Comment: It really shouldn’t come as a great surprise, but white supremacist elements are targeting the Tea Party movement for infiltration and co- option. With the GOP’s history of involvement with Nazi and fascist elements, they shouldn’t be too far out of the Republican mainstream.
Excerpt: Billy Roper is a write-in candidate for governor of Arkansas and an unapologetic white nationalist.
“I don’t want non-whites in my country in any form or fashion or any status,” he says.
Roper also is a tea party member who says he has been gathering support for his cause by attending tea party rallies.
“We go to these tea parties all over the country,” Roper said. “We’re looking for the younger, potentially more radical people.”
Accusations about racism within the tea party have rumbled for a year, but they suddenly exploded this week with a resolution at the NAACP convention in Kansas City saying the party is attracting people and groups hostile to minorities.
The allegations prompted irate denials from tea party supporters, and even critics make it clear that they’re not accusing all tea parties or party members of racism.
Indeed, it’s difficult to answer the racism question because the tea party is split into hundreds of shards, and the issue of racism depends somewhat on perceptions.
Still, it’s clear that some with racist agendas are trying to make inroads into the party.
In several instances, tea party members with racist backgrounds such as Roper have played a role in party events. At the same time, The Kansas City Star has found, white nationalist groups are encouraging members to attend tea parties. One organization based in St. Louis is sponsoring tea parties of its own.
“There definitely is racism within the tea party movement,” said Daryle Lamont Jenkins, an African-American and a spokesman for One People’s Project, a Philadelphia-based group that monitors racism. “I’ve seen it, and it’s something they need to deal with now.”
The tea party absolutely rejects the racist label, for a number of reasons.
Many deny outright that any incidents of racism have occurred. They point out that there are minorities in the tea party and that tea parties are endorsing minority candidates in some races.
Others say racism may be occurring, but only on the fringes of a movement that is so decentralized that 69 tea parties exist in Missouri and 24 more in Kansas. Nonetheless, some in the party have tried to police incidents of racism and turn away white supremacists.
Brendan Steinhauser, director of campaigns for FreedomWorks, which organizes tea parties, acknowledges that some racist groups may be trying to “glom” onto the movement. But “where we see that behavior, we’re going to call them out,” he said.
He noted that one tea party in Houston helped expose a tea party leader who allegedly made a racist poster.
“Racism is something we find morally repugnant,” Steinhauser said. “It damages the movement, and it’s just not good for our image or our message.”
At the same time, Steinhauser downplays actual racist incidents, saying he hasn’t seen any himself.
“Are there infiltrators coming in to try to make it look racist or extremist? Yes,” he said. “Are there people that may have those kinds of views that are showing up at our events trying to be a part of the movement? Sure. But if you talk to 99.9 percent of these people, that’s not what they believe.”
But for Leonard Zeskind, who has written a history of the white nationalist movement, the problem is obvious.
“There are hard-core racists brewing inside the tea party movement,” said Zeskind, author of “Blood and Politics” and a Kansas City resident. “They see tea parties not only as recruitment opportunities, but as vehicles to cross over into mainstream American politics.”
Is it racism?
For many tea partiers, racism is in the eye of the beholder.
Take Ron Wight, who stood with dozens of tea party activists at the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain in April, complaining about the Obama administration, its socialist agenda and being called a racist.
Those like him who complain about President Barack Obama are accused of racism, lamented the semi-retired music teacher from Lee’s Summit.
Then he added: “If I was a black man, I’d get down on my knees and thank God for slavery. Otherwise, I could be dying of AIDS now in Africa.”
Wight doesn’t consider that comment to be racist.
“I wish slavery had never happened,” he said. “But there are some black people alive today who have never suffered one day what the people who were black went through in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. Has somebody said something stupid or done something stupid? Yes, there have been incidents.
“But with everything that has been done in this country legally and socially for the black man, it’s almost like they’ve been given a great leg up.”
Signs at tea party events that have drawn criticism also have defenders.
One poster says: “What’s the difference between the Cleveland Zoo and the White House? The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin’ African!”
Another depicts Obama as a tribal witch doctor, wearing a headdress and a bone through his nose, with the words “Obamacare: Coming soon to a clinic near you.”
While some tea party events turn away signs that might be offensive, it’s not always clear that they depict racism, party members say.
Another concern — even within the tea party — is the actions of some who are in leadership positions.
A photo circulating on the web shows Dale Robertson, founder and president of Houston-based TeaParty.org — also called the 1776 Tea Party — at a 2009 rally carrying a sign that said: “Congress = Slave Owner, Taxpayer = Niggar.”
In an interview, Robertson denied his sign was racist, saying someone altered the picture on the web.
“The original sign said ‘slave,’ and somebody changed it to the N‑word,” he said. But then he defended the use of the word.
