Back during the campaign for governor of South Carolina in 2014, Democratic candidate Vincent Sheheen called for removing the Confederate flag from the grounds of the statehouse. But the soon-to-be GOP governor Nikki Haley blew off his comments as coming from a sinking candidate who had run out of talking points.
“What I can tell you is over the last three and a half years, I spent a lot of my days on the phones with CEOs and recruiting jobs to this state,” Haley said. “I can honestly say I have not had one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag.”
Fast forward to 2015, a white man holding a gun walks into an iconic black church and kills 9 people – including a prominent black state senator – and the Confederate flag still flies proudly over the statehouse the day after.
Last night, Haley wrote on Facebook, “We’ll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another.”
From Jezebel’s Jia Tolentino:
Haley seems confused, or something—but the rest of us could easily leap to the possibility that a racist murderer might be highly motivated by a number of things, such as racism, as well as a desire to murder, and also maybe a governor who is like, “What I can tell you about this slave-state white supremacy symbol officially sponsored by my administration is that CEOs think it’s pretty chill.”
Interestingly, the American and state flag are at half-staff over the House, but the Confederate flag still reportedly flies high atop its pole.
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