Mark Burns, a right-wing pastor, conspiracy theorist, and unabashed Trump cultist, made an appearance on “TNT Radio” on Wednesday, where he provided an incoherently ahistorical explanation of how former President Donald Trump was integral in transforming him from a Democrat into a Republican.
Burns, who is currently running for Congress with Trump’s endorsement, claimed that he had long been a Democrat because he was “not politically astute,” but all of that changed once he met Trump and learned the true history of the Democratic Party.
“I was one of the early evangelical leaders that was invited to Trump Towers to discuss with him—there was about 20 or so leaders that were there—and it was in that meeting that I began to discover the difference between Republicans and Democrats,” Burns said. “As a Black man in America, the majority of us are Democrat Party supporters because of the civil rights movement and the things that happened prior [with] Dr. Martin Luther King and how the civil rights movement worked hand-in-hand with the Democratic Party of Lyndon Baines Johnson and John Kennedy, before his assassination, [on] the voting rights bill, the civil rights bill.”
“This is how all of this came out to be,” Burns continued. “And the Southern Strategy of the Democratic Party, which is not so much because they were pushing for Black advancement—it was the Republican Party that pushed for Black advancement—but the Democratic Party took advantage of Dr. King’s name and they took advantage of the Southern Strategy, the large population of Black people in the southern states who were never really allowed to vote. And that’s how they were able to push these initiatives through. In some of the southern states like Georgia, like Alabama, and Mississippi that have large Black populations, they were able to communicate with that audience, and that’s how Black people in general become Democrat because of the civil rights movement.”
“Now, let’s be clear,” Burns added. “The Democratic Party of Dr. King is not the Democratic Party of today, of Joe Biden. It is not. It is the not the Democratic Party of Barack Obama. These are two separate entities and they do not go hand-in-hand. The Democratic Party today is evil. I can call them evil. Their policies are evil and they come from the gates of hell.”
It’s difficult to even know where to start in explaining everything that is wrong with Burns’ statement, since it’s hard to understand even what he is trying to say, especially since he seems to think that the “Southern Strategy” was some Democratic ploy to win over Black voters.
In reality, the “Southern Strategy” was developed by Republican activists to win over traditional southern Democrats who were angry by the party’s emerging pro-civil rights positions and get them to vote for Richard Nixon. As Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips explained it:
The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
Ronald Regan’s strategist Lee Atwater was even more blunt about the reasoning behind the strategy:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Ni**er, ni**er, ni**er,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘ni**er’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”
Burns’ explanation of history became even more convoluted just a few moments later when he basically contradicted everything he had previously said, beginning with falsely insisting that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican.
“[Black people] don’t know that even Dr. Martin Luther King was a Republican,” Burns declared. “Most Black people during that time period were Republican. They were friends with Richard Nixon, the vice president at the time who was running for president. They were not friends with John F. Kennedy. They were friends with Richard Nixon because of the advancement of Black people through the outreach of the Republican Party. And hence, that’s why the Republican Party fought to free slaves. Hence, that’s where the 13th Amendment come from. People gotta go back and read the history. Rep. Alexander Stevenson, who led that charge, was considered part of the radical Republicans who was wanting to free slaves. It was the Democrats, the Dixiecrats, who fought it tooth and nail to keep Black people in chains.”
To recap: Having first asserted that Black voters support the Democrats because it is the party of MLK and the civil rights movement, Burns subsequently asserted that Black voters were actually Republicans who supported Richard Nixon … despite the fact that it was the Nixon campaign that actually used the “Southern Strategy” to appeal to racist white southern voters.
Furthermore, there is no “Rep. Alexander Stevenson.” Presumably, Burn was referring to ardent abolitionist Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, whom he seems to have confused with Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy.
On top of that, the “Dixiecrats” did not form until 1948, more than 80 years after the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment.
Ironically, we are inclined to agree with Burns that “people gotta go back and read the history.” Maybe he should take his own advice instead of allowing himself to “become educated” by someone like Trump.
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