Hosted by Chris Matthews
Matthews: Your remarks yesterday were pretty hot. Do you stand by them?
Frank: Yes, although I see there was some potential confusion. Somebody wrote me an angry letter today and said "were you accusing the President of genocide?" To me there was a very sharp distinction between ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Genocide is murdering people. By ethnic cleansing - and I welcome a chance to clarify this as certainly what I had in mind - I'm talking about the policy of removing a certain kind of people from an area, not killing them, but getting them out. And that's clearly what's going on in New Orleans.
It is clearly going to be the case that if the Bush Administration is allowed to continue its policy, there will be in New Orleans after this is over, this period of crisis, many fewer lower income people, and particularly many fewer African-Americans.
The inaction of the federal government is such that people...whose homes were destroyed, whose lives were devastated by the hurricane, are getting literally no assistance.
They got some short-term, temporary relocation assistance, very in adequate, but this administration's policy is so far literally to do nothing to try to help particularly lower income people build their homes and everybody understands the consequence of that. It's going to be a much richer, much whiter New Orleans." Click Here to Read More
Matthews: ...Do you think it's more than just statistics here? Is there some effort to keep the people they have helped relocate in Texas?
Frank: Well, that's why I said inaction. No I don't think it is - nobody has deliberately tried to get the African-American population out, but I think the fact that one consequence of the inaction is going to be exactly as you said, a Louisiana that's much more republican, a Louisiana - it's one of the few Southern states now which continues to have a Democratic senator.
Yes, I do believe that there are Republicans - look, Karl Rove plays it this way and, again, that's what I said by inaction. I am not accusing them of deliberately driving people out. I am saying that the fact that the result of their total refusal to help lower income people rebuild housing will have that political effect, it's kind of icing on the cake...
Mathews: Are you sure, Congressman, that ethnic cleansing doesn't include killing people? I'm thinking of how we first learned that phrase and how most of us think of it as - from over in the Balkans and wasn't there an effort by Milosevic? I know he's on trial for something over there, and I don't think it's just separating from one group from another.
Frank: Yes, well there was also a specific - he's been specifically accused of genocide with regard to one place, and I welcome this chance to clarify this. I mean, as I understand ethnic cleansing, as I use it - and there have been other proposals.
Some of them were extreme right-wingers in Israel who said well, we want to get rid of Palestinians in the West Bank. So, I distinguish between genocide and ethnic cleansing. And, as I said, I welcome the chance to do that.
It is a - and by the way, there is this clear concept in American law, it is one thing, a terrible thing, to do something wrong. It is a lesser bad thing but still often a legally culpable thing to have something bad happen that you could have prevented and not lift a finger to prevent it.
And that's - again, I want to stress the substance here. There is zero proposals by the Bush administration to help rebuild low income housing. There was public housing, subsidized housing, homeowners that had low income housing.
They are getting virtually zero help and what that means is sure, people who are wealthy enough, they will be able to rebuild, so it is clear to anyone who looks at this that the consequence of the federal government refusing to help moderate and lower income people build is going to be this consequence.