MS NOW Host Feels ‘Deep Unease’ About America’s 250th Celebrations, Cites Our ‘Racist Past’
“America has never actually fully reckoned with its racist past and its original founding sin of slavery.”
With America’s 250th birthday just weeks away, communities across the country are preparing to celebrate one of the most significant milestones in the nation’s history. Not everyone is in a festive mood, however. On Sunday, MS NOW host Ali Velshi told viewers the approaching anniversary fills him with “deep unease” because America “never actually fully reckoned with its racist past and its original founding sin of slavery.”
Velshi began:
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.
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 these celebrations to which I am invited to mark the 250th anniversary of our so-called democracy.
Because this 250th 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. That’s what this is.
MS Now host Ali Velshi says he feels “deep unease” about celebrating America’s 250th anniversary.
“America has never actually fully reckoned with its racist past and its original founding sin of slavery.” pic.twitter.com/O1a7a16Nc8
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) June 1, 2026
Mediaite reported the rest of Velshi’s rant:
Women and Black Americans have seen their rights taken away. The Voting Rights Act has effectively been gutted. 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.
Louisiana did exactly that. Just a few days ago, it passed a new map that eliminated Black majority districts.
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. At least I’m with you on this.
The outlet reports that Velshi was born in Kenya, grew up in Canada, and became a U.S. citizen in 2015.
Velshi is best known for his coverage of the George Floyd riots in Minneapolis in May 2020. As the city’s police station burned in the background and the riot swirled around him, he reported, “This is mostly a protest. It is not, generally speaking, unruly.”
Mary covered this story at the time.
Minneapolis, May 2020.
Velshi as fire raged behind him: “This is mostly a protest. It is not, generally speaking, unruly."
Same guy. https://t.co/AP313kJGPE pic.twitter.com/52KZp5gqk1
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) May 31, 2026
One X user put it bluntly: If he feels such “deep unease” about celebrating the 250th birthday of his adopted nation — the country that welcomed him and afforded him the opportunities he enjoys today — then he should “get the hell out.”
Then get the hell out
— Pamela Murphey 🇺🇸 (@pmurphey47) June 1, 2026
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn.
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Comments
If he thinks America is so bad, why is he here? Perhaps he will be happier if he is elsewhere. So will we.
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This whole crap argument that the USA ‘…hasn’t reckoned with its past’ is absolutely Cray Cray and complete nonsense. If Velshi is so dang uneasy celebrating the 250th of the USA and its constant improvement, appreciation of our history, building on the foundation laid and progress made by prior generations to include 750K+ deaths in a Civil War, passage of 13th, 14th, 15th amendments in the immediate aftermath, fifty five years later passing the 19th amendment and a great deal else he’s willfully ignoring ….he should consider which other Nation he wishes to call home and call up their Embassy.
I was going to scold him for missing school on every day the Civil War was mentioned in history class. But I see he wasn’t educated here. It seems the citizenship test should have a multiple choice question on it: “Select three ways the United States has dealt with slavery and racism,” followed by a list of 10 or 12 answers, all of which are correct.
So:
– He’s Muslim, couple 16 centuries of slave trading.
– Most Muslim countries waited till the 20th century to end slavery
– He was born in Kenya, ground zero for the Muslim slave trade to Muslim Asia. Much larger than the few million to the US
– took Canadian citizenship, then move to the US for more opportunity
– got rich, took that wicked US citizenship, from a country he hates
– now makes more money complaining about America and capitalism
– married to a hedge fund manager 🙂
Regarding the African-American:
– between 10,000,000-12,000,000Africans were sold to the European, American and African slave traders
– of that total, only650,000 +/- landed in the USA
– of the other millions, most landed in SA countries or died en route
– USA was the First Nation worldwide to legally end slavery.
Questions:
– regarding Muslim slavery – spread all through the Arabian peninsula, North Africa, eastern Mediterranean and southern Europe,
….how many millions were enslaved and if not enslaved, murdered because the would not convert to Islam? This practice still exists today
– today, there are still Muslim slaves mostly in Africa.
WTH?! No, it was absolutely not! Not even close.
And while we’re at it, Velshi is an Ismaili Moslem. Ismailis are generally known for being peaceful and rejecting violence. They are the victims of violence and oppression, not as far as I know ever the perpetrators. They interpret the obligation of jihad purely as an internal struggle with ones own carnal nature, and reject the literal interpretation most Moslems adopt, of military conflict.
And his only link to Kenya is that his parents happened to be living there when he was born. He has no roots there and did not grow up there. It’s very unlikely that he has any memories from there. Unless at least one of his parents took out Kenyan citizenship during their stay there, he was never a Kenyan citizen. Culturally he is Indian and Canadian, not Kenyan.
Ah, so, culturally, this piece of excrement, sanctimonious ingrate and idiotic talking head isn’t American?
Thank you for underscoring that salient fact.
Is there any hater, communist, anti-Semite, anarchist, murderer that you will not make excuses for or on whom you will offer up your legal expertise?
Isfoss, I see that you are another worthless person who doesn’t care about the truth, and will tell any lie so long as it advances your agenda. That makes you a Democrat.
