During a recent episode of MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki,” former White House press secretary Jen Psaki made a controversial statement, alleging that Republicans are actively recruiting Muslims to oppose transgender individuals.
Drawing parallels to former President Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” Psaki suggested that this approach aims to win over Muslim Americans and secure their support.
“Now, decades later, the right-wing is reviving that same playbook,” Psaki said. “This time, with Muslim Americans and trans people. Hear me out here, the GOP is trying to recruit Muslim Americans, a community that makes up less than two percent of the U.S. population against another tiny marginalized group of Americans — transgender people.”
She further claimed the Republican Party and alleged “conspiracy theorists” have made Muslims “public enemy number one” for several years until deciding to “shift their fear mongering” toward transgender people.
“Who better to go after the new enemy than the old enemy?” she continued, before playing 2015 footage of Fox News’ Laura Ingraham saying Muslims coming to the U.S. could be radicalized. “Now, if you can believe it, Laura Ingraham rallying Muslims against books in schools with LGBTQ+ themes.”
Psaki referenced a Muslim community in Dearborn, Michigan who called for the ban of sexually explicit books from their local school district. A school board meeting was canceled as Muslims protested the books by holding up signs reading, “Homosexuality Big Sin” and “Keep Your Dirty Books In The Closet.”
The school is reviewing six books in its library, including “This Book Is Gay,” a book that gives the “ins and outs of gay sex,” and “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a descriptive memoir of a queer, black boy.
The former press secretary compared former President Donald Trump to former Alabama governor and segregationist George Wallace. She played a video of Trump saying in a June 10 speech “people go crazy” when he starts talking about transgender people.
“So what you just heard in that video, that sounds an awful lot like, and reminiscent of what George Wallace, a staunch segregationist, once told a newspaper editor, ‘You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about n******, and they stomped the floor.’”
“So, let’s be clear. This is the same old GOP playbook. Another cynical ploy to tear at the fabric of society and damage the idea that out of any, we are one,” Psaki concluded.