A former adviser to President Ronald Reagan said that he was appalled and enraged over an insinuation by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., that the popular two-term president was racist. And, he added, Reagan would have felt pretty much the same way.
“I was appalled and I was angry, and Reagan would have been angry, too,” Mark Weinberg said on “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”
Her comments are now again in the focus as she re-tweeted the Atlantic article where audiotape from a long-hidden conversation between Reagan and Nixon surfaced. In the tapes, he allegedly called people from African nations as “monkeys,”
The day after the United Nations voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China, then–California Governor Ronald Reagan phoned President Richard Nixon at the White House and vented his frustration at the delegates who had sided against the United States.
“Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said. “Yeah,” Nixon interjected. Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh…
Ocasio-Cortez needed this so that she can launch her attack on former President Reagan.
“Remember when GOP got all outraged & fanned controversy when I pointed out how Reagan used racism as a political tool to keep white people poor & people of color poor too?
“Well, here we have it. Like many racists, Reagan spoke it behind closed doors. @TheAtlantic has the story,” she said.
Throughout American history, presidents have uttered comments, issued decisions and made public and private moves that critics said were racist, either at the time or in later generations. The presidents did so both before taking office and during their time in the White House.
What the Dems fail to mention is that is not just Reagan that made comments like this in the past.
It was their civil rights hero Lindon Johnson who made racist remarks but nobody is tweeting about it.
ccording to tapes of his private conversations, Johnson routinely used racist epithets to describe African Americans and some blacks he appointed to key positions.
His successor, Republican Richard Nixon, also regularly used racist epithets while in office in private conversations.
“We’re going to (place) more of these little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls at $2,400 a family,” Nixon once said about what he saw as lax work requirements. Nixon also made derogatory remarks about Jews, Mexican Americans, Italian Americans and Irish Americans.
As with Johnson, many of Nixon’s remarks were unknown to the general public until tapes of White House conversations were released decades later.
