MSNBC’s Joy Reid argued Monday that Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republicans are “bringing back lynching” after Abbott spoke out in defense of an army vet convicted of fatally shooting a Black Lives Matter rioter in 2020.
Thirty-seven year-old Daniel Perry was convicted of fatally shooting 28-year-old Garrett Foster in Austin, Texas, in July of 2020. Perry was driving in the city when he turned onto a street that had been overtaken by rioters. Foster, who was reportedly armed with an AK-47, and several other protesters surrounded Perry’s car. Perry’s lawyers allege Perry shot Foster in self-defense, Reuters reported.
Abbott tweeted Saturday he was working as “swiftly as Texas law allows” to pardon Perry, arguing Perry had the right to stand his ground. (RELATED: Black Kids Seen Attacking White Kids On Playground, Allegedly Forcing Them To Say ‘Black Lives Matter’)
“You might recall that Abbott also posted a celebratory tweet when Kyle Rittenhouse, who used his semiautomatic rifle to shoot two men dead after a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was declared not guilty,” Reid said. “This feels like a pattern to me. You have Republicans in multiple states, including Florida, passing and pushing laws that will allow people to hit Black Lives Matter protesters or any protesters they like with their cars. This was after the Charlottesville murder by car of a white woman who was a Black Lives Matter protester. They seem to have gotten back into lynching, hanging, all sorts of other draconian 19th century fare.”
“What is going on with Republicans that they seem to like be bringing back the lynching vibe?” Reid asked MSNBC senior political analyst Matthew Dowd.
Dowd argued that if Perry was black, Abbott would not have stepped in.
“This is all – it all is integrated, this is another attack on our democracy, and I don’t think people fully understand what that means. They think attacks on our democracy are only like taking away somebody’s vote or what happened on January 6th. This is an attack of a jury, which is in our Constitution, in the seventh amendment, the right to jury trial, that basically takes the power of citizens away to hold anybody accountable. That’s what a jury is. It’s an integral part of our democracy.”
“[Abbott] decided he knows better than 12 average folks sitting in Austin, Texas, to make this decision. Again, it’s another attack on our democracy.”
“Fascism has many features. And one of them is this sort of lust to be able to harm or kill your political opponents. And it feels like across the board on the right, there is this kind of, sort of, lust for that,” Reid responded.