Democratic political analyst Lisa Durden criticized Republican Christians for opposing President Joe Biden’s commutation of 37 death row prisoners on Monday, arguing they should support the move because “God says forgive.”
Reacting on NewsNation to Biden’s decision to commute the sentences of 37 out of 40 death row inmates, including those convicted of murdering children, Durden said:
It’s always good to do a good thing. Let me just start by saying this. All of you MAGA minions and you MAGA maniacs and MAGA monsters are the so-called evangelicals who believe in God, and God says forgive. Now, I understand lots of people are victims of all kinds of heinous crimes and I can’t stand it, but people who are evangelicals, people who are Christians, people who claim they believe in God should not feel like a person has the right to kill someone, even if they were also victims or their families were. So do I agree with Joe Biden commuting 37 death row inmates, to keep them in jail for life? I absolutely do.
Durden also cited her race as one of the reasons why she supported Biden’s move.
“One of the other reasons why I agree with him is because I’m a Black person and I know the death penalty harms more Black people than anyone else,” she claimed. “So I can’t feel good when real heinous killers have a death penalty and then maybe a Black person gets a death penalty who’s innocent. Either you believe in the death penalty or you don’t, and I don’t.”
Durden concluded, “The criminal-in-chief Donald Trump would not want to do that when he got in office, so I’m glad that Joe Biden commuted those sentences before Donald Trump got in office, because that would be a disaster.”
Republican adviser Bret Manley responded by pointing out that Biden did not commute the sentence of every death row prisoner, with three inmates – Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers – still scheduled for execution.
“If your moral position is that you don’t support the death penalty, that’s certainly a case you can make, but then why leave those other men on death row?” Manley questioned. “If those crimes that those men committed are so heinous that they deserve to die, why is it that the men whose sentences were commuted don’t deserve to die?”
Watch above via NewsNation.
