Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” CNN contributor Bakari Sellers, who is black, said that the Republican health care bill was a “travesty of justice,” created by “13 all white males in the back room.”
Host Jake Tapper prompted Sellers’ response by saying, “Bakari, so let me ask you: There is this argument, that in order to get 52 Republican senators; in order to get both the Ted Cruz’s and Mike Lee’s of the world on board with something, and then you have the Lisa Murkowski’s and Susan Collins’ of the world, the negotiations do need to be done behind closed doors with only Republicans watching. That’s the argument.”
Sellers replied:
Yeah, that’s not a good argument; it’s an argument that’s based upon hypocrisy. And even when you compare it to 2009, you had the Democratic party, the House Republican — House Democrats at that time under Nancy Pelosi’s leadership, they had over 20 hearings. You know, this took a year before it passed. So this is not comparable to what happened in 2009. But I’d just love to see Mitch McConnell, and everyone else just cloak themselves in such hypocrisy and the travesty and why we need more Republicans with courage like my colleague here to the right, and why we need more Republicans to stand up is because the Republican party right now is trying to take away health insurance from 23 million people, and they are literally, literally drafting up a piece of legislation that affects one-sixth of our economy under the cover of darkness, which is 13 all white males in the back room.
He added, “And this is the problem that Americans have and why they distrust the process and why they distrust Democrats and Republicans alike, because we moved too fast in 2009, but the Republicans didn’t learn a lesson, and they are now the ones who have the ball, and it’s a travesty of justice.”
Video below, starting at 3:31: