Mehdi Hasan clobbers 'bigoted' Republicans for embracing 'odious' convicted murderer Daniel Perry

17 April 2023

On Sunday's edition of his show, MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan tore into right-wing Republicans over their recent embrace of convicted murderer Daniel Perry, a now-former United States Army sergeant who proudly bragged about being a "racist" before he gunned down a Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster in 2020.

Hasan began:

Earlier this month, on Friday, April the seventh, a US Army sergeant named Daniel Perry was found guilty of murdering Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster at a demonstration in Austin, Texas in the summer of 2020. Perry shot Foster multiple times and a jury of his peers deliberated for seventeen hours before coming to a unanimous guilty verdict. And yet the very next day after Fox's Tucker Carlson came to Daniel Perry's defense on his primetime show – the very next day – Texas GOP Governor Greg Abbott announced that he was working as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sergeant Perry. The pardon.

Acquitted Kenosha, Wisconsin shooter Kyle Rittenhouse was Carlson's guest on his April 7th broadcast and argued that Perry "defended himself" and that Perry "knows what he did was right." Carlson then declared that "George Soros can't pay for people to put his political opponents in jail and then have a Republican governor ignore it."

Continuing on, Hasan condemned GOP lawmakers for latching onto Carlson and Abbott's clemency calls for Perry:

MAGA Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ronnie Jackson weighed in too, defending Perry and demanding he be let go. GOP Congressman Dan Crenshaw said, 'Thank God that Perry was on course for a pardon' and even said 'he should also be compensated.'

Daniel Perry. New hero of the GOP. Their new cause celebre. The new Rittenhouse. Put aside the fact that unlike Kyle Rittenhouse, Daniel Perry was found guilty of murder in a case where the facts were pretty clear. He drove through a red light into a crowd of BLM protesters, and opened fire multiple times on a man who, yes, was legally and openly carrying an AK-47 but according to witnesses, didn't have it pointed at Perry. So Perry wasn't acting in self-defense. He wasn't standing his ground.

Hasan then recalled Perry's history of boastful bigotry:

Oh, and here's what we've learned about Daniel Perry since the guilty verdict; since Republicans have fallen over one another to defend him. According to seventy-six pages of documents unsealed by the judge last week and shared online by 'The Houston Chronicle,' Perry sent private messages for years containing racist memes and defending the killing of protesters and Muslims. For example, in a 2019 message, Perry wrote, it was 'to [sic] bad we can't get paid for hunting Muslims in Europe.' In June, 2020, he referred to Black Lives Matter protesters as 'monkeys,' and said, 'I am a racist because I do not agree with people acting like animals at the zoo.'

Hasan's conclusion was that Perry's views are no longer an aberration for hardliners inside the Make America Great Again movement:

Now, when these texts and social media posts came out last week, I initially thought to myself, silly, GOP. Maybe they should have waited a bit before turning this odious guy into their new hero, their new martyr. But now I'm thinking, sadly, these statements from Perry – this clear evidence of his racism and his violent hatred towards minorities – will just make him more popular in right-wing circles, not less, given the bigoted state of the modern GOP.

Watch below or at this link.

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