Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich Defends Steve Scalise

According to Mediaite, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich defended embattled House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) by bringing up President Barack Obama‘s association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and questioning why Obama got a “pass.” Gingrich discussed it on the program Face The Nation.

“The president explained he didn’t hear any of [Wright’s controversial remarks about America], and we all gave him a pass,” Gingrich told Bob Scieffer on the show, adding Obama made a “great speech” in Philadelphia as a candidate when he attempted to distance himself from Wright.

Secular Talk

Hardball: Jan. 6th Rough Day For The Republican Party

According to the host of MSNBC’s Hardball, it was a bad day for the Republican party as a top governor was sent to prison and 25 Republicans voted to dump John Boehner as House Speaker.

Chris Matthews discusses it with Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank and political commentator John Feehery.

MSNBC

House GOP Leader Once Addressed White Supremacists

A House GOP leader has acknowledged that he once addressed a gathering of white supremacists, though his office denies any association with the group’s social views.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, the chamber’s third-ranking Republican, served in the Louisiana Legislature when he appeared in 2002 at a convention of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO).

The group was founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified the group as a hate group.

In a written statement, Scalise aide Moira Bagley Smith confirmed that Scalise addressed the group as it gathered at a hotel near the neighborhoods that both Scalise and Duke represented during separate terms as state lawmakers.

MSNBC video.

More:

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/euro

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/30/crybaby-racists-support-steve-scalise.html