On the eve of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the fierce topic of Sunday morning news shows was President Donald Trump and his reference, during a negotiation session focused U.S. immigration policy, to African countries and Haiti in vulgar, scatological terms.
And Georgia political figures were front and center.
On ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Atlanta, passed his judgment on Trump: “I think he is a racist…we have to stand up, we have to speak up, and not try to sweep it under the rug.”
Minutes later, on the same program, U.S. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., who was in that meeting with Trump, made a course correction. On Friday, the senator put out a joint statement with Senate colleague Tom Cotton, R-Ark. Both said they couldn’t remember the president comparing Third World nations to latrines.
This morning, Perdue said it never happened. “I’m telling you he did not use that word, George. And I’m telling you it’s a gross misrepresentation. How many times do you want me to say that?” the Georgia senator said:
But then there was Andrew Young. The former U.N. ambassador and Atlanta mayor was the featured guest on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” Watch here:
Young has never been one to be forced into sound bites. So here’s a portion of this morning’s transcript:
Host Chuck Todd: Some of your fellow travelers in the civil rights movement, John Lewis, Jessie Jackson, and of course, Martin Luther King's son, have been pretty tough on the president. They said in response, "He speaks like one who knows something about being a racist. He speaks like a racist." Martin Luther King Jr, III: "Yesterday caused him to lose any level of credibility." All of them stop short of calling the president a racist. Where are you, sir?
Young: Well, I'm of the opinion that we were born in a very complex, multi-cultural situation. I prefer to use the term ethno-centrism. Because it goes way back and it doesn't help to put the label on any single person. Dr. King said we were born in an unjust world. And none of us can take any virtue about being born black, white, liberal, or conservative.
We have a difficult situation, and it was proven to me when [King] came out of the meeting with Senator [Arthur] Goldberg at the U.N. on Vietnam and he refused to give any comment. And they asked him, "Well, what do you think of China?" And he said, "Well, 800 million people are not going to disappear because we refuse to admit their existence." He was attacked by every single newspaper from Washington to California, from Chicago down to Miami.
That was the climate of the time. And it was absolutely stupid. One of the things [King] said, not related to that, but which was quoted by the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico last night at the King dinner, was that Martin Luther King said that "nothing is more dangerous in all the world than serious ignorance, sincere ignorance and enthusiastic stupidity."
Todd: Yeah.
Young: And I think that that's not to be applied to any one person. That that could be applied to both parties. It could be applied to just about every member of the House of Representatives. That we don't really grasp the complexity of the times that we're in. And we're trying to simplify it and personalize it. And that will not work.
Todd: You know, it's interesting, Martin Luther King's nephew, who stood next to the president when he signed the proclamation on Friday, Isaac Farris, afterwards as he was walking out of the White House, he was asked to respond to this issue, is the president a racist.
And he said this: "I think President Trump is racially ignorant and racially uninformed. But I don't think he is a racist in the traditional sense." So it was basically backing up what you were saying. But let me ask you this: How do you educate a 71-year-old man, Donald Trump, on the issue of race?
Young: Well, very easy. I think he's being educated. And it's not a matter of educating Donald Trump. It's a matter of educating our entire society. Getting President Trump to be a saint is not going to change the employment situation, it's not going to change the global economy, it's not going to deal with the tensions between North Korea and the United States. This is a difficult world. And it doesn't help to label people.
You know, you don't help someone who has an alcohol problem by constantly calling him a drunk. You have to deal with the sickness. And I don't even want to use the term sickness in a moral sense. We're part of an extremely confusing time. And it probably goes more back to cell phones and the technology.
Todd: And the instant reaction. Yeah.
Young: And if you read Peter Diamandis' "Abundance," you realize that science and technology is doing extremely well, but the better they do, the more insecure it makes politicians.
Todd: That's an excellent point. So let me ask you this. What do you say to Democrats right now? What do you say to the next generation of African-American leaders who just say, "You know what, I can't work with this man. You just can't do it. It enables him." I think I know what you're going to say, but explain to that younger generation why they should try to work with him, if you think they should.
Young: Well, no. Dr. King sent me in to Birmingham to deal with a community that was institutionally racialized. And where just about every member of the hierarchy was committed to racial segregation. And it took us only about 90 days. But there were almost, oh, every two or three days we had discussions. And we dismantled segregation piece by piece.
And we did it with a no-fault analysis of it. And Dr. King used to say, "We are not to be blamed. We have no virtue in being born black. And you have no virtue in being born white. We're in an unjust situation. And together, we have to resolve it." I would say now that it's rich and poor. And I would say that it goes all the way back to, I would take it back to General MacArthur, who did not know that the Koreans that he was dealing with, Kim Jong-un's great grandfather, was a graduate of a Presbyterian missionary college.
If he had had that one little bit of information, he would have shown them a little more respect. We might not have had a Korean War. There would've been a half a million people that would not have to have lost their lives. But the Koreans were fighting against Japan since 1930. And we didn't start until '41. And they thought they were on our side.
But we didn't know any better. We didn't realize that Ho Chi Min had been a student in Boston and worked at the Parker House, same time Martin Luther King was. And it's our demonizing anybody that we don't know. Kissinger had Mandela at the top of the terrorist list. And so it's our ignorance. We don't know any better. And we have to learn geography and we have to learn global economics. And the president is compartmentalized. He has a very good education in business. But probably not very good in history…
Todd: Let me ask you this final question then. Is the president redeemable?
Young: Let me tell you something. I'm a Christian. And all men's sin fall short of the glory of God, and women do, too. And if we were not redeemable, we would not be committed to our Lord and savior Jesus Christ as much as we are. We are committed because we are sinners that know we cannot make it on our own. And I think he's kind of got to realize that, too.
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