Northam, stormed, tells the Cabinet that he will not resign and that he will be labeled "racist for life"



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Northam oversaw a cabinet meeting scheduled for Monday morning, which a source inside the meeting described as "solemn".

According to this source, the governor specifically stated that when he resigned, he would resign as a "racist for life", and that the only way out was to stay in office and convince people that he was not in this position. picture and that the picture does not represent who he is.

No Cabinet member has resigned, nor is there a threat of resignation, the source said. This person stated that there was tension in the room and that many people were worried that, despite the governor's desire to clarify his name, he would have little chance of regaining Virginians' trust. .

Cabinet members are collectively "fighting" for this situation and none of them think it's racist – but its explanation of what happened there 24 years is "unsustainable," said the source.

"We are struggling here, there is no better way to say it, we all love the governor," the source told CNN. "We do not think he has a racist bone in his body – but he does not seem to be able to explain it, and that makes it very difficult for us to stick to him."

Northam said at a meeting of all his staff that he needed more time to decide on his future, after a decades-old racist photo surfaced on his page. the directory, told CNN a Democrat from Virginia informed by several officials present at the meeting. The Democrat said the meeting was intense and Northam and his chief of staff were described as "emotional."

On Monday, a Virginia Democrat informed CNN that Clark Mercer, the governor's chief of staff, had told other senior aides that they owed the governor to stay with him while he was there. was looking for a way to clean himself.

At this point, there is no sign of rallying around the conflicting governor, something that will have to happen if he hopes to respect his own standard of staying that he can continue to govern effectively. . On Monday morning protesters gathered in front of the Governor's Mansion in Richmond.

The Democratic governor hastily convened a meeting of senior officials of his government Sunday night to see if anyone who had close ties with him would be willing to support him during a storm of controversy around the world. 39, a racist picture several decades old.

Here's who called for the resignation of Ralph Northam

The meeting did not follow the path of Northam. During the meeting, not a single person told the governor to stay and fight, said an informed source of the conversation.

Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who is black and would presume that Northam was to retire, told reporters Monday in Richmond that he had nothing to add to his weekend statement, in which he stated that he could not Norton forgave the past actions, but did not call him to resign.

"I believe the governor must make the decision that is in the best interest of the Commonwealth of Virginia," Fairfax said Monday. "I know a lot of people have called him to resign, I'm in a unique position, obviously, as a lieutenant governor and as a person who should take on this position if he resigns be very circumspect and I have to think about people or the Commonwealth. "

He added that his last conversation with Northam was "probably a few days ago".

Despite calls for Northam's resignation, Kirk Cox, chairman of the Virginia House of Representatives in the Virginia House of Representatives, told reporters Monday morning that the General Assembly had no desire to forcibly overthrow Northam and that the current situation did not fall under the two constitutional provisions for a governor to be forcibly removed.

After first announcing Friday night that he was on the picture appearing on his page of his 1984 medical yearbook, which shows a person dressed in Blackface and another wearing the hood and white robes of KKK, Northam now insists that he's not one of the two people in the photo. He hopes to convince the people for whom he is responsible that the opportunity is given to him to explain what happened and that the photo does not reflect the person that he is.

McAuliffe predicts that Northam will do the right thing.

The governor had hoped that a press conference on Saturday afternoon would reverse the course of things in his favor. He tried to prove that he was not the person in the photo, but he admitted to appearing at Blackface at another time of the same year, at a dance competition in San Antonio.

The fallout from the press conference was swift and overwhelming. Many of the important leaders who had already called for his resignation reiterated this call. The few people detained at the time called for him to step down, including two US state senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, who had privately encouraged him to resign.

This story has been updated.

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