james tyson who helped her pull it off. they were both charged with defacing a monument and now face up to three years in jail. after all of that less than an hour later it was back up and flying. they are out front tonight. thank you both of you for coming in. you want the flag down? yes. a lot of people want the flag down. why did you take such drastic measures then to do it yourself? i wanted to highlight just the unjust nature of the entire situation. i mean the reason why south carolina has been so held up in terms of removing their flag whereas you have seen in alabama, they took the flag down right away is because there was this series of laws that were passed in the 60s and in the year 2000 to protect the symbol of hate this symbol of treason. so the fact that the legislature or the governor can t even move to remove the flag as reverend
certainly it has been there, sort of underbelly of america. something that people don t want to talk about. and this you know president obama is coming off this what i think is a transformative week quite frankly, in his presidency. we re taulg about the supreme court rulings in terms of gay marriage, the supreme court rulings in terms of his key, and that incredible what i felt was a life altering experience that i experienced did you go his eulogy for reverend pinckney s funeral. so coming off that i think what we are seeing is perhaps a sense of hopelessness for those people that are subscribing to white supremacy. we re seeing that uptick many response to this week. but i don t think racism is exploding all of a sudden. but i think it is being highlighted by the fact we ve had this president having such a transform i have the week.
welcome back. in the aftermath of the tragedy in charleston it didn t take long for politicians in both parties to suddenly unite and call for the removal of the confederate battle flag from the front of the state capitol in south carolina. one prominent south carolina politician who has changed his mind on the issue is senator lindsey graham, who is running for the republican presidential nomination. on friday he attended the funeral of reverend clementa pinckney in charleston, where president obama spoke so movingly. senator graham joins me now. senator, welcome back to meet the press. thank you very much. take me to the services on friday. what did you make of the president? great speech. good singer. i don t think he s a very good commander in chief, but he did a very good job. i guess when we started talking about god s grace and embracing the democratic agenda across the board he sort of lost me there but i thought he did an incredible job of speaking about reverend pinck
you re eulogized. after all the words and recitations and résumés are read, to just say somebody was a good man. blinded by hatred the alleged killer could not see the grace surrounding reverend pinckney and that bible study group. the light of love that s shown as they opened the church doors and invited a stranger to join in their prayer circle. the alleged killer could have never anticipated the way the families of the fallen would respond when they saw him in court in the midst of unspeakable grief with words of forgiveness. he couldn t imagine that. vice president joe biden meanwhile attended services at the church where the attack took place on sunday. the vice president addressed the
reverend pinckney. he did a good job explaining our history. but then it got a bit political. i m glad he came and i know it meant a lot to the people in south carolina for the president to come. why did it take nine deaths to change your mind on the battle flag? if you d ask me the day before the attack and this killing, i would have said the compromise were for south carolina, chuck. i m not going to throw my state under the bus. that s never going to happen. this compromise was 15 years old. we took the flag off the top of the dome, moved it by the war memorial, built an african monument that worked for most south carolinaen and after the shooting it did not. my state will never move forward after this shooting if we don t take the flag down. the people at the ame church, the families of the victims, changed everything by their grace, by their love by their forgiveness, making it impossible for a guy like me to say, keep the flag up. when you see the flag now, do you see a sym