“I looked the word up in Webster, and it says it means politically unrepresented,” he said.
Robertson also sent a fundraising e‑mail that contained a picture depicting Obama as what some describe as a stereotypical black pimp with a thin mustache and wearing a zebra-striped fedora trimmed in white fur with a black feather on top.
Robertson said allegations of racism in the tea party are coming from “people who have an agenda, and all they want to do is slander this movement.”
But some tea party groups have denounced Robertson.
“We do not choose to associate with people that use his type of disgusting language,” the Houston Tea Party Society said in a statement issued on its website.
The Tea Party Patriots also shunned Robertson.
“We stand firmly against any expression of racism and the kind of language and opinion expressed in his (N‑word) sign,” the group said.
The Council of Conservative Citizens, a St. Louis-based group that promotes the preservation of the white race, has sponsored its own tea parties in some Southern states.
The council’s website has referred to blacks as “a retrograde species of humanity” and said non-white immigration would turn the country into a “slimy brown mass of glop.”
Gordon Baum, the group’s founder, told The Star that the council encourages members to participate in tea parties.
He described the tea party rallies as “mainly a white thing, because there’s not a whole lot of blacks that participate, and the ones that do get to be speakers.”
That leads some groups into a bizarre hypersensitivity, he said.
“They have black speakers, and sometimes when they can’t get one lined up, they just get some poor devil that’s on their side, black guy, in the audience and drag him up on stage,” he said.
Some other white supremacy groups also see tea parties as recruiting grounds.
Roper, a former organizer for the neo-Nazi National Alliance and now chairman of White Revolution, said he has been attending tea party rallies to recruit members and garner support for his 2010 write-in campaign for Arkansas governor.
Roper, a member of the ResistNet.com tea party, said in an interview that he sees tea parties as a base of support.
Have tea parties been receptive?
“It varies,” he said. “If I go to some of the larger tea parties, I’ll find a few dozen people at least who are seeing the world through the same lenses I have.”
Roper said he was kicked out of one tea party rally by a man who said racists weren’t welcome.
“I told him I’m not a white supremacist,” Roper said. “I’m a separatist.”
Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke has posted a video on his website addressing tea party supporters. Duke says in the video that the majority of tea party activists “oppose affirmative action and diversity, which are nothing more than programs of racist discrimination against white people.”
Tea party on racism
Last fall, the Council of Conservative Citizens put fliers promoting the group on cars at a tea party event in Virginia. In response, leaders of the Roanoke Tea Party publicly disavowed the council.
In April, an Alabama attorney who was scheduled to speak at a tea party rally in Wausau, Wis., was asked to withdraw after it was revealed that he had a history of speaking at white supremacist events.
Those are among several examples of tea parties making it clear they don’t support racist views.
At the same time, though, supporters want to make sure racist incidents aren’t blown out of proportion.
“We’ve got to recognize that there are freaks at both ends and they will attempt to attach themselves to legitimate movements,” said Woody Cozad, a former chairman of the Missouri Republican Party who has spoken at tea party events.
“But that does not say anything about the movement unless the movement endorses or embraces them, which the tea party has not done that I know of.”
Indeed, some tea partiers say they haven’t seen racism at all.
Lloyd Marcus, a black conservative and musician who has both spoken and entertained at tea party rallies, said he has been to 200 events and never witnessed any racist incidents.
“It’s women, it’s families, it’s grandparents, it’s kids,” Marcus said. “The decent folks that I meet at the tea parties, to be called a racist is devastating to them.”
Ward Connerly, a conservative African-American who has spoken at numerous tea party events, said he has no qualms about the tea party movement.
“I’ve probably spoken at over 20 tea party events in the last three months, and I’m convinced that these folks are ordinary people who are frustrated with government,” he said.
Connerly acknowledged that minorities are scarce at tea party events he’s attended, but he attributed it to “the attitude that minorities often have about the political process.”
Sometimes language differences hold back blacks and Latinos, he said, while those of Asian descent don’t participate in political events unless it relates to what they see as their own identity.
Many also are complaining about racism on the other side. They accuse the NAACP of failing to denounce racist incidents by African-Americans, such as voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party during the 2008 elections.
“There’s no room for that kind of vitriolic language in a civilized democratic society,” NAACP spokesman Chris Fleming said Thursday about the voter incidents.
Watchdog fears
Those who monitor hate groups are worried about racism in the tea party.
“There are probably close to a couple thousand of these local tea party chapters now,” said Devin Burghart, vice president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which is finalizing a special report on tea parties.
“A number of these groups have been either thoroughly infiltrated by more hard-core folks, or at least those more hard-core folks are allowed to swim in that same ocean.”
As examples, Burghart cited Robertson, as well as some speakers promoted by tea parties, such as Red Beckman, an anti-Semite who was once evicted from his land by the Internal Revenue Service for refusing to pay taxes.
