Peak Ignorance: Watch Sharpton Argue Founding Fathers Never ‘Tried to Overthrow the Government’

The social media platform X, one of the internet’s few bastions of free speech, often presents us with timely reminders.

In this case, it has reminded us that establishment operatives who cite the Founding Fathers almost invariably do so in ways that strike sensible observers as either comically inept or purposefully disingenuous.

For instance, in recent days X users have recirculated an 18-month-old clip of MSNBC commentator and professional race-baiter Al Sharpton making a comment about two Pantheon-level Founding Fathers that sounded too ludicrous to attribute to anything besides a momentary lapse in Sharpton’s cognitive function, for no truly skilled liar would have said something that silly on purpose.

“One day our children’s children will read American history,” Sharpton said in a clip posted to X on Sunday, “and can you imagine our reading that James Madison or Thomas Jefferson tried to overthrow the government, so they could stay in power? That’s what we’re looking at; we’re looking at American history.”

Al Sharpton Asks: Can you imagine if James Madison or Thomas Jefferson tried to overthrow the government?

🙄🙄pic.twitter.com/Swr2Gn7qjM

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) February 16, 2025

Madison and Jefferson trying to overthrow a government? Perish the thought.

Jefferson, of course, wrote the Declaration of Independence. He also served as a wartime governor of Virginia for two years (1779-81) that coincided with a British invasion.

Meanwhile, Madison served on the Virginia Council of State then in the Continental Congress. Needless to say, the British government did not recognize the legitimacy of either.

In other words, both revolutionaries stood to lose everything had the British succeeded in reestablishing their colonial authority.

As we know, however, that did not happen. Madison and Jefferson, to Sharpton’s horror, helped overthrow their government.

Sharpton, of course, meant to use the Founding Fathers as rhetorical props in the establishment’s never-ending melodrama about President Donald Trump and the Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021.

As we noted at the time, Sharpton’s gaffe during an Aug. 2, 2023, appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where panelists discussed then-special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump on charges pertaining to the Capitol incursion, drew well-deserved mockery from social media users.

Prominent pro-Trump investigative journalist Laura Loomer, for instance, called it “MUST WATCH STUPIDITY.”

MUST WATCH STUPIDITY:

Professional race baiter Al Sharpton asks MSNBC panel, “Can you imagine if James Madison or Thomas Jefferson tried to overthrow the government?”

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

Oh

My

GOD pic.twitter.com/u76OJpdHLx

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) August 3, 2023

Recently, Sharpton came under heavy criticism for accepting money from former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign. After the campaign donated $500,000 to Sharpton’s National Action Network, the MSNBC host gave Harris a sympathetic interview.

Of course, recirculating Sharpton’s 2023 comments should not necessarily call to mind the former and now best-forgotten vice president. Instead, they should remind us that Sharpton, who has sown racial division for a living, works for the establishment, and establishment operatives, when not encouraging the removal or destruction of statues to the Founding Fathers, only cite those great men in the most cynical ways imaginable.

For instance, if establishment operatives can frustrate a peaceful populist revolution by distorting early U.S. history, they will do so.

In recent weeks, federal judges have usurped power in order to slow Trump’s ongoing assault on the deep state.

On X, that usurpation has prompted a debate about Chief Justice John Marshall’s landmark 1803 opinion in “Marbury v. Madison,” wherein Marshall effectively invented the concept of judicial review, which does not appear in the Constitution, but which judge-worshiping law-school graduates always rely upon to buttress their false claim that the judiciary must decide the Constitution’s meaning for the other two branches.

JD Vance must have slept through his Constitutional law class at Yale. Just to remind, see Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison (1803): “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” https://t.co/itO9ig8CHq

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) February 10, 2025

Marbury v. Madison is not found within the text of the Constitution. It was a judicial edict.

Thanks to all the goobers and reply guys who “thought they said something.”

They did not. https://t.co/EcH1GGqxUC

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) February 17, 2025

Madison, the sitting secretary of state and defendant in the case, ignored the ruling. Jefferson, the sitting president, likewise ignored it.

Years later, in fact, Jefferson described the principle of judicial review as constitutional suicide.

Ironically, even Marshall admitted that for the Supreme Court to order the secretary of state to take the action demanded by plaintiffs (government office-seekers — surprise, surprise) in “Marbury v. Madison” would have been to exercise a power not granted to the Court by the Constitution. In other words, SCOTUS could review a law’s constitutionality, but it could not control the executive branch.

Would establishment operatives like to have a conversation about Madison and Jefferson now? After all, if we can restore their vision of the Constitution (or even Marshall’s comparatively limited assertion of judicial review), then the American people might win back their republic.

In the meantime, we may thank Sharpton and his silliness for the unintended-yet-timely reminder of our true founding principles.

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