New York Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel casually dismissed those who identify with the Tea Party as “mean, racist people,” compared red states to the Confederacy and wondered why President Barack Obama would ever try to work with Republicans — all in under two minutes.
Rangel made the remarks during an interview Tuesday night with NY1, when the anchor asked the congressman about a recent deadly explosion in his Harlem district. The congressman strangely blamed Republicans for blocking unnamed federal programs designed to refurbish failing infrastructure in his community.
“This is the president’s program,” he claimed. “It’s hard for me to explain how you work with a president that thought he could really deal with the Republican leadership. He really thought — and maybe it’s the water they drink at Harvard — that he could deal with the Tea Party!”
“They are mean, racist people,” he declared, jabbing his finger forward. “Now why do I say that? Because in those red states, they’re the same slave-holding states! They had the Confederate flag. They became Dixiecrats, they had the Confederate flag. They’re now Tea Party, they STILL got the Confederate flag!”
“I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” he continued. “And they just can’t get — there is NOTHING the president can do that — not love of country, not love of party — that they’re not prepared to kill himself to get to him.” (RELATED: TREACHER: Charlie Rangel sure does hate white people, huh?)
“Not even support for infrastructure it sounds like,” the accommodating anchor replied.
“Well, we don’t know,” Rangel said, “because what the president is doing is basically saying, ‘The hell with legislative prerogative’ . . . There’s no question in my mind that if the president had information that my two buildings were going to explode because of the infrastructure failing, I KNOW he would have the executive authority to fix that building.”
Last July, Rangel called Tea Partiers “white crackers” and compared them to Southern segregationists “with the dogs and the police.”
[h/t Mediaite]
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