MS NOW’s Al Sharpton Decried for Saying Black People Shouldn’t Honor America’s 250th

The Reverend Al Sharpton, the MS NOW weekend host, is receiving furious pushback over his assertion that black people should not celebrate America’s 250th anniversary. Speaking Wednesday at the National Action Network’s 35th Anniversary National Convention, Reverend Sharpton said, “They’re going to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country July 4th, but that’s not our celebration.”“We were slaves then, and they celebrate signing the Declaration of Independence 1776. We were not even emancipated until 1863. So I don’t know what everybody getting ready for a celebration [for]. You know that it seems crazy for me to have on the birthday hat at your birthday party. That ain’t my party,” he added.He suggested that black Americans should hold a separate event at Philadelphia.The reverend was promptly criticized for his comments. A conservative radio host, Anthony Cumia, wrote on X, “[Reverend] Al may have gotten a little older and slowed down a bit but his anti white racism is still going strong.”“Isn’t it so ironic that people who claimed for years they want to be equal now want to be separate and different,” another user said. A conservative commentator, Joey Mannarino, asked, “If Al Sharpton feels that way, why exactly does he remain in America?”“Only Al Sharpton could look at 250 years of American progress- including ending slavery and securing civil rights and say black people should sit it out. [That’s] not activism, that’s division. Millions of black Americans will be proudly celebrating anyway,” another user wrote.The far-left activist and weekend cable TV host has previously faced criticism over his comments in the past, with critics frequently accusing him of stoking racial animus. Reverend Sharpton’s show airs on weekends at MS NOW. Despite years of controversies, he has survived multiple programming shakeups when MS NOW was called MSNBC, and he also survived the transition to MS NOW.When MS NOW was known as MSNBC, Reverend Sharpton used to have a weekday show. However, at the time, it was still associated with NBC, and executives at its parent company tried to tamp down the far-left tone of the cable network.NPR’s David Folkenflik noted in 2020 that the then-recently ousted chairman of NBC News, Andy Lack, “sought to make MSNBC less explicitly liberal.”“Lack de-emphasized several more ideological hosts, such as the [Reverend] Al Sharpton, and unsuccessfully sought to move others, including left-of-center prime-time host Chris Hayes. And along with MSNBC President Phil Griffin, Lack elevated former George W. Bush communications director Nicolle Wallace to become a host in her own right,” Mr. Folkenflik wrote.In 2015, MSNBC demoted Reverend Sharpton from a weeknight host to a Sunday morning time slot. After the 2024 election, Reverend Sharpton came under fire after the Washington Free Beacon reported that his National Action Network made donations of up to $250,000 to Vice President Harris’s campaign, which he did not disclose to viewers. On October 20, he gave a sympathetic interview to Ms. Harris without disclosing his donations to her campaign, which led to ethical concerns. A coalition of black churches called on MSNBC to suspend him pending an investigation, however, it is unclear whether there was any investigation or disciplinary action taken. Comcast executives have, in the past, taken action against contributors who they felt went too far in their commentary. Last fall, MSNBC cut ties with an anti-Trump contributor, Matthew Dowd, after he suggested that Charlie Kirk’s commentary may have been responsible for his death. After the comment, the Comcast CEO, Brian Roberts, and the CEO of MS NOW’s current parent company, Versant, sent a memo to staff saying that Mr. Dowd’s commentary “was at odds with fostering civil dialogue and being willing to listen to the points of view of those who have differing opinions.”“We should be able to disagree, robustly and passionately, but, ultimately, with respect. We need to do better,” they added. Now that MS NOW has been cleaved from the NBC Universal umbrella and placed under a new parent company, Versant, the network appears to be moving further to the left. In February, it struck a deal with a far-left podcast company, Crooked Media, to air highlights of its podcasts on Saturdays. Meanwhile, another host, Ana Cabrera, has devoted much airtime to the Epstein files and featured guests who promoted discredited claims. In December, an MS NOW legal correspondent, Lisa Rubin, appeared on Ms. Cabrera’s show and claimed that an image released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, which showed Mr. Trump posing with women whose faces were redacted, “suggests” that they were “minors and/or survivors.”However, the New York Post reported that the women in the picture were “adult women models” who represented a suntanning lotion company.As MS NOW sheds any pretense of being a center-left network, it is unclear whether executives will take any similar actions as their predecessors and seek to create distance from Reverend Sharpton’s commentary and political activism. MS NOW did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.

MS NOW’s Al Sharpton Decried for Saying Black People Shouldn’t Honor America’s 250th

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