Lester Holt uses Charlotte, Tulsa to race bait the two white Presidential candidates on how they’d ‘heal the divide’
The first presidential debate came with a lot of tension and energy, but what moment worth noting is NBC moderator Lester Holt interjecting race after the discussion on the economy.
He begins with Hillary Clinton, asking how she’ll “Heal the divide…” – see the transcript below.
Critics were quick to point out that the liberal leaning NBC using race at this point was inappropriate and awkward. The pro-Clinton tone was contradicted with Holt’s reaction to Trump’s reference to “Stop and Frisk.”
photo Scott Davidson
Trump is correct that the murder rate has plummeted in New York in the last two decades. But the same could be said for many other large American cities during the same period, and there’s certainly no way to credit stop-and-frisk for the decline.
This was all the perfect set up to paint Trump as a racist: “In Trump’s America, there are two sets of laws: one for white people and one for everyone else” writes the Slate.
That said, IT IS PART OF THE TRUMP-PENCE ticket.
Mike Pence on Sunday stood by Donald Trump’s call last week for nationwide stop-and-frisk policing practices, despite the fact that such policies have been ruled unconstitutional.
“Stop-and-frisk literally saved lives in New York City when it was implemented, and it’s been implemented in cities around the country,” Trump’s running mate said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“It’s on a sound constitutional footing. This gives law enforcement officers the opportunity, with probable cause, to be able to stop and question individuals that they think may be involved or about to be involved in criminal activity,” Pence said.
HOLT: Well, we’re well behind schedule, so I want to move to our next segment. We move into our next segment talking about America’s direction. And let’s start by talking about race.
The share of Americans who say race relations are bad in this country is the highest it’s been in decades, much of it amplified by shootings of African-Americans by police, as we’ve seen recently in Charlotte and Tulsa. Race has been a big issue in this campaign, and one of you is going to have to bridge a very wide and bitter gap.
So how do you heal the divide? Secretary Clinton, you get two minutes on this.
CLINTON: Well, you’re right. Race remains a significant challenge in our country. Unfortunately, race still determines too much, often determines where people live, determines what kind of education in their public schools they can get, and, yes, it determines how they’re treated in the criminal justice system. We’ve just seen those two tragic examples in both Tulsa and Charlotte.
And we’ve got to do several things at the same time. We have to restore trust between communities and the police. We have to work to make sure that our police are using the best training, the best techniques, that they’re well prepared to use force only when necessary. Everyone should be respected by the law, and everyone should respect the law.
CLINTON: Right now, that’s not the case in a lot of our neighborhoods. So I have, ever since the first day of my campaign, called for criminal justice reform. I’ve laid out a platform that I think would begin to remedy some of the problems we have in the criminal justice system.
But we also have to recognize, in addition to the challenges that we face with policing, there are so many good, brave police officers who equally want reform. So we have to bring communities together in order to begin working on that as a mutual goal. And we’ve got to get guns out of the hands of people who should not have them.
The gun epidemic is the leading cause of death of young African- American men, more than the next nine causes put together. So we have to do two things, as I said. We have to restore trust. We have to work with the police. We have to make sure they respect the communities and the communities respect them. And we have to tackle the plague of gun violence, which is a big contributor to a lot of the problems that we’re seeing today.
HOLT: All right, Mr. Trump, you have two minutes. How do you heal the divide?
