From the April 17 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press:
NBC’s Chuck Todd Grills NC Governor About Anti-LGBT Law: “How Did The State Of North Carolina ... Not Overreach?”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
CHUCK TODD (HOST): Since you signed the executive order, and it was intended to try, I think you were trying to ratchet back some of the controversy here, you still had more companies joining the boycott here, Bloomberg, Capital One, United Airlines, William Sonoma. That's just on Friday. 160 companies have called for its repeal. You still have an NBA commissioner that is not yet committing to keeping the All-Star game in Charlotte. Any estimates that we have of lost revenue so far, we have come up with calculated, conservative calculations, $39.7 million, $186 million perhaps in revenue, and some have suggested billions in lost revenue. All of this now, do you have regrets signing this law?
GOV. PAT MCCRORY (R-NC): I'm going to, as governor, as I did with mayor, I will always call out government overreach. And this example, the city of Charlotte, where I was mayor for 14 years, did government overreach. And what your pre-clip didn't mention was it was the left that brought about the bathroom bill, not the right in the city of Charlotte, like the city of Houston tried to do and was rejected by 61 percent of the vote. The city of Charlotte passed a bathroom ordinance mandate on every private sector employer in Charlotte, North Carolina, one of the largest, 15th, 16th-largest cities in the United States of America. And I think that's government overreach. It's not government's business to tell the private sector what their bathroom, locker room, or shower -- um -- practices should be. Not only the private business, but also the Y.M.C.A. and other non-profit organizations. And by the way, this is what 29 other states also do not have, these types of restroom, locker room, and bathroom policies. So--
TODD: But I thought, you know, you talked about overreach. Okay, you say Charlotte overreached.
MCCRORY: Right.
TODD: How did the state of North Carolina, the state government, not overreach in just the same way? You mentioned Houston. Voters made that decision.
MCCRORY: Right.
TODD: You can make a case, voters made the decision in Charlotte. Charlotte rejected it, then elected two new members of the city council. This has been a long debate in the city of Charlotte, this is where they came down. You guys debated for, like, ten seconds. I mean, don't you regret the time of debate?
Previously:
Media Document The Economic Cost Of North Carolina’s Anti-LGBT Law
Memo To Media: Gov. McCrory's Executive Order Didn't Fix North Carolina's Anti-LGBT Law
The Question Every Reporter Should Be Asking About Transgender Bathroom Bans