White nationalist is someone who believes that the white race is superior to
other races.
>> Well, that's some people's opinion, and I don't think am in the lot.
>> It's an opinion.
>> Pardon.
>> What's your opinion?
[SOUND] >> Here we have a situation in which
a United States senator, Tommy Tuberville, is pretending as
if he is completely unaware of what the phrase white nationalist truly entails.
Don't believe me?
Well, just keep watching.
>> My opinion of a white nationalist,
if somebody wants to call them white nationalist, to me is an American.
It's an American.
Now, if that white nationalist is a racist, I'm totally against
anything that they want to do because I am 110% against racism.
But I want somebody that's in our military that's strong, that believes in this
country, that's an American that will fight along anybody, whether it's a man or
woman, Black or White, Rit, it doesn't make any difference.
>> Now, we're gonna get to more of this exchange.
It's important to understand the context.
And I think that there might be a framing issue that he's trying to engage
in here that just completely backfired and he completely bombed on.
I'll get to that in a moment as well.
But what is the context?
Well, apparently the interview resurrected another controversy for
this first time senator who had been in the news for
basically stalling scores of senior military nominations.
Or he was complaining about that in an attempt to stop a Defense Department
policy that helps ensure access to abortions for service members and
their families.
Now, Collins wanted to get some clarification on some other comments that
he had made earlier on the same topic about white nationalism.
So for instance, in a May interview with a local public radio station in Alabama,
Tuberville, a former football coach,
criticized Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for his efforts to get out
the white extremists the white nationalists from the military.
Tuberville said it was part of an effort to politicize the armed services and
accused Pentagon leaders of ruining our military and
driving away supporters of former president Donald Trump.
So before I get to more of this exchange, Cenk, what are your thoughts on Tuberville
and other elected Republican lawmakers just having this knee jerk reaction to
Lloyd Austin trying to ensure that there aren't, extremists within their ranks?
>> Yeah, so there's two really interesting things that come out of this.
One is why Tuberville is trying to have it both ways.
And the second is that we never define any terms.
And so that's why he gets to do this wordplay.
We'll come back to the words.
First on Tuberville, so the reason why he's trying to say, wow,
I'm a 110% against race, he said later in that interview that he had to deal with,
I mean, work with African Americans on the college teams that he coached.
It was like, okay, yeah, just show me your hand.
Go ahead.
Anyways, so he wants to be able to say, I'm against racist, but
I'm for white nationalists because he thinks, not us,
he thinks a big chunk of his voters are white nationalists.
That's why you try to parse these words.
There is one other possibility that he just doesn't know the English language.
He's never heard the term phrase white nationalist, even though he's been in
the news for months and months and months about the same term, that he's so
incompetent and lazy, never even bothered at looking it up.
He didn't ask any of his staffers,
hey, guys, what do people mean by white nationalists?
Why are people so upset about it?
Either he's so uncaring and dumb that he didn't ask that, or he knows, but
he wants to say no, white nationalist good, good, good, right?
Racist, I mean, media don't pick on me, I'm against racist, okay?
>> So, okay, my take, and this is me playing devil's advocate,
I don't know if this is true, but you'll hear more of the exchange, and
you'll get a sense of why I think this is what he was trying to do in his framing,
and he ended up bombing it backfired.
I think what he was trying to communicate here is, listen,
our political opponents like to label everyone they disagree with as
white supremacists, white nationalists, racists.
And he's trying to make an argument that these people who are being targeted,
who tend to be Trump supporters, are not racists.
That's what I think he's trying to communicate here, but
he's doing it in a super weird and it was a failed attempt,
to say the least, if that's what he's trying to do here.
Because pick up on some of the specific phrases he uses,
especially in this next clip.
>> Yeah, I'm not discounting that he's an idiot, but let's watch the clip and
look at it together.
>> For those who are watching, if they haven't heard your remarks,
this is what you said.
>> Do you believe they should allow white nationalists in the military?
>> Well, they call them that.
I call them Americans.
>> Do you want to explain those comments, senator?
>> Yeah, first of all, I'm totally against any type of racism, okay?
I was a football coach for 40 years, and had opportunity
to be around more minorities than anybody up here on this hill.
But when our military has been attacked, was being attacked after January 6,
and that was my first day on the Senate floor,
I thought it was outrageous of what senators from the Democratic side,
Chuck Schumer, sat on the floor that night calling out people,
calling people racist, calling people white nationalist.
White nationalist is just another word that they want to use other than racism.
I'm totally against anything to do with racism.
But the thing about being a white nationalist is just a cover word for
the Democrats now where they can use it to try to make people mad across the country
identity politics.
>> Okay, so that was the part of the interview that made me think that he is
attempting to inartfully accuse Democrats of labeling people who, in his mind,
are not racist as white nationalists, and he refuses to call them racist.
That is what it appears to be.
I don't know for sure if that's what he's attempting to do, and
if that is what he's attempting to do, it was a failed attempt.
>> Yes, so that's the generous way of looking at it.
