The heights to which race baiters have risen...

The President, Al Sharpton, and the Corruption of Modern Liberalism

Peter Wehner

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, with his city roiling in the aftermath of the assassination of two NYPD officers, is imploring protesters–who until now he’s supported–to wait until after the funerals of two policemen before resuming their anti-police rallies. Al Sharpton–excuse me, the Reverend Al Sharpton–has declined. Which should come as a surprise to precisely no one. After all, what would a day in Gotham be without protesters shouting, “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now.”

It tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the president and his White House and their views toward law enforcement and race relations that Sharpton is, in the words of Politico, “Obama’s go-to man on race.” He has direct contact with White House adviser and First Friend Valerie Jarrett, we’re told. He’s visited the White House at least 61 times since 2009, including meeting one on one with the president, who has publicly praised Sharpton, including sending an aide to read a message at a recent event commending Sharpton’s “dedication to the righteous cause of perfecting our union.” Sharpton was among a small group at the White House when the president announced his nomination of Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, to become the next attorney general.

“There’s a trust factor with The Rev from the Oval Office on down,” a White House official familiar with their dealings told reporter Glenn Thrush. “He gets it, and he’s got credibility in the community that nobody else has got. There’s really no one else out there who does what he does.”

That last statement is true; there isn’t anyone out there who does what Sharpton does quite the way he does it.

Al Sharpton is a person who lives for the purpose of stoking racial hatreds. He was convicted of defaming a New York prosecutor, Steven A. Pagones, in the notorious Tawana Brawley affair, in which Brawley falsely accused Pagones of raping her. During the 1991 Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn, Sharpton fueled black rage after a Hasidic Jewish driver accidentally killed a seven-year-old black child with his car. (A young talmudic scholar, Yankel Rosenbaum, was stabbed to death by a mob shouting “Kill the Jew.”) Sharpton has made numerous anti-Semitic comments. He’s characterized black people who disagreed with him as “yellow niggers” and called white people “crackers.” He constantly casts the police as racists when there’s no evidence to support the charge. And on top of that he’s a tax cheat, having been convicted of tax evasion and, according to the New York Times, with more than $4.5 million in current state and federal tax liens against him and his for-profit businesses.

Sharpton, then, is a notorious and demagogic figure. He’s anti-cop. He’s anti-Semitic. And he’s an enemy of racial reconciliation, having done incalculable damage to race relations in America. That such a loathsome individual would be allowed into the White House is itself stunning; and the fact that he’s Barack Obama’s “go-to man on race” is shameful and discrediting. These are the depths to which modern liberalism has descended.