BILL HEMMER (HOST): Did you expect the government to sue you. Is that why you fired the first shot yesterday morning?
NC LT. GOV. DAN FOREST: Absolutely. Regardless of whether they decided to sue us or not, we had to fire back. Because, really what they are doing, Bill, is completely unconstitutional and its against the rule of law. This is the heavy hand of the federal government is using extortion to try to bully the states into having their way.
HEMMER: You know what the government thinks about this. Loretta Lynch, strong words directed at you and others leading this fight in North Carolina, just listen there.
[…]
HEMMER: She is linking this directly to the civil rights movement in the history in certain parts of the country, including your state, how do you respond?
FOREST: Well I think it's shameful that you would take the protection of women and children in bathrooms, something that human decency has ruled for decades in this country and all of a sudden equate that to Jim Crow laws in the South. It’s a shameful attempt to say that somehow North Carolina is discriminating against somebody, when that's not the case at all. What we had was a radical, out of touch ordinance in the city of Charlotte, that mandated that all signs have to come off bathrooms, there can be no more male and female signs on bathrooms. That’s just unconscionable. And what we did was we had to strike that down. So it was unconstitutional, it was extreme, we struck it down and really returned to status quo in North Carolina. So for her to say somehow we're discriminating in North Carolina now means that she really doesn't understand the situation that's going on here.
