While speaking on Friday’s episode of “The Five” on Fox News, Jessica Tarlov’s co-host Will Cain compared Donald Trump’s mugshot to that of Frank Sinatra or Martin Luther King Jr. and the “image of defiance” he believes the photos all have in common. Tarlov nearly immediately shredded the comparison, telling Cain, “I don’t think, Will, to your point, that anyone except the biggest Donald Trump fans is sitting there thinking that that mugshot has anything to do with what it looked like when MLK had his mugshot taken.”
Tarlov added that she also didn’t appreciate “commentary” about “how much he weighs and all of that” before redirecting the conversation to a topic that she thought should concern Cain: the many indictments that the former president still faces.
As she put it, “This wasn’t Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow sitting there. It was regular people who listened to the evidence that was brought before them.”
Tarlov pointed out that while Trump’s most loyal base of voters continues to support him, the “average American” doesn’t seem to be a fan. As she noted, recent polling indicates that “62% [of Americans] think he committed a crime, including 67% of independents. 61% think that he must stand trial before the election.”
When Cain commented, “Time will tell if the public agrees with you this is not a two-tiered system of justice,” Tarlov fired back, “I don’t think when they think of a two-tiered system of justice, they think of a white billionaire who tried to overthrow the election.”
Traditionally, the concept of a two-tiered system of justice has illustrated the differences in how wealthy people who commit crimes are treated and how everyone else is treated, with Black Americans and Americans of color often enduring the harshest treatment of all.
The conversation between Cain and Tarlov comes as the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington is being celebrated and pondered throughout the United States and around the world. In a conversation with MSNBC’s Symone Sanders-Townsend and Black Voters Matter founder LaTosha Brown ahead of the Aug. 28 date, the New Georgia Project’s Kendra Cotton confessed to the host that when it comes to race in the United States, she believes, “We are regressing.”
Cotton continued, “If we want to talk about where we compare to 60 years ago, when I think about where we are, immediately I think about Carter G. Woodson’s seminal work, ‘The Miseducation of the Negro.’ There was a quote in there that compels and really kind of impacts my thinking and my understanding of the moment that we’re in right now.”
She concluded, “It says, ‘When you control a man’s thinking, you do not have to worry about his actions. You don’t have to tell him not to stand or to go yonder, he will find his proper place, and he’ll stay in it,’ and that’s what we’re seeing.”
While citing book bans, Cotton added, “I feel like we are less than a generation away from folks trying to convince us that the March on Washington was nothing more than a proverbial ‘block party.’”
With comments like those made by Will Cain, along with many other in the public eye, it may not be hard to see why Cotton feels that way. Watch the interviews with Cain and Tarlov and Sanders-Townsend, Cotton and Brown above.
