Racism ‘One of the Most Powerful Words and Weapons’ the Left Wields, Innis Warns

Racism “is one of the most powerful words and weapons” the Left wields to silence conservatives disproportionately while ignoring liberal shortcomings, national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Niger Innis warned Wednesday on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.”

Innis (above left) and others on “The Ingraham Angle” panel reacted to the fallout from ABC News’ decision to cancel its hit show “Roseanne,” after lead actress Roseanne Barr targeted former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, an African-American woman, Tuesday on Twitter. Barr tweeted, “[M]uslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj,” before deleting it amid widespread backlash.

Although Barr apologized for her tweet, ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey said in a statement Tuesday that the network chose to cancel her show because Barr’s tweet was “abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values.”

It didn’t take long, however, for liberals to tie Barr’s downfall to President Donald Trump and to try lumping them together as irredeemable “racists” — especially since Trump had called Roseanne in March to congratulate her on her soaring ratings.

Suzan Johnson Cook, a former adviser to former Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, insisted that “a lot of people do blame Trump” for creating a climate that led Barr to believe her tweet would be acceptable.

When Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked Cook (pictured above, third from left) if she believed that a “significant chunk of the Trump base is racist,” Cook replied, “I do.”

“But racism is one of the most powerful words and weapons that is used in our culture today,” Innis warned. “It is not 1955. It is not 1965. It’s not 1980. And even today, race and racism is a charge that is incredibly powerful.”

“And for you to say automatically and somewhat, I believe, flippantly, that Donald Trump is a racist? Was he a racist when he was having events with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton on Wall Street?” Innis asked Cook.

Ingraham noted that the Left feels compelled to “tag Roseanne’s racial misdeed to Trump” because liberals “have no substantive answers to the problems facing minority communities today.”

“So their only recourse is to do what they do best — race bait and demonize their opponents,” Ingraham said. “My question is, when will the day of reckoning come for those on the Left whose own abhorrent and repugnant views are inconsistent with our values?”

Horace Cooper, co-chairman of the Project 21 National Advisory Board, ripped liberals for exhibiting a glaring double standard by defending other liberals who say or write offensive statements — while condemning conservatives and Trump supporters for making the same egregious errors.

“But why don’t we see when Alec Baldwin says to a black man, uses the N-word in reference to him — why doesn’t he get to have his show taken away? Why does Joy Behar get to say and post some of the most obnoxious things, and all we see are great accolades?” Cooper (above, second from left) asked.

“What I’m asking about is, why is it the condemnation seems to only go one way?”

“What I’m just saying is — I’m not asking for anyone’s show to be taken from them. What I’m asking about is, why is it the condemnation seems to only go one way?” he continued.

Innis replied, “Well, it’s simple — because there’s this belief that somehow minorities, blacks can’t be racists, that certain groups, certain protected groups can’t be discriminatory. And that’s just bogus.”

He pointed to the controversy that surrounded Obama when anti-Semitic sermons and statements from his former minister, Jeremiah Wright, came under intense scrutiny during the 2008 presidential campaign. Wright also came under fire for calling the U.S.A. the “U.S. of KKK A.”

“I mean, President Obama got elected and re-elected after this controversy about Jeremiah Wright. And it did get a lot of oxygen, you know,” Innis noted. “To connect President Trump with something Roseanne Barr said is absurd.”

Related: ‘Roseanne’ Canceled: TV Queen Apologizes for Shot at Valerie Jarrett, Is Fired Anyway

Ingraham noted that her point “is that the Left routinely maligns and mocks entire classes of Americans with impunity.”

“Candidate Obama was questioned about that, like, ‘Oh, you can’t impute Reverend Wright’s comments about the U.S. and KKK and all that on me.’ But he was a lot closer to Wright than — the president’s not close to Roseanne. He called her and said congrats on the ratings. Big deal,” Ingraham said. “It’s about blaming Trump — that’s my point. It’s not about Roseanne.”

Cooper also pointed to the numbers of white and black voters who supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 before switching to Trump in 2016.

“Surveys also show how many people said, ‘I voted for Obama twice and now I voted for Trump.’ When did they become a racist?” Cooper asked. “‘So I’m willing to vote for Barack Obama and I’m willing to vote for Trump because I’m a racist?'”

Innis said, “It’s a strange type of racist that you say that Donald Trump is [when he] talks about, on a regular basis, the record low unemployment among blacks and Hispanics and people of color generally.”

PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.