The racism isn’t coming only from the fringe, Burghart said.
“This is not just a nut showing up in the audience with a crazy sign,” Burghart said. “It’s someone who they vetted and decided to give a platform to.”
Zeskind said racist tendencies may be broader within the party than even critics realize. . . .
Uh oh, it looks like
someonealmost everyone didn’t get the “don’t act like a giant racist” memo at this year’s CPAC:One of the strangest aspects of American democracy is how little interest there generally is in the primaries given how much more influential a vote in a primary can be compared to a vote in the general election given the relatively low voter turnout for primaries and the de facto one-party rule for so many state and local elections. Plus, when you vote in the primary, you get to vote against all the candidates like this:
Of course, voters that skip the primaries and only vote in the general election might still get a chance to vote against these kinds of candidates.
Shocker:
Yep, a total shocker.
You gotta wonder what Scalise and the other speakers might have talked about at the event.
The self-flagellation of the GOP’s House Whip is going to be interesting...
“The novelty of David Duke has worn off,” said Scalise. “The voters in this district are smart enough to realize that they need to get behind someone who not only believes in the issues they care about, but also can get elected. Duke has proven that he can’t get elected, and that’s the first and most important thing.”
So the GOP’s House Whip is like an electable David Duke, who was just a novelty. Nothing novel about that!
“If Scalise is going to be crucified — if Republicans want to throw Steve Scalise to the woods, then a lot of them better be looking over their shoulders,” Duke told Fusion:
Uh oh.
Also, uh oh:
With the GOP now facing another “we’re not the the bigot party!” moment, it’s worth asking “What would Rand Do?”
The answer: Mostly just deny everything. And the band plays on:
“Some scholars affiliated with the Mises Institute have combined dark biblical prophecy with apocalyptic warnings that the nation is plunging toward economic collapse and cultural ruin.” Dark biblical prophecies from Mises Institute affiliates. LOL (check out pages 418–419)
It was all so much easier when the GOP could pretend it doesn’t have a history of courting the white supremacist vote. Now it’s just awkward to see the GOP having to pretending that it totally courted that vote by accident. Awkward and painful. For everyone:
“If Republicans truly wanted to take this country back, they would make use of the majority of people in this country — Whites — and mobilize...The Dems play identity politics with non-whites. The only way the Republicans will win is if they do the same with Whites.” Bwah! Ha! Ha! That was a good one. The part of Scalise comparing the white supremacists to the League of Women voters was pretty hilarious too.
And the hits keep coming:
“Above all, Boehner and his fellow Republicans want the story to blow over. It’s not the start they wanted to the 114th Congress, and they have nothing to gain by discussing it. Criticizing Scalise could offend the GOP base, and any praise has to be cautious given the nature of the controversy.”
That does seem to summarize the situation well. At least the old situation. It turns out there’s a new situation:
Scalise didn’t go to the EURO conference at all. He merely attended a different neighborhood association meeting that happened to be at the same hotel on the same day and that happened to be organized by the same David Duke associate, Kenny Knight, that booked the room for the EURO conference. Also, Kenny Knight had nothing else to do with the EURO conference. He just booked the room as a favor for David Duke while Duke was away in Russia. Yep, that’s totally what happened:
Woah! Well that’s quite an explanation from mutual Duke/Scalise associate Kenny Knight: he was merely neighbors with Scalise, and “now and then I’d see him at a Republican function, we’d say hello, but we never exchanged any philosophy ideas.” Presumably Knight never “exchanged any philosophy ideas” with the other folks at these Republican functions, because that would be scanalous.
Anyways, so Knight wasn’t really involved with the EURO conference at all....except for booking the room as a favor for Duke. But he didn’t really attend it. No, he was only involved with the Jefferson Heights Civic Association conference that took place at the same hotel just a few hours earlier and that was the conference Scalise spoke at. Not the EURO conference.
Well that settles that! It was all a big misunderstanding. Uh huh:
Ah. Well, it sure looks like Scalise’s alibi turned out to be a lie and he really did attend the EURO conference. Oh well. It’s kind of moot at this point.
David Duke once again threatened to ‘name names’ of politicians who continue to attack Steve Scalise which means that David Duke is now successfully publicly blackmailing politicians using his own political taint as the WMD. And why not? He’s probably got a lot of names to name, after all.
So we should probably expect see the GOP continuing to stand by Scalise while simultaneously denouncing Duke. But, of course, that may not be good enough, because the white supremacists not only want to see the attacks on Scalise end. They want to see the attacks on their white supremacist ideology end too. So the GOP has to defend Scalise while not attack the white supremacists too much. And there’s not really anything the GOP can do other than continue its weird political squirming.
