are just anti-democratic.”
He also offered a counter to those suggesting — like his CNN colleague Jake Tapper — that it’s unfair to argue that those who oppose the current voting rights laws are on the side of segregationists of the last century.
The fact is that the side you’re taking is the same side that’s been taken before by these individuals. Back to King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail. When he compared the white moderate to the White Citizens’ Council or the KKK, he didn’t say that you were burning crosses on our yard. He didn’t say that you were lynching us. But what he did say was that you were trying to preserve order over justice, and you are just as much of an impediment as they are. And so yes, when I say the Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are on the same side of Lester Maddox and Bull Connor and George Wallace, I’m not saying that they’re putting a water hose on me. But what I am saying is that they are just as large an impediment to justice for the Negro as these individuals were.
We also spoke about the cable news landscape, which Sellers has a good view of from his perch at CNN.
He has long been a consumer of the medium. His dad taught him to always listen to the other side, which has prompted interesting viewing habits: “When I was in law school, I would tape the O’Reilly Factor and 106 & Park every day.”
He doesn’t watch much of Fox News anymore.
“I think that Laura Ingraham is just an unabashed racist who traffics in racism to sell,” he said. “It bothers me. I think [Sean] Hannity is brilliant. And I think he knows exactly what he’s doing. I think that Chris Wallace and Jake Tapper are the two best interviewers in all of TV.”
A Fox News spokesperson fired back at Sellers’ criticism of Ingraham in a statement: “This is a despicable smear and an outright lie that says more about a CNN pundit’s desperate quest for relevance than anything else and is exactly the type of rhetoric that is poisoning the national discourse”
We also discussed the political rhetoric on MLK Day (“infantile”), media coverage of the Biden administration (“approval ratings right now don’t matter”) and whether he would host a show on cable news (“of course, if the opportunity presented itself”).
Download the full episode here, and subscribe to The Interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Read more coverage of The Interview on Mediaite.
