NC Lt. Gov. Dan Forest - Calls Obama Administration’s Jim Crow Claim ‘Shameful’

Kelsey Harkness / May 11, 2016

RALEIGH, N.C. — Two days after North Carolina and the Justice Department announced dueling lawsuits, The Daily Signal sat down with Lt. Gov. Dan Forest. Forest, a Republican, called the Obama administration “shameful” for equating the state’s so-called bathroom bill to Jim Crow laws and other forms of state-sponsored discrimination.

“To use Jim Crow laws is pretty shameful,” Forest said, referring to comments made by Attorney General Loretta Lynch during a press conference Monday.

“The color of somebody’s skin,” he added, “the pigment of their skin, has absolutely nothing—zero—to do with what bathroom somebody goes into, what locker room or shower they use.”

“However, somebody’s biological sex has everything to do with which bathroom you use.”

Kelsey Harkness is a senior news producer at The Daily Signal. Send an email to Kelsey.

Machine Transcript:

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you spoke out

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out he used the Obama administration of using children as pawns to further

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our political agenda can you explain what you meant there well its base level

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it's extortion calcium and what they did was they looked into North Carolina they

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said unless you do we say agency of the executive branch of the federal

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government lets you do what we say we are going to withhold your money for the

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taxpayers of North Carolina send their money to washington for things like

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education and transportation and housing and they get skimmed off in washington

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and some of it comes back what they're saying now and is unless you change your

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loss to believe like we believe then we're gonna keep your money so they're

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using it as an extortion extraordinary tool to really hold the children of

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North Carolina hostage to push their radical leftist agenda and so it's

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unfortunate that they're doing that's really unprecedented in a lot of ways

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and so when they sent us a letter and told us what we had to do or else what

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we did the governor filed lawsuits against them as well as the legislature

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filed a lawsuit against them

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challenging their stance with title nine and title seven and really challenging

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what they believe the Civil Rights Act of the sixties and seventies really says

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and attorney general Loretta Lynch and the justice department came out this

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week and like end north carolina's bill to Jim Crow and other forms of

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state-sponsored discrimination that is a pretty heavy allegation curious how you

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respond to that

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to use the Jim Crow laws is pretty shameful here's why

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here's why this really works is the color of somebody's skin pigment of

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their skin has absolutely nothing zero to do with what bathroom somebody goes

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into what locker room shower they use what lunch counter they said that has

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nothing to do with that that's why we got rid of this nefarious laws call Jim

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Crow laws because they were amazingly discriminatory however somebody's

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biological 6 has everything to do with which bathroom use that's why we decided

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even at that time you don't take down men and women signs off the bathrooms

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you leave them up because that's what it's for its because there's a

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differentiation between biological sex and and what goes on in those in those

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facilities has absolutely nothing to do with Jim Crow laws she knows that

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they're pushing the envelope here to again push their agenda so that they can

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redefine what the term sex means in the civil rights act so they're saying that

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sex has always meant transgender and everything else you know the sixty some

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odd transgendered definitions there are now they think that that's what sex

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means and the civil rights activist absolutely not true and what would you

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say to the transgender community who does feel offended and discriminated

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against because of that law yet so you're welcome here everybody's welcome

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in North Carolina there's no discrimination going on in North

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Carolina but work with us to we are trying to drive reasonable

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accommodations for those people that are fearful but not put women and children

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at risk that the rhetoric that's going on about how people believing that

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republicans North Carolina somehow fear that transgender people in the LGBT

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community our bathroom molesters nobody's ever said I don't have one

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colleague here i dont no one Republican that has ever said that so that's just

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absolutely not true but you know what we do have twenty-four thousand registered

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sex offenders in North Carolina we do have a lot of people who have some ill

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intent they see a loophole in the law they're gonna take advantage of it why

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would we put one woman or one child at risk of being molested in the bathroom

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taken advantage of in a bathroom or shower locker room we don't want to do

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that that 99% of the people out there who are just trying to go about their

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lives every day and go use public facilities safely and securely we have

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to protect them to governor thank you very much for joining us thank you for

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coming today