Chuck Schumer BURIES Tommy Tuberville’s Comments on White Nationalism in Scorching Senate Floor Rant: ‘Deeply and Terribly Disturbing’
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had strong, blunt words for Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) on the Senate floor after the latter said that it was a matter of “opinion” that white nationalists were racists.
Last night on the debut of Kaitlin Collins’ new CNN prime time show The Source, Collins asked Tuberville to clarify his past statement about white nationalists in the military, saying “I call them Americans.” When she reminded him that a “white nationalist is someone who believes that the white race is superior to other races,” he said that was “some people’s opinion.”
Schumer had an opinion about that, and he made it clear in a stern condemnation on the Senate floor:
It’s hard to believe that the Senator from Alabama has to be corrected again. The Senator from Alabama is wrong, wrong, wrong. The definition of white nationalism is not a matter of opinion. White nationalism, the ideology that one race is inherently superior to others, that people of color should be segregated, subjected, and relegated to second class citizenship is racist down to its rotten core. And for the senator from Alabama to obscure the racist nature of white nationalism is indeed very, very dangerous. His words have power and carry weight with the fringe of his constituency, just the fringe. But if that fringe listens to him excuse and defend white nationalism, he is fanning the flames of bigotry and intolerance.
Last week, the gunman who killed 23 people at an El Paso Walmart was sentenced to 90 life terms in prison. He was a self-described white nationalist. The man who murdered ten people at a Tops Supermarket in my home state of New York in Buffalo was a white nationalist.
And if those examples aren’t clear enough, let us not forget Charlottesville, where neo-fascists, alt-right radicals, and far-right militias paraded through the streets, carrying torches and chanted “Jews will not replace us.” Those were white nationalists.
This isn’t a joke. This is deadly serious stuff. And for a member of the United States Senate to speculate about what white nationalism means as if it’s some benign little thought experiment is deeply and terribly disturbing. I urge my Republican colleagues to impress upon the Senator from Alabama the destructive impact of his words and urge him to apologize.
Tuberville has also been drawing criticism for demanding a Senate vote on the military’s abortion policy, holding up hundreds of non-political military confirmations including the leader of the Marines, who are now without a leader for the first time since 1859.
Watch the video above via C-SPAN.
