On Tuesday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, host Al Sharpton complained that a "war on the poor" has been "launched" by the right, prompting Washington Post political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson to complain of a "dangerous tone" from conservatives and "antipathy towards Americans."
Setting up clips from Rush Limbaugh and FBN's Charles Payne, Sharpton fretted:
And, you know, Nia-Malika, the thing that concerns me, though, is when you look at the words and the war on the poor that it seems that the right has launched. Look at this.
After Sharpton suggested that such talk would undermine the passage of legislation, Henderson began her response:
It's certainly a dangerous tone, this sort of antipathy towards Americans, this sort of sense that Americans are lazy and they don't actually want to work. I mean, it certainly runs counter to what we know about Americans, the people who built this country.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Tuesday, July 30, PoliticsNation on MSNBC:
AL SHARPTON: And, you know, Nia-Malika, the thing that concerns me, though, is when you look at the words and the war on the poor that it seems that the right has launched. Look at this.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE ON FBN: If people are feeling that they're not being paid adequately, then they've got to find a job some place elsewhere the business model pays higher wages.
RUSH LIMBAUGH: It's not that there are jobs that Americans won't do anymore. It's that Americans just don't want to work. The entitlement society is too big. We have the numbers yesterday: 101 million adults in this country get federal assistance of some kind.
CHARLES PAYNE, FBN: What we're trying to say is that mediocrity should be rewarded. There's no responsibility on you to do anything. We'll make sure that corporate America keeps paying you more than you really should earn.
SHARPTON: See, this is what concerns me. Because with this kind of talk, I mean, how can we expect them to pass any legislation that will help Americans?
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, WASHINGTON POST: It's certainly a dangerous tone, this sort of antipathy towards Americans, this sort of sense that Americans are lazy and they don't actually want to work. I mean, it certainly runs counter to what we know about Americans, the people who built this country.
We have a fight going on here in D.C. where Wal-Mart wants to expand their company here, but the D.C. city council is very much pushing back, asking for a living wage of $12. We'll have to see what happens with that. Is it better that they pay 8 bucks an hour or have no jobs at all? So it's a fight. I think we're going to see a long, hot summer of working class folks really standing up for themselves. It's almost a replay of, you know, sort of operation zero, ground zero.
-- Brad Wilmouth is a news analyst at the Media Research Center