Nation Writer Labels the Constitution ‘Trash’
Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation, labeled the Constitution “trash” in an appearance on ABC’s The View on Friday.
Appearing on the program to promote his new book, Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution, Mystal was asked by co-host Ana Navarro-Cárdenas if the Constitution “is a living document,” or a “sacred document.” Mystal responded by declaring that “it’s certainly not sacred, all right, let’s start there. The Constitution is kind of trash.”
“It was written by slavers and colonists and white people who were willing to make deals with slavers and colonists. They didn’t ask anybody that looked like me what they thought about the Constitution,” continued Mystal, who proceeded to do an impression of a 18th century slave weighing in on the document.
.@ElieNYC on his book ‘Allow Me To Retort’: “What I’m trying to do with this book is explain in layman’s terms what Republicans are doing to the law because I honestly believe that if everybody understood it, they’d be as outraged as I am about it.” https://t.co/cVclFZQmjA pic.twitter.com/0XI4SNOawO
— The View (@TheView) March 4, 2022
In another interview promoting Allow Me to Retort, Mystal was asked if he thought the Constitution should be “scrapped altogether.”
“Sure, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” replied Mystal, who expressed support for a new, “more inclusive,” structure of government.
In the absence of that emerging, however, he suggested Americans “interpret our Constitution so that we extend justice and fairness and equality to all, as opposed to whatever the heck we do now.”
Mystal expanded on this point in his Friday appearance on The View, “the very least we can do is ignore what those slavers and colonists and misogynists thought.”
Included in his proposed improvements to the Constitution was “no states’ rights when it comes to healthcare, elections, policing, and guns. That’s just better.”
Mystal, who frequently appears as a guest on MSNBC, is an outspoken critic of the “conservative” judicial philosophies of originalism and textualism, and their practitioners. During Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing, Mystal took issue with Barrett’s description of her family, tweeting “did anybody else notice that Amy Coney Barrett told us her white children have intellectual goals while her black children can… deadlift? Or was that just me?”
Barrett is the mother to five white children she gave birth to, and two black children she and her husband adopted from Haiti. She contrasted her daughter Vivian’s weakened state when she was adopted to her physical strength and vigor in the present during her hearing.
