House Manager Stacey Plaskett Rips Trump Lawyers for Not-So-Subtle Focus on Black Women in Defense Videos: ‘I Thought We Were Past That’
Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) pivoted off of a question about the message the Senate would send by acquitting former President Donald Trump to call out the not-so-subtle focus on Black women marching and protesting in his defense counsel’s video evidence.
During the fourth day of Trump’s impeachment trial, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) asked about a past example of Congress impeaching and convicting a former Secretary of War who had already left office. Plaskett, the lone non-voting delegate from the territory U.S. Virgin Islands, addressed the Minnesota Democrat’s point, but then spent the latter half of her allotted five minutes to discuss her own personal response to the impeachment defense, which she implied was trafficking in the “angry Black women” stereotype.
“Let me also bring something else up,” Plaskett said. “I’ll briefly say that defense counsel put a lot of videos out in their defense, playing clip after clip of Black women talking about fighting for a cause on an issue or a policy. It was not lost on me so many of them were people of color and women, Black women. Black women like myself who are sick and tired of being sick and tired for our children. Your children. Our children.”
Plaskett was far from the only one to notice:
Trump’s defense is attempting to make their argument with tough talking black women. #ImpeachmentTrial #Whataboutism
— Jason R. Moore (@JasonMooreENT) February 12, 2021
Informally, I am counting how much “diversity” we see today in the footage that the Trump impeachment defense team plays. So far, Black women are in the lead.
— Aaron L. Morrison (@aaronlmorrison) February 12, 2021
“This summer things happened that were violent. But there was also things that gave some of us Black women great comfort,” Plaskett went on, alluding to the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests. “Seeing Amish people from Pennsylvania standing up with us, members of Congress fighting up with us.”
“And so I thought we were past that. I think maybe we’re not,” Plaskett added.
“There are long-standing consequences, decisions like this that will define who are as people, who America is,” she concluded. We have in this room made monumental decisions. ” At this ti se of these decisions even controversial, but history has shown that they define us as a country and as a people. Today, is one of those moments and history will wait for our decision.”
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
