CNN "Newsroom" - Interview with James Clyburn

Interview

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Joining us now is the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, the House Majority Whip, Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina.

Congressman, always good to have you with us. Thank you for being here.

First, your reaction to the president changing the date of his rally.

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC), HOUSE MAJORITY WHIP: Well, thank you very much for having me.

Well, I think that cooler heads have prevailed. I have no idea who the possessors of those cooler heads are, but Juneteenth means something. It is a demonstration once again of the failure to communicate because the fact of the matter is, Emancipation Proclamation became effective January 1, 1863. Juneteenth occurred in 1865, two years and a half later.

It means that the failure to communicate allowed a whole group of people in the state of Texas to stay in slavery for another two and a half years after they were freed. And so that is a very sensitive issue with the African-American community, and I am now pleased that somebody in the White House understood that. Not to mention the fact that Tulsa is where the -- maybe the most horrendous racial riot to ever take place, and that racial riot was directed by white people against black people in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

And to have such callous disregard for that sensitive part of our history, something was a bit much for many of us to take, so I'm pleased that somebody either in the White House, some influencer of the White House, prevailed and they changed their minds about this, and I am very pleased about that. I would hope that they -- I'm sorry?

CABRERA: Please go ahead.

CLYBURN: I would hope that the same kind of thought process would get into Jacksonville. Remember, I'm a student of those cities of the 1960s. I remember Ax Handle Day in Jacksonville. I remember sitting at lunch counters in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

I remember Lester Maddox, the governor of Georgia, wielding ax handles against peaceful demonstrators, and anybody that will do something on the anniversary of Ax Handle Day in Jacksonville, Florida, that, to me, sends a signal. This president has a real blind spot when it comes to the real history of this country and whoever prevailed over this idea in Tulsa, I hope that they will double down and do the same for Jacksonville, Florida, as well.

CABRERA: And for our viewers who may not know exactly what you're referencing, I mean, you're talking about the date the president is expected to give his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination for presidency as part of the RNC convention coinciding with the anniversary of Ax Handle Saturday.

So he has changed this date in Tulsa and his rally there, but as we also talked about with Kristen Holmes, he is digging in, in his defense of Confederate statues and military bases named after Confederate leaders.

Again, you grew up in the Jim Crow South. You marched during the civil rights movement. Are you surprised that in the year 2020, after everything we've seen, we are still fighting over statues and flags of the Confederacy?

CLYBURN: No, I'm not surprised at that because the whole thing is a false pretense. Look, these statues were erected not after the civil war. These statues were erected, meaning they were put in place, during the 1950s and '60s, as a way of saying we will resist your becoming a part of this pursuit of happiness in this country.

If you look at the Confederate battle flags, when states changed their flags, those flags were not original. Clemson University just yesterday, I'm very proud of Clemson University, they are now going to take their dormitory or that building on the campus that was named for a -- Pitchfork Ben Tillman. They want to take not a new name, take it back to the name that it was before they named it for Tillman.

So, those --these buildings, many of these squares, had names before.

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They changed these names and put these Confederate soldiers and Confederate folks' names on them as a sign of resistance to integration, a resistance to the Earl Warren court that gave us Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. That's what started this.

1954 Supreme Court decision started this foolishness. It didn't come out of the -- this stuff about heritage. It's not about heritage. It is, in fact, about hate.

CABRERA: You're giving us -- a lot of us a history lesson. Thank you for that.

CLYBURN: (INAUDIBLE)

CABRERA: I do want to ask you about the protests today and the, you know, events that have occurred since the death of George Floyd. We have heard calls to defund the police. That's been a bit of a rally cry at some of these protests across the country. The president and other Republicans are now seizing on that, turning it into a line of attack, politically.

But you yourself, I know you are not a fan of that slogan. Why?

CLYBURN: Simply because I do not believe that those who are working very hard to have some reform, to restructure these systems, restructure our law enforcement system, restructure our judicial system, restructure our educational system, our healthcare system, we do not wish for this battle to be lost on sloganeering.

I was there along with many, John Lewis included, when we were doing the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, we were working hard to desegregate lunch counters, working very hard to integrate public transit. These things were legitimate issues.

Then all of a sudden, we woke up one day, there's a slogan out there, burn, baby, burn. What the heck does that mean? We know what it conjures up.

So, all of a sudden, you give the opponents of the issues a cover, and that's -- that's all I'm afraid of here, that we start talking about defunding the police. No, let's restructure law enforcement. Restructure judicial systems. Not defund, because you know all that will do is give Donald Trump the cover he needs.

I've been saying to people all the time, if you allow yourself to play the opponent's game, you're going to lose and the opponent will win. Let's not play his game.

He is about violence. He is about sloganeering. He is about what I like to say, really, insulting.

That's not who we are. The family of George Floyd have made it very clear that George Floyd's family said, please honor our brother, our son, our uncle, our daddy. Honor his memory with positive, proactive activity that will reform law enforcement.

That's what they want. That's what we should want. Let's not allow ourselves to get caught up in sloganeering, sound bytes, and if we do, we will lose the issue. Any time you've got to explain what you're saying, you will lose it, whatever you're fighting for.

CABRERA: Let's talk about President Trump's opponent for a moment because you have said Joe Biden, picking a black woman as VP is not a must but a plus. But you also said this is a very tough moment or this is very tough timing for Amy Klobuchar.

Can Biden's campaign realistically capture the energy of this movement without having any racial diversity at the top of the ticket?

CLYBURN: I think Joe Biden's doing a great job with that. His comments day before yesterday, two or three days ago, I thought were spot on. I do believe that having -- he promised to put a woman on the ticket and I believe a black woman would be a plus and I think that we ought to really take a serious look at all the women involved in this.

And Elizabeth Warren is a good woman. I like Amy Klobuchar. All I said about Amy Klobuchar was you got to know that all of this stuff surrounding Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a problem, and timing cost me an election once, so I understand this whole thing about timing.

But I think that people like Karen Bass out in California as well as Kamala Harris, they're great people to look at. People like Stacey Abrams down in Georgia, as well as Keisha Lance Bottoms, they're great woman to look at.

But I'm not going (ph) to say that they're a must. But they certainly would -- Karen Bass would be a big plus. A former speaker of the house in California? That's got to be a plus.

CABRERA: Is she -- is she your front runner in your mind?

CLYBURN: She is a great person in my mind. I work with her every day. Val Demings is a great person. But so are the others that I speak about.

I just think that we ought to let Joe's committee do their work, let them do the -- all the investigations, do their vetting, let them do the polling, and then come back to the vice president with their results, and then I want the vice president to take a look at it and with his heart and his head do whatever is necessary to deliver for him what he calls simpatico.

CABRERA: OK. House Majority Whip James Clyburn, thank you for your time. Thanks for being here.

CLYBURN: Thank you.

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