The ungenerous way of looking at it is he's trying to appeal to white
nationalists while pretending to be against racist.
>> And that's definitely a possibility.
>> Yeah, so both are relatively you could assign different percentages to those
possibilities.
But all of that gets to the core of no one ever defines anything, right?
So we talk about this all the time in the context of socialism,
people will say that Fidel Castro and Bernie Sanders and
Finland are all socialist, and they'll compare them to Stalin.
Wait, what, right?
So and nobody ever, ever defines.
So in the case of racism and white nationalism, white nationalism is,
by definition, racism.
It's the idea of that whites should control the nation,
they should be supreme and superior to others.
>> Let me give you two different sources that give you the definition, okay?
So look, both of these are from the Columbia Journalism Review, but
one of these specifically cites Merriam-Webster.
So first one graphic three,
white nationalists generally wants a nation of white people.
Whether that means creating a separate nation of just white people or
pushing those who are not white out of their current nation depends on
which branch of white nationalism is talking.
And then the same piece for the Columbia Journalism Review notes that,
as Merriam-Webster explains, white nationalist is defined as one of
a group of militant whites who espouse white supremacy and
advocate enforced racial segregation while white supremacist is a person
who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and
that white people should have control over people of other races.
Now, with that said, he's a United States senator in a country that
is obviously in some areas of the country concerned about racism,
concerned about white supremacy.
He's very well aware of that.
So he should be informed on what the actual definition of white nationalism is.
So, the whole, he doesn't know what he's talking about, I'm not buying that at all.
Either he is engaging in language that's meant to appeal to what he believes
is a base of racist voters, or he's trying to make a critical comment about
Democrats labeling people who he does not believe are racist as racist.
>> Yeah, so guys, white nationalists is at the top of the racist hierarchy because
they're saying, look, we don't even want to be around blacks people, Latinos,
Asians, with none of them, okay?
We want our own nation, and we think we're definitely superior, okay?
So now then you go down that gradation to white supremacist and
racist, and there's all different types of racist and white supremacist.
And this is what the media never talks about, Democratic Party and
Republican Party, right?
So for example, when Republicans say racist and he says almost 110%,
against race, what he means is, no, I don't wanna lynch black people and
I don't wanna discriminate against them in outrageous ways where we say,
okay, just because you're black, you're gonna have less rights than us.
That's an extremist version of racism, right?
And that's how Republicans view it.
Now, Democrats go, well, that's the incorrect way of viewing it, but
they never acknowledge that that is how Republicans view it.
I think Republicans are wrong, too, right?
But we have to understand each other, right?
So meanwhile, when Democrats say racist, they mean a whole range of things, right?
So they mean, well, for example, our criminal justice system is racist,
and here's a good example of it, white people and
black people smoke marijuana at the same rate, but
black people are arrested at 370% higher than whites, right?
Even though it's the same crime.
So you can argue that that is a form of racism, and I would argue that, right?
But Republicans don't think that at all.
They're like what?
No.
And so they have a much higher bar, conveniently so, for
what they think is racist.
So when they keep saying, we're not racist, they keep saying, like,
I don't want someone to be my slave or something.
They have an extreme bar for racism.
Meanwhile, some Democrats now have an extremely low bar for what's racist.
If you're against affirmative action, which 55% of the country agreed with
the Supreme Court decision, they say, that's it, you're definitely racist.
You could have a debate about affirmative action, but they say, no,
55% of the country is racist.
And some might even say white supremacist, I don't know.
So now, given that gigantic range for the word racist,
do you understand why we're constantly having these debates,
conversations, misunderstandings on media and in politics?
You see what I'm saying?
So in this case so where does that come out on Tuberville?
I think Tuberville would meet a lot of my definition for
racist based on his policies that have an incredibly disparate
effect between blacks, whites and other races, right?
>> Which policies, though?
>> So it depends.
So, for example, what I argue, my book Justice Is Coming, is Republicans say,
well, we don't want black people being arrested almost four times as much as
white people for the same crime.
Well, then are you doing anything about it?
If you go and ask Republicans to change that, will they change that?
My guess is Tommy Tuberville, which is doing absolutely nothing to change that
and doesn't want to change that.
So that's this very simple example.
But I can give you many, many others, right?
But Ana is right, we do have to be specific, right?
What is it about their policies that we don't agree with?
Why do we think it has a racial effect?
And is that racist or not?
So that we can begin to understand each other?
>> I want to also just address the reality of certain extremist
beliefs being some portion of our institution.
So, for instance, there was a study done by the Center for
Strategic International Studies, they found that 6.4% of all domestic
terror incidents in 2020 involved active duty or reserve personnel,
more than quadrupling the tally from the previous year.
Hate groups actively target troops to become recruits while encouraging their
own extremists to join the military ranks.
So when we talk about Lloyd Austin, who, to be quite frank with you all,
I don't have much love for, he is very hawkish in foreign policy,
has close ties to defense contractors, not one of my favorite people on the planet.
But when he, I think, legitimately brings up a concern about this form of extremism
being represented in some portion of the armed services, it is a legitimate concern
that Tommy Tuberville should be able to give an honest and frank response to.
And instead of doing that, he gives this weird, wishy washy answer.
And then later on, when reporters catch up with him to just ask him to elaborate
again and clarify his remarks, he begins by attempting to double down.
So let's watch that.
>> Explain why you continue to insist that white nationalists are Americans.
>> Listen, I'm totally against racism.
If Democrats want to say that white nationalists are racist,
I'm totally against that, too.
>> But that's not a Democratic definition.
The definition of a white nationalist-.
>> Well, that's your definition.
My definition is racism.
>> It is the definition.
>> Next question, next question.
>> The definition is that the belief that the white race is superior to all racist.
>> Racism is totally out of the question.
>> Do you believe that white nationalists are racist?
>> Yes, if that's what race is, yes.
Thank you.
>> Okay, but white nationalism literally, by definition, espouses racism.
It believes in a white nation, okay?
Okay, there's that.
And then final thing I'll say about this, this whole debacle reminded me of
something that transpired a few years ago, back in 2019, when former representative,
although he was a Congressman at the time, Steve King, made this comment.
White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization,
how did that language become offensive?
Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and
our civilization?
He was censured as a result of that.
Kicked out of congressional committees as a result of that statement,
which he gave in the context of a New York Times interview.
So the idea that the Republican Party is unaware of what
that word means is laughable to me.
I would be shocked if Tommy Tuberville had no idea what that word means.
>> Yeah, that's why I'm saying that, my guess is that he's trying to make sure he
doesn't offend a lot of his voters who he thinks are white nationalists, and
that's why he's trying to parse these words.
Okay, now, look, super important couple of things.
First of all, Rachel Scott was that reporter thank you from ABC News.
Great job by Rachel Scott, trying to actually clarify the meeting,
as we've been asking people to do 100 times.
Number two, McConnell put a lot of pressure on Tuberville, and that's partly
why he backpedaled at the very end there, because soon, if he keeps going,
everybody's gonna think the Republican Party is the white nationalist Party,
which a ton of people already do.
Which brings me back to how all this started.
If you ask Republicans,
was anybody on January 6 white nationals?
I think a lot of them would answer no, all those folks were just good Republicans.
And some of them did went too far.
Some of them will acknowledge, right?
But were they white nationalists?
They'll say no.
I think if you ask a lot of Democrats- >> They'll say all of them are.
>> They'll say all of them.
>> That's an inaccurate description, they were lied to and
genuinely thought the election was stolen from Donald Trump.
And that is unhinged, to say the least.
But to paint them all as white nationalists, I think would be.
>> That's exactly where I was going, so, which is, look,
I'm not saying all Democrats do that by a long shot, we don't do that, and
we're definitely left wing, right?
But a lot of them go, they're all white nationalists.
And then they say everybody that attended the speech is guilty in white
nationalists.
Now, first of all, a lot of people attended the speech and
then did not raid the Capitol, so that's a giant distinction.
Second of all, among the people who raid the Capitol,
they're all guilty because they committed a crime and they should go to jail, okay?
Having said that, were they all avowed white nationalists?
How would you know that?
You don't know that.
Now, for Republicans, you say there was no white nationalists there?
No, we know specifically that there's group X, Y, Z, etc.
>> [INAUDIBLE] members.
>> Yeah, that espouse white nationalism.
>> Exactly.
>> So were there white nationalists they're, of course,
of course it's empirical, and some of them have admitted it in court, right?
So there's no question about that.
But guys, you need accuracy.
You can't just all be, everybody's a white nationalist,
nobody's a white nationalist, right?
So which brings us to the final thing, which is where all of this started,
what should the military do, right?
That's where this controversy began.
So the correct answer is, no, we're not gonna use the Democrats definition of
white nationals, which is all MAGA, guys, right?
And sorry, I know that's not all Democrats, but
some Democrats feel that way, right?
We cannot use that definition.
That definition is crazy, okay?
Because if you eliminate all Republicans from the military,
it's not gonna work out well, right?
But if you say the military should not investigate if someone's a white
nationalist, you're nuts.
Of course the military should investigate that and kick them out.
>> Agreed. >> They don't even
believe in this country.
They want a separate white country.
Are you insane?
Why would we have them in our military?
>> How are they supposed to serve alongside service members who are black,
Latino, Asian from all different walks of life?
I mean, they have to work together.
I mean, it's absurd to believe that it's okay for
that kind of ideology to stand within the armed services.
>> Yeah, and so, look, right wingers, can I get you to acknowledge that, or
are you still, if you say no, look, we're not looking for
anybody's definition of racism or even white supremacy, but no,
specifically, white nationalists who wanna separate white country and think
white people are superior and they have an ideology and they're in a group, etc.
You really think we shouldn't kick those guys out of our military?
Do you get that that sounds nuts?
Just as long as we're clear about what we're talking about.
No, of course they don't belong in the US military.