Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
Senator Rand Paul’s Democratic opponent in Kentucky has put out a video in which he is seen wearing a noose around his neck, and suggesting that Paul supports lynching black people.
Charles Booker appears in the video, which implies that Paul held up legislation in 2020 that would have made lynching a federal hate crime in America because he actually supports it.
Booker voices over the footage, stating “The pain of our past persists to this day,” adding that “In Kentucky, like many states throughout the South, lynching was a tool of terror. It was used to kill hopes for freedom.”
“It was used to kill my ancestors,” Booker continues, as he appears under a tree with a noose around his neck.
Watch:
“Now, in a historic victory for our commonwealth, I have become the first Black Kentuckian to receive the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate,” Booker continues, before turning directly to Rand Paul and describing him as “The very person who compared expanded health care to slavery.”
“The person who said he would have opposed the Civil Rights Act. The person who singlehandedly blocked an antilynching act from being federal law,” Booker further contends.
The video then contains the sound of a tightened rope creaking as Booker says “The choice couldn’t be clearer… Do we move forward together? Or do we let politicians like Rand Paul forever hold us back and drive us apart?”
As noted by The Courier Journal, Booker “does not mention that Paul went on to co-sponsor a new (and bipartisan) version of that [anti-lynching] legislation. The Senate unanimously voted this March to pass the updated Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which is now law.”
Paul has also repeatedly said that he supports the Civil Rights Act. The notion that he doesn’t comes from a comment he made in 2010 when he said he disliked the idea of government enforcing mandates on private businesses.
The healthcare/slavery comment was made by Paul in relation to his opposition to the expansion of Obamacare, which mandated insurance through select government approved companies.
Paul said, during a Senate hearing in 2011, “With regard to the idea whether or not you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies. I am a physician. You have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery.”
Booker’s insinuations are clear. He is attempting to disingenuously paint up his opponent, Rand Paul, as an extreme racist.
Democrats in 2022 claiming that their political opponents are racist on every issue is just par for the course now.
