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SHERLIE SHERROD SCHOOLS ELIZABETH HASSELBECK

Shirley Sherrod Schools Elisabeth Hasselbeck

*Shirley Sherrod’s mass media tour on Thursday included a stop on “The View,” and inevitably, the show’s resident conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck challenged the ousted Agriculture Department employee over remarks she made about Republicans at the end of her speech to the NAACP.

Questioning Sherrod’s contention all along that the speech was about her own epiphany regarding race, Hasselbeck played a portion of the tape in which Sherrod said: “I haven’t seen such mean-spirited people as I’ve seen lately over this issue of health care. We’ve endured eight years of the Bushes and we didn’t do the stuff these Republicans are doing because you have a black president.”

After the clip, Hasselbeck asked Sherrod: “Where’s the epiphany where it’s not about color and it’s not about race?”

Sherrod took a moment, sighed, and said: “Why is it that there’s such opposition to something that’s so important to poor people? Again, I’m coming at it from the angle of poor people. Poor people need health care.”

As the audience applauded, Hasselbeck continued to question the racial element of those remarks, then, asked Sherrod if she was in violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits civil servants from making partisan statements.

Listen to Sherrod’s answer and the rest of their exchange below, plus other footage from her visit to the Hot Topics table.