Sophia Michaels
Who needs history when you can just make shit up?
On Friday, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, spoke to Blaze TV’s Glenn Beck where she said that “people saw” the Confederate flag “as service, and sacrifice, and heritage” before white supremacist Dylann Roof “hijacked” it when he killed nine black people at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in South Carolina in 2015.
“South Carolina fell her to her knees when this happened, this is one of the oldest African-American churches. And these twelve people were amazing people, they loved their church, loved their families, loved their community,” Haley said.
Haley then explained how the racist mass killer Roof changed what “people thought of” the Confederate flag, saying, “And here is this guy who comes out with his manifesto. Holding the confederate flag and had just hijacked everything that people thought of.”
Haley continued, “We don’t have hateful people in South Carolina. There’s a small minority that’s going to be there, but people saw it [the Confederate flag] as service, and sacrifice, and heritage. But once he did that there was no way to overcome it.”
The former South Carolina governor then went on blame the “national media” for coming to South Carolina to cover the racist mass killing as if it had something to do with racism.
“The national media came in droves, they wanted to define what happened, they wanted to make it about racism, they wanted to make it about gun control, they wanted to make it about the death penalty, and I really pushed off the national media and and said, there will be a time in place to talk about this but it is not now,” Haley said.
Nikki Haley says the Confederate flag was about “service, and sacrifice, and heritage” until Dylan Roof “hijacked” it pic.twitter.com/pqdhKIezRl
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) December 6, 2019
Haley responded to the backlash on social media after the video tweeted by Media Matters for America’s Jason Campbell went viral. Haley linked to a transcript of what she said as governor at the time of the horrific act and wrote, “2015 was a painful time for our state.The pain was and is still real. Below was my call for the removal of the Confederate flag & I stand by it. I continue to be proud of the people of SC and how we turned the hate of a killer into the love for each other.”
Featured via: Rollingstone
