America is about to turn 250 years old, and most of the country is ready to celebrate.
Not everyone at MSNBC got that memo.
And one cable news anchor just told his audience something about the upcoming birthday that left a whole lot of Americans furious.
Ali Velshi Calls America a “So-Called Democracy”
MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi used his weekend program recently to tell viewers he feels a “deep unease” about celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary — and he didn’t stop there.
He called the United States a “so-called democracy.”
The remarks came during a lengthy on-air monologue just weeks before the country marks one of the biggest milestones in its history. Velshi told his audience, “Anniversaries are imperfect records of the thing which is being celebrated. In America’s case, anniversaries often gloss over the racial dynamics underlying much of America’s history and politics, issues that remain unsolved, because America has never actually fully reckoned with its racist past and its original founding sin of slavery.”
He kept going.
“In one month, America will mark the 250th anniversary of its founding. Like previous anniversaries, there is a deep unease about this. I feel a deep unease about the celebrations to which I am invited to mark the 250th anniversary of our so-called democracy,” Velshi said, before adding that the anniversary “is taking place during yet another period of deep and fundamental and existential unrest in this country, brought on by the country’s unresolved racial politics.”
And then he tacked on the kicker: “That’s what this is.”
The Lecture Nobody Asked For
Velshi, who was born in Kenya and raised in Canada before becoming a U.S. citizen in 2015, apparently feels qualified to tell Americans they have nothing worth celebrating about the country that took him in.
That’s a rich position to take from a cable news anchor who has made his career — and his comfortable living — in the very nation he now can’t stop lecturing.
Velshi claimed that “women and Black Americans have seen their rights taken away” and that “the Voting Rights Act has effectively been gutted.” He also asserted that “a number of states are continuing to gerrymander their congressional maps ahead of the midterm elections, with the explicit effect of taking away political power from Black Americans,” specifically pointing to Louisiana, which he claimed “passed a new map that eliminated Black majority districts.”
Worth noting: redistricting is a constitutional exercise that both parties engage in, and courts — including the Supreme Court — have repeatedly weighed in on these maps through the normal legal process. Framing routine legislative mapmaking as an assault on civil rights is a political choice, not a factual one.
But Velshi wasn’t done. He told viewers, “If you’ve got conflicting feelings about America’s upcoming anniversary — like you want to celebrate the ideals that America strives for, which are noble and should be celebrated, but lament the state of the country — you’re not alone.”
Kind of him to validate the conflicted feelings he spent several minutes manufacturing in the first place.
The Man Who Whitewashed Riots Now Dreads a Birthday Party
Here’s where this gets genuinely hard to take seriously.
Velshi once praised Black Lives Matter rioters even as Minneapolis burned in the background during live coverage. That’s not an allegation — it’s a matter of public record, captured on video that circulated widely at the time.
But celebrating America’s 250th birthday? That, apparently, fills him with dread.
The Black Lives Matter organization, for those who need a reminder, was founded by self-described Marxists and later became engulfed in financial scandal, with questions about how tens of millions of dollars in donations were spent by its leadership. The group’s founders openly stated their ideological goals went well beyond policing reform. Velshi stood in front of burning buildings and called what was happening “mostly a protest.” He couldn’t muster that same generosity of spirit for a Fourth of July fireworks show.
And that tells you just about everything you need to know about where his loyalties actually lie.
What 250 Years Actually Means
Velshi’s brand of commentary — dripping with condescension toward ordinary Americans who just want to grill out and watch fireworks — is exactly the kind of thing that has driven working-class voters away from the media establishment in droves. People can smell the contempt. They don’t need a lecture from a cable anchor about whether their country deserves a birthday party.
America turns 250 next month. Millions of families will gather, fly their flags, and mark the occasion with pride. And Ali Velshi will be right there on television, feeling deeply uneasy about all of it.
Some people really can’t help themselves.
Sources: Mediaite; Legal Insurrection; Western Journal; American News Nation