White House Press Secretary said on Wednesday that he hoped that if Coretta Scott King were still alive that she would support the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) for attorney general. King, the late widow of civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr., had originally opposed Sessions’ nomination for a federal judgeship in the 1980s on the grounds that he had allegedly tried to “intimidate and chill the exercise of the ballot” by African Americans. Despite this, Spicer said that he hoped that King would have come around to support Sessions today if she had ever taken the time to get to know him and understand his record on key issues as voting rights.
“But, unfortunately, seeing how she’s not among us anymore, I can only say that her opinion is at this point irrelevant,” Spicer also said. “That’s why there’s no need to take her opinion into consideration, for better or worse. One thing must be emphasized here, though – neither her husband nor she knew anything about politics or racism. They are hailed today as icons of the supposed battle for civil rights, but at the end of the day, they were as clueless during that time as the rest of us. And it makes me very sad to see Mr. Sessions’ name being dragged through the mud because of something that happened so long ago. I for one won’t stand for it and won’t tolerate it.”
He continued, “When it’s all said and done, and I know there are plenty of Americans out there that will agree with what I’m about to say, I think that the single greatest civil rights battle that has been won in this country since its independence is the fact that today black people aren’t still chained up and hauled to pick cotton across the plains of the South. And allow me to refresh your memory, ladies and gentlemen – it was the Republicans who abolished slavery and allowed African Americans to become free men equal to every other race in this country. So, in actuality, the Republicans of the past are the ones we should be celebrating today as civil rights heroes, not some black guy who started a riot because he had nothing better to do.”
“Therefore, allow me to rephrase that into a sentence that’s an actual, straight-forward answer to the initial problem. Do I think we should take into consideration the potential opinion of Coretta Scott King if she were still alive? No. Do I think we should take into consideration the potential opinion (even though we already know what it would be, but nevertheless) of Martin Luther King Jr. on this issue? Not by a longshot. So, whose potential opinion should we care about and consider because it would be the single most important opinion in the history of opinions? I’ll tell you whose. He was a Republican, and a white person, but that’s beside the point right now. His name was Abraham Lincoln and as far as racial issues concerning Americans past, present and future are concerned, he is the ultimate and only benchmark,” Spicer concluded.
