Fox Business Network’s “Making Money” host Charles Payne, used his own family story to show just how former Attorney General Eric Holder is wrong for questioning if America was ever “great” to begin with.
Eric Holder, who served in the former Obama administration, appeared on MSNBC on Tuesday and took a stab at President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, pondering the idea that America’s greatness “never existed.”
“When I hear these things about let’s make America great again, I think to myself, ‘Exactly when did you think America was great?’” Holder said.
He pointed to a few examples for his reasoning: “It certainly wasn’t when people were enslaved. It certainly wasn’t when women didn’t have the right to vote. It certainly wasn’t when the LGBT community was denied the rights to which it was entitled.”
On Saturday, Payne told “Fox & Friends” his personal story of why he is grateful to have been born in the United States, a stark contrast to Holder’s comment.
He also noted that he believes people “conflate great with perfect.”
“The seeds of greatness were planted with the war of Independence and the Constitution,” Payne said. “And that allowed us, and continues to allow us, to evolve.”
Payne went on to say that his grandmother used to listen for Ku Klux Klan members coming during the night hours.
He stated that even though America “wasn’t as great as it could have been” during that time, “it was the greatest country in the world, even for black people.”
“There’s no other country in the world I would have rather been born in on the day I was born than America,” Payne said.
“So maybe we timestamp it differently, but if you want to go to the origins of it, it was a fight for independence, a fight for an idea of individualism, and the seeds of the Consitution, written by imperfect individuals but as a collective, the wisdom that allows us to ultimately have freedom for black people, have women allowed to vote. Look at where this country has gone in such a short period of time.” he added.
“Posted against the rest of the world, we are the greatest country in the world,” Payne said. “And by definition, the greatest is great.”