He’s also an a-hole.
Regarding the African-American slave trade:
– Between 10,000,000-12,000,000 Africans were sold BY AFRICANS to the slave traders
– Of those millions ONLY 650,000+ (5 – 6.5%) landed in what’s now the USA
– Of the other millions, most landed in Central or SA countries or died en route
– The USA was one of the very FIRST nations to legally end slavery
Questions for this guy:
– Regarding Muslim slavery which was practiced via conquering tribes all through the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, eastern Mediterranean and southern Europe
– How many of these millions were enslaved and if not enslaved, murdered because they would not convert to Islam?
– Today, there still are Muslim slaves, mostly in Africa and the ME
Agreed. He could renounce his US citizenship which he accepted in 2015 and go back to Canada or his birthplace, Kenya, anytime he wants too, but he won’t. He is just a coward virtue signaling and couldn’t live without all the benefits of this country which he hates.
It’s unlikely that he could go to Kenya. He has no connection with the place other than having been born there, and under Kenyan law that’s not enough.
He’s a foreigner. Why do these “news” companies hire all these hateful foreigners? Why do the news companies hate Americans?
Find a new news outlet. MS Now sucks and no one should watch the insufferable foreigners.
Just broadcasting the hatred of America that Americans won’t do. Except there are plenty of Americans that will.
Back in the day when Peter Jennings anchored ABC’s evening news (and back when I watched such things) I used to tell people, “I watch Jennings on ABC, so at least I’m being lied to by a Canadian and not a fellow American.” So watching this guy Velshi isn’t as bad as watching an American spewing the same twaddle.
bu he decided he wanted to be a racist American
He’s not a foreigner; he was naturalized and that makes him fully USAn. So says the 14th amendment.
I always thought a feminist cable channel, like MS NOW, was a bad idea
The argument is not whether the glass is half full or half empty, the Left doesn’t want the glass. What they want is a septic tank to live in.
This is a Reagan-esque comment, in its wit and truth.
It’s been pointed out to me recently that the glass is always full. It’s half full of water. The other half is full of air.
I see it as halfway to the next glass. 😉
I hate these people
Probably not enough.
Shut up. Just… shut up. I’m sick of you people. And yes. I said “you people. Deal with it.
My ancestors left Kenya eons ago because it was a dangerous 💩 🕳️ even back then. It’s every bit as backwards and dangerous today.
And in Canada, they’ll offer to off you 💉 if you have a toothache, but the care you receive will be free. 👩⚕️ 💵
And finally, I don’t need some 🫏 🕳️ foreigner lecturing me on my country’s “racist past”. There are 700,000 boys in the group from 160 years ago that died settling that score.
And to the extent that there is racial animus in the United States, we can leave that at the feet of two democrats: LBJ and BHO.
This dude needs to STFU and go away.
beyond LBJ and BHO, add
Jeff Davis
Bull Connor
Nathan Bedford Forrest
George Wallace
(D)’s all
you forgot Woodrow Wilson
MSNBC was cancelled and replaced by MS NOW and it’s now 100% worse than it ever was.
It”s like the LA Times publisher firing all the old Marxists because they were too intolerant .. and then replacing them with vicious Bolsheviks.
And they demand we abide by Marquess of Queensberry rules? while they rape the peasants, burn and loot the stores and shout NO KINGS! as they setup a Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Scott Pelley earns an estimated annual salary of $7 million and has a net worth of approximately $18 million.
He has enough nOw to complain about Bari Weiss and 60 minutes “massacre “
lol
He don’t look like no American, and a committee of cuck-loving harridans dress him.
Turtle turtle
He has no knowledge of everything America has done or the planet.
Go look for another country that has done even 1/2 of what we have accomplished.
“America has never actually fully reckoned with its racist past and its original founding sin of slavery.” And will never be allowed to do so in your warped world view. Too much graft to lose doing so.
This punk a$$ bit*h is from Canada. Get the fu*k out and shut your co*ksucking mouth.
IMHO, President Lincoln laid this matter to rest in 1865 in what can be called the closest thing to Holy Scripture this country has produced:
“Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”
The debt has been paid and our conscience, clear.
The debt has been paid and our conscience, clear.
______________________________________________
agree–this paid shill should take a few moments to read this in full as well
also from lincoln with a nod to pericles:
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Amen.
Poor fool will always be a slave to his own inability to resolve racial politics. America’s institutions have, in fact, long ago done so. The airing of such moronic propaganda is a testament to the freedom that all Americans are blessed with.
Ali Velshi. A Canadian Indian muslim born in Africa. The last person in the f;g world I want to gear from, Let’s look at him by the numbers,
Canadians racist past is as bad as the US and they don;t even have the excuse of slavery. They are STILL treating their indigenous population badly. STFU.
India has the worst caste system in the world. Most other cultures have given up, Dont think India really has. STFU!
muslim, Where to start. A religion whose adherents won’f tolerate any other beliefs, Hell, they don’t even tolerate each other. STFU!
Africa. Still has slavery today. Slavery yesterday. Slavery today. Slavery tomorrow, STFU.
