racial healing as opposed to holding on to the reins and blocking his lieutenant governor from taking the helm as governor justin fairfax, who is a fantastic elected leader. he has the respect of the democratic party. he has the respect statewide of voters. this is the time for northam to step down and allow someone else to lead. do you, kailey, i ll give you the last word. do you think the president should be weighing in on this? is there any reason he would remain silent on this? should he not condemn the photo. the president, of course, condemns that photo. his first tweet was about celebrating african-american history month. black history month. that was his first tweet today. this is for democrats to sort out. we call on him to resign. it s a racist photo. the president s continue little condemned white supremacist in all of its forms. i have all the dates. he s repeatedly condemned it and he needs to resign right now,
hearing about this photograph which is obviously in his words, racist and offensive. alex. absolutely. mike, quickly around you, there were some crowds beginning to build. protest ares there outside. how is the tenor of things now? reporter: they dispersed very early in the morning despite the cold. there were many who were calling for the resignation of governor northam. a lot of them advocating for the ascension of the lieutenant governor here, lieutenant governor justin fairfax. is he an african-american. he s taking a strong stand. historically on civil rights here in virginia. each year, the state legislature has an event honoring robert e. lee, the native son of virginia and commanding general of confederate forces in the civil war. he gets up, does the lieutenant governor and walked out of that session of the state legislature. always taken a strong stand on civil rights. many here calling for him to become the next governor of virginia, calling for ralph northam to step dow
being african-american, you can see how this would play, not just to northam s advantage, but to the commonwealth of virginia s advantage because the state s image is hurting again. ie mean, we ve had so many problems in modern times. we could mention all the politicians but i won t. but we ve had lots and lots of problems. joy, is there anything that he can say that would suffice and do you think as this groundswell of reaction in the last hour and a half has put forth that he might be changing his mind and actually resigning at 2:30? i wouldn t be surprised if he ultimately changed his mind and resigned. i think his political effectiveness is now zero. it s going to be very difficult for him to hang on for all the reasons the other panelists have said. the groundswell is not going to stop for him to step an aside and allow fairfax to take over the governorship. justin fairfax because of the virginia would be able
true and the people around him are telling us these things, one would assume that he would come out with some explanation. i think he ll have to provide a lot of proof, not just assertions. but as some of the other panelists have said, it s a process i think of governor northam accepting reality. because it s been sudden. it s been awful but the reality is his base of support in his own party has collapsed. there s almost no one left. there are few in the state of virginia, there are almost none outside virginia. and in the end, you have to have your base if donald trump has proved anything, it s that. you need a base to stick with you. and he s lost his base. and as several have mentioned it s not as though there were republican lieutenant governor and the state would be turned over to the republicans. there is a democratic lieutenant governor, justin fairfax, and
joining me now, joy reid, host ofid am joy, tiffany cross, former naacp ben jealous and founder for center the for politics of virginia, larry sabato. joy,y you ve been talking abou this for the last hour since we got this pushbacking whether he is in the picture. what do you make of this reporting? it is a bizarre turn because ralph northam has a couple of problems. one of them is named justin fairfax who is the very popular lieutenant governor of virginia. he underperformed northam by only about 1 percentage point. he got about 52.7% of the vote. he is a very viable option to run for governor in his own right which he could do as an incumbent and as the lone african-american governor in the u.s. if northam were to step aside. normham could do himself some