U.S. has 'dark and terrible past'

Editor’s note: Each week, WorldNetDaily White House correspondent Les Kinsolving asks the tough questions almost no one else will ask. And each week, WorldNetDaily brings you the transcripts of those dialogues with the president and his spokesman.

At today’s White House news briefing, WND asked presidential press secretary Scott McClellan about a proposal for paying reparations to descendants of slaves.

WND: The Washington Times this morning in its editorial “Shaking Down Wachovia,” noted that lawyer Robert Brock contends that the government should pay each descendant of a slave $500,000, or an estimated total of $13 trillion. And my question is: What is the president’s position on this and the rest of the slavery reparations proposals?

McCLELLAN: I think the president has addressed it in remarks repeatedly, and that’s his view when it comes to our own nation’s past. It is a dark and terrible past. The president often points out our own history when we were in the process of building a truly free nation and a truly democratic nation. There were great injustices that occurred in our own history. And the president has acknowledged those injustices and our own past, and he often talks about that, Les. I think you’ve heard — I think you’ve heard his comments on it.