21st century jim crow assault is real. it s unrelenting. we re going to challenge it vigorously. that was the president biden a few minutes ago delivering that speech in philadelphia blasting efforts to restrict voting as an assault on liberty that we re all seeing unfold. with more to talk about this is damon hewitt. he was part of that group of civil rights leaders who met with the president last week on voting rights. welcome back to the show. first, you listened to the president s speech. what did you think? well, look, there s two ways to turn the screw. you can use a power tool and do it manually. this was more manual. i think we ll have to turn
help us unpack everything he talked about. we have dana bash. john king and kaitlan collins. dana, i know your time is limited. it was interesting, i would say that s his most fulsome defense of voting rights thus far. civil rights leaders have been calling for this and saying you have been in office for six months. infrastructure is important but this is the most important and that seems like what he was saying today. no question about it. your exactly right. there has been an outcry from not just civil rights leaders, just run of the mill democrats in states across the country who feel completely under siege by their local leaders, legislatures and they don t feel that from the white house there s been enough effort made rhetorically to try to push back.
of the nation and he s trying to enlist civil rights organizations. he s trying to enlist the courts. this is going to be a fight that everybody is involved in. if it is successful. that will be the pressure on the senate. that will be the pressure to try to begin to turn the tide here. it s going to be a big long vicious fight. i think the stakes could not be higher. the president made that clear. those who want to try to avoid this fight will find it will be right in their face. the democratic base who he was speaking to today will be aroused, is going to be in streets. is going to be working for a lot of different changes and we saw this example in texas. extraordinary action by state legislatures. not just a stunt but people really sort of being as creative
why we are seeing republicans in states nation wide try to change their election laws. like what you re seeing in texas basing all of it off of the lie that was pushed and perpetrated by former president trump. that is what president biden got out here today when he was ticking through all of the audits and the recounts and the recounts that doubled and t tripled themselves in some states to go after and make sure the vote count was entirely and completely accurate. he walked through that step by step. i think that was part of a tool to convince and to push back on some of these republicans in these states to say what they are doing is not based on anything. it s not there was frauds in one of these state and that s why y you re seeing some lawmakers talk about the need to of all it. there s none of that. president biden was going after to say it s baseless what they are basing all of this on. what they are pushing back on and what you re seeing democrats and civil rights activists say
knife to a fight against a nuclear bomb. that is what the pressure is going to continue to be on the president to convince some of those moderate democrats in the place he used to work for 36 years, the united states senate that this is the one issue that is important to work around the filibuster on. john king, out to you. up with of the civil rights groups that spoke with the president a couple do iays ago, said it would have been an epic fail for the president to not mention the filibuster or say it s time to create a carve out. he didn t do it. didn t mention it those conservative democrats. victor, i think that s the call the paradox to call it inconsistent. the president made a very passionate case for the two pieces of democratic legislation that would deal with voting rights and wipe some of these republican laws off the books or