Cliven Bundy Says Martin Luther Jr. Would Be On His Side
Cliven Bundy went on CNN's New Day[/i] to defend himself this morning, one day after we all found out that the former conservative hero rancher is actually pretty racist. It did not go well for Cliven Bundy.
The rancher began the interview by holding up a dead calf live on air, after which he told CNN he wanted to talk to you about being prejudiced a little bit. What followed was a somewhat astonishing series of thoughts from Bundy on civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. I'm not a racist, but I did wonder that, Bundy said in response to a question from Chris Cuomo. That answer is kind of the perfect distillation of what the rancher has been saying to defend himself after the New York Times[/i] quoted him waxing nostalgic on slavery. Bundy, it has become clear, believes that there is no harm in wondering lots of very offensive things on the record. Here's some of that exchange. We've highlighted the part where Cliven Bundy says that Martin Luther King wouldn't want the media to call him prejudiced: Bundy further defended his right to refer to black people as Negro, black boy or slave.
If those people cannot take those kinds of words and not be offensive, then Martin Luther King hasn’t got his job done yet. I should be able to say those things and they shouldn’t offend anybody. A Thursday story in the New York Times quoted Bundy referring to black people as the Negro. They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton, Bundy said of black people, according to the Times. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get any more freedom. They got less freedom.
Republicans, including those who had support Bundy in his cattle battle, denounced his comments as racist. Bundy rose to national fame this month when the Bureau of Land Management tried to take his cattle off federal land after he refused to pay grazing fees for two decades. Armed militia members came to his ranch in southern Nevada to defend him from the federal agents, and the bureau backed down.
Cliven Bundy went on CNN's New Day[/i] to defend himself this morning, one day after we all found out that the former conservative hero rancher is actually pretty racist. It did not go well for Cliven Bundy.
If those people cannot take those kinds of words and not be offensive, then Martin Luther King hasn’t got his job done yet. I should be able to say those things and they shouldn’t offend anybody. A Thursday story in the New York Times quoted Bundy referring to black people as the Negro. They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton, Bundy said of black people, according to the Times. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get any more freedom. They got less freedom.
Republicans, including those who had support Bundy in his cattle battle, denounced his comments as racist. Bundy rose to national fame this month when the Bureau of Land Management tried to take his cattle off federal land after he refused to pay grazing fees for two decades. Armed militia members came to his ranch in southern Nevada to defend him from the federal agents, and the bureau backed down.