Ben Jealous, the former head of the NAACP and one of Bernie Sanders’ highest-profile African-American supporters, said on Monday he was unimpressed by Hillary Clinton’s recent trip to Flint, Michigan.
“That type of stuff just always strikes me as petty,” Jealous told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead.” “I’m fairly certain that if she had been asked to go on Saturday Night Live, she would have gone to Flint on a different day.”
Sanders told Tapper in an interview that aired Sunday on “State of the Union” that the city’s ongoing water crisis “a national priority.”
Clinton, meanwhile, addressed churchgoers in the Michigan city that day.
“I think you will see that our campaign is the best campaign for making sure these sorts of things don’t happen down the road,” said Jealous, who endorsed the Vermont senator last week.
Asked why he was backing Sanders, the former NAACP president cited Martin Luther King Jr.’s “three giant triplets of evil: racism, militarism and greed.”
“On each on each of those categories,” he said, “Clinton’s history is, frankly, complex and often confounding,” while “Bernie’s is very, very clear.”
Jealous praised Sanders for his work during the 1960s Civil Rights movement, in particular the fight to desegregate university housing in Chicago. He had kind words for Clinton’s efforts at the Children’s Defense Fund, but questioned the language she used championing the “tough on crime” reforms of the early 1990s.
“I think she’s at her high water mark,” Jealous said of Clinton’s current poll numbers, especially in the South and among African-American voters. “I think you’ll see that begin to change as folks start to tune in as we head into the Super Tuesday states …That support will begin to shrink.”