Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) recently accused tea partiers of wanting to turn back the clock to the era of racial segregation, BuzzFeed reported Wednesday.
The congressman was speaking Saturday at an event hosted by the Palm Beach County Democratic Party in Florida when he recounted an exchange he had with a tea party supporter.
“I’ll never forget this guy, on the steps of the Capitol, says to me, ‘We want our country back,’” Cleaver said. “And I’ve got people on both sides screaming, ‘We want our country back.’”
“So I turn and I say, ‘Well, you can’t have it,'” he continued.
“And the reason is, we’re not going back,” Cleaver said to applause. “You can’t have it back. We’re not going back to a day when we were segregated. We’re not going back to a day when women were considered secondary citizens. We’re not going back. No, you can’t have it back.”
Watch below. Cleaver’s comments on tea partiers start at about 38:30.