Only on the left does it seem we have these POS foreigners who flee their countries for greener pastures only to trash the country which provided everything they can possibly want to them. Never mind illegal immigration, aholes like this make the case for terminating all legal immigration for say 20 years.
ZTakddot, you wrote the most disgusting comment I have EVER seen. Terminate legal immigration for “say 20 years”?!?! And you fancy yourself a Patriot, I bet! I’m sure you MEANT to write, terminate legal immigration, for “say 200 years”!!!!!
I forgive you!
Yes indeed, very well said about this goofball. He has some connection to and could probably swing long-term residency in Canada or Kenya or South Africa or even India …but he didn’t. Instead he chose the USA but despite his naturalization being barely a decade ago he can’t set aside his lefty/woke narratives or his ideological blinders to get over the rest of us celebrating 250 years of the USA.
Well-said!
This dope was born in Kenya or Uganda, so why is he here in America? Go back from whence you came if you dislike America!
pls go to africa so we can once and for all eradicate rcaism as we get to the Roots of where it alllll started
It seems to be the light-skinned ones that snivel and whine the most. See: Ben Chavis.
America, Love it or leave it. AMF.
He could always renounce his citizenship and go elsewhere, if he’s so disgusted.
Not holding my breath on that.
I think it was CommoChief who said recently that we in the Old South had to confront our racist past and we actually have done quite well at it.
I recall a man from Detroit who was visiting our next door neighbors. He said he was having trouble getting used to being in our Birmingham suburb because it’s so quiet. No loud cars, no gun shots, no loud fighting, no feeling of threat, nothing but peace and quiet while enjoying a conversation. He said he wished he could stay. Maybe we’re not so bad after all.
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If he thinks the USA has to “fully reckon” with an “original founding sin of slavery”, tell me what other country does not have that “founding sin”? Until the late 18th century no one in human history seems to have come up with the idea that there was anything wrong with slavery. Every society in the world practiced it.
What makes the USA different is that at its founding many of its founders already regarded slavery as wrong, and refused to allow any mention of it in the constitution. They were unable to abolish it, because most people did not yet accept their radical new theory, but they took care not to endorse it by putting it in the constitution. That itself is a remarkable thing. The USA is also the only country that fought a war (as opposed to a slave revolt) to abolish slavery. If that’s not reckoning, I don’t know what is.
Hear! Hear!
I logged in just to up-vote this one.
If him, and others of his ilk, believe the United States is so terrible, why do they stay, and prosper? Sounds like it’s time to go back to their origins.
“America has never actually fully reckoned with its racist past and its original founding sin of slavery.”
Really? I’d say the ~300k men who died fighting to end the practice is a pretty good reckoning.
Institutional, cultural racism of whites against blacks in the US is dead and buried. The other way around…not so much.
“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.”
But strangely, black conservatives running in those new districts don’t count. The one dem stronghold district being eliminated by TN redistricting is currently held by a white leftist and the black conservative is likely to win after the redistricting.
So does it really have to do with race? I’d say not for either side. Has nothing to do with skin tone, it has everything to do with political affiliation.
So a Muslim Indian born in Kenya wants to peddle the ‘slavery is America’s original sin’ myth? I mean I guess that’ll win the approval of his audience, but it doesn’t reflect reality much. Add in that he considers voting equality to be disenfranchisement – but only when it negatively impacts Democrat interests, and he seems to be stamped in the same model as Soviet mouthpieces.
add Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes into this mix
what a bunch of stuuuupppiddd fk leftists!!
Well Francis, we’ve reconciled. I guess you’re a little late to the party. But here you are, a newly minted ‘Merican of African and Canadian origin, who has a fairly large public platform with the accompanying large money. Maybe you should be grateful that we let your sorry ass into this country and that we’re not applying tar and feathers to your cue ball head.
Just another sociopath basketcase spewing his hatred of America. Let him stew in his toxic brew.
A Canadian insulting America….how novel!
Delta is ready when you are, goat humper.
I’m uneasy with the pseudosophisticated Third World jerks that contaminate America these days.
Give him “deep sea unease” with a long walk off a short plank.
what gets me is this pose of high morality democrats always present. what nerve.
they are moochers, and fraudsters, bribe takers and bribe makers, blackmailers, traitors, thieves, election stealers, child groomers, molesters and mutilators, racists, liars, murderers
Yes, ‘racist’ America is why millions of black and brown people are sneaking over our borders to get in. Racist America elected a black president twice. Cries of ‘racism’ are all that’s left in the back of tricks used by the America hating progressive d-bags. Notice however, that none of these people who hate America ever leave.
Well, Ali Velshi, please feel free to feel any way you want about your newly adopted homeland, as just one of the freedoms you “enjoy” here, and so sorry it’s just not enough for you. As for the patriots out here, we’ll celebrate the American experiment, warts and all, for forging ahead 250 years from its founding to evolve into “a more perfect union,” while your tree falls silently in the woods. If there’s a better nation in your book (as apparently Uganda and Canada just didn’t do it for you), then go there. You’ll not be missed.
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