This weekend during a heated debate on Fox News, House Majority Whip James Clyburn made it clear to viewers that he believes that voter suppression is the only thing that could stop former Vice President Joe Biden from winning the 2020 presidential election.
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Sunday, during Fox News’ Democracy 2020 Election Preview Special, the South Carolina Democrat shared how many Black residents in his state have already faced voter suppression while trying to take part in the election.
“I have had complaints all day today,” he explained to Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. “Professional football players from my home state cannot vote because their ballots have not been delivered to them. They can’t come home to vote because they are in lockdown because of COVID-19.”
When Baier asked Clyburn to address the latest Fox News poll that showed Trump receiving 14% of the Black vote nationally, he responded that he is “praying” for President Donald Trump‘s Black supporters but believes most Black voters will cast ballots for Biden.
“I don’t know where those polls come from… ” Clyburn conceded. “I can tell you what, and I feel this sincerely … I’m the father of three Black women. I am the son of a Black woman. If any Black man can go in a polling place and cast a vote for a man who referred to a Black woman as a dog on national television, I’m going to have to pray for them. I will have to pray for them. I don’t know of any man [who] can abide that kind of disrespect and insult.”
“What you’re saying here is, essentially, what Joe Biden said on that radio show, that if you’re Black and you vote for Trump, quote, ‘you ain’t Black,'” Baier pushed back later in the interview. “That’s what he said. He later apologized for that, but you’re sending the same message to African-Americans who may have a different choice in this election.”
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“What I said was any man that calls one of my three daughters a dog, I would never vote for them, and I don’t understand any Black man that would vote for anybody that refers to a Black woman [that way],” Clyburn said. “All of us that I know are sons of Black women. I don’t stand for that kind of insult for my mothers, my sisters, or my children.”
Clyburn, 80, has represented South Carolina’s 6th district since 1993.
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