Terrible misstep by Chuck Todd of Meet The Press this morning as the panel discussed the deaths of nine black church-goers at the hands of a young white racist this week.
Instead of focusing on the race issue, Todd swung right and aired a clip of only black men currently in prison for using guns to kill.
Via Raw Story:
“The circumstances you are about to see are very different from the racist violence in Charleston,” Todd explained. “In this case, in the inmates are African-American that you’re going to hear from. But their lessons remain important.”
“And we simply ask you to look at this as a color-blind issue that’s about just simply gun violence,” he added.
Following the video clip of several tearful black men who said that they never intended to kill anyone when they picked up a gun, Todd returned to his panel of guests for comments.
“Passing a law isn’t going to change the culture,” Todd opined.
“But passing the right law — passing a law that frankly we’re not going to pass would take a lot of guns out of circulation, would make the gun not the normal thing one reaches for when one wants to aggrandize ones self-esteem,” columnist Eugene Robinson argued.
Robinson agreed that the video of the black men had been “powerful,” but he said that it did not fit the circumstances.
“There wasn’t a terribly diverse set of people who were talking,” the columnist observed. “Right now, we’re talking about a horrific crime committed by a white man, we’re talking about the search for two escaped murderers who are white men.”
“So we should point out that this is not just an African-American problem.”
“No, no, no, no,” Todd replied. “And it wasn’t intended to be that way.”
Painfully disconnected. Good on Eugene Robinson for bringing proper perspective to the "discussion."
Another reminder of how much we miss Tim Russert.
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