1/21/19
Julian Zelizer blasts Pence for comparing Donald Trump to MLK
Historians in the Newstags: Martin Luther King, Julian Zelizer, holidays, Mike Pence, Trump
A historian slammed Vice President Mike Pence on Monday for comparing President Donald Trump to celebrated civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.
Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, appeared on CNN Monday to discuss the vice president's recent attempt to align Trump's efforts amid the partial government shutdown with King's historic work for civil rights. Zelizer said Trump's policies are staunchly opposed to what King represented.
“Look, the policies of this administration, from the border wall to voting rights restrictions, are antithetical to absolutely everything Martin Luther King fought for,” Zelizer explained. “Having Vice President Pence invoke Martin Luther King for this deal [regarding border security], or anything else, really flies in the face of his memory.”
Pence appeared on CBS News’s Face the Nation Sunday to discuss the ongoing partial government shutdown, which has become the longest in U.S. history. Repeating the Trump administration’s hard-line stance in his demand for funding for a wall on the southern border with Mexico, Pence argued that the president was acting in the spirit of MLK.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Josh Hawley Earns F in Early American History
- Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism?
- "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel