On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Weeknight,” Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) reacted to the federal takeover of the D.C. police and deploying of the National Guard in the city by saying that “I said that Project 2025 is Jim Crow 2.0.” And “I can tell you, right now, exactly what is going to happen in so many of these instances, because it’s all right there. If you look in the history books, you see it.”
Co-host Alicia Menendez asked, “Congressman, before we let you go, I do want to ask you about the news that we have been watching unfold out of Washington, D.C., and I want you to take a listen to what Mayor Bowser had to say about today’s actions by the president.”
Menendez then played video of Bowser saying, “My message to residents is this: We know that access to our democracy is tenuous…and while this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can’t say that, given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we’re totally surprised.”
Menendez then said, “Congressman, as a student of history, as someone who is living this right now, draw a line for us between what we are watching happening in Washington, D.C. with the president of the United States and what we are watching unfold in South Carolina, in Missouri, in Texas.”
Clyburn responded, “You may recall, at the Democratic Convention, I spoke one evening and I said that Project 2025 is Jim Crow 2.0. Now, Jim Crow 1.0 came out of a [thesis] written by a Confederate General, Martin Gary. If you look at Project 2025, look at that 1876 document, you will see why I said what I did at the Democratic Convention, because whoever wrote Project 2025, they used those edicts out of 1876. I can tell you, right now, exactly what is going to happen in so many of these instances, because it’s all right there. If you look in the history books, you see it. And so, that’s why the Mayor said what she said. In fact, I was with one of her top aides over the weekend, and we had some discussions on this. No, they’re not surprised, because we’ve been talking about this for a while. We were just hoping it would not come to pass.”
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