Squirm baby squirm
“The Republican Party has made a lot of noise recently about reaching out to minorities in this country...It’s very hard to understand how the party is going to do that when it turns out that one of their most important leaders has been giving speeches to an openly white supremacist group.”
This sounds like a job for bold party leadership. Have fun with that.
It looks like Steve Scalise might finally be on the way out as House Majority Whip now that the Scalise/Duke scandal has finally started threatening what matters most to the GOP: its money:
So, wait, are we seriously supposed to believe that any of the GOP’s major donors haven’t already come to terms with the GOP as a political vehicle for whatever-it-takes-including-pandering-to-racist-sentiments no holds barred electoral victory and general cronyism a LONG time ago? Winning elections and sharing the spoils and rigging the system so only billionaires can win. THAT’s the real heart of the GOP.
Is the same big money THAT HAS BEEN FINANCING RACE-BAITERS FOR YEARS is going to suddenly get squeamish about continuing to financing the same party for doing the same thing it’s been doing for over a generation? Race baiting is what gets the rabble to get enthusiastic about dismantling the New Deal. You can’t just suddenly stop a strategy like that. Dismantling the New Deal is a core GOP value.
Similarly, taking money from poor and middle-class people of all races and somehow giving it to the wealthy is a basic core value of the GOP’s true base (right-wing billionaires and thier millionaire minions) and pandering to the white supremacists vote is integral to living according those values. That’s not suddenly changing.
Sure, this Scalise thing is potentially an issue for donors that are seen giving to a white supremacist panderer. But isn’t that what Citizens United is supposed to be for when it comes to the major donors?
Instead, it sure looks the GOP might just be grasping around for an excuse to dump Scalise without looking like they did it because he was cavorting with David Duke’s outfit. Why? Well, maybe it has to do with the fact that Duke is blackmailing the GOP with the names of more bigot panderers the party doesn’t back off Scalise and stop making a big deal out the situation. So the party needs to dump Scalise, but in a way that sends a “We, the GOP party leadership, totally support Scalise, but it’s those overly sensitive billionaires that are forcing us to move him out of leadership”-signal so David Duke doesn’t flip out and start naming names.
Sure, GOP, it’s not that you’re embarrassed about being directly associated with David Duke (as opposed to the normal vague philosophically alignment with those sympathetic to Duke’s views). You’re not scared of David Duke. It’s the elite donors that are forcing you to get rid of Scalise. Uh huh.
The GOP sure is lucky it doesn’t ever have to actually deal with its white supremacy infestation:
Remember when GOP staffers were floating the idea that Steve Scalise might have to step down if it impacted his ability to raise funds from big donors. Yeah, that’s not going to be a problem:
“We have continued to move forward with our first-quarter plans...We look forward to a successful quarter and a successful cycle and doing all we can do to keep and expand our majority.” Have fun expanding that majority.
Birds of a feather...
“Brimelow, Spencer, Taylor, and their ideological allies often have trouble finding venues venues to host their anti-black, anti-Hispanic, and anti-immigrant events. Providing a platform for white supremacists, as it turns out, isn’t great for hotel #brands”.
While hosting White Nationalist gatherings might be a challenge for some hotels, sharing their views at the CPAC conference doesn’t seem to be a very big challenge for the White Nationalists.
With Donald Trump’s continued domination of the GOP’s 2016 field still going strong, the question of “how long before he implodes?” is steadily getting replaced with “can anyone stop him?” But those aren’t the only questions being asked. In particular, there’s still the pesky question of whether or not he’ll make an independent bid if he doesn’t get the nomination and feels treated poorly by the GOP. It’s a very reasonable and relevant question given the number of times Donald Trump has threatened to do just that. And it just got a lot more reasonable and relevant:
Yes, Roger Ailes demands an apology from Donald Trump. Good luck with that!
So now that Donald Trump and Fox News are settling into frenemy status, the question of that third-party run just got a lot more interesting! Especially because there are some deadlines involved and they’re fast approaching. For instance, South Carolina’s GOP has a rule: if you want to run in that state’s primary, you had better sign a GOP loyalty oath that promises you won’t do an independent bid. You better sign it by the end of September. And now other states are considering following suit.
So if Trump’s tiff with Fox keeps flaring up over the next few weeks, we could be looking at a situation where Trump has to pledge his loyalty to a political party with flagship TV station that’s basically declared war on Trump. Yowza!
Strange times. But let’s not forget, they could always get stranger. For instance, let’s not forget about another threat recently made by one of the GOP’s frenemies if he wasn’t treated fairly. It was one of those fun episodes that the GOP would most assuredly like us to never remember, but is just really hard to forget:
“The Republican Party’s issues are my issues...the difference with me in the Republican Party is that I didn’t betray them when I got elected.”
Yes, back in January, David Duke was so miffed with the GOP that he was threatening to run against the House Majority Whip, Steve Scalise, after Scalise’s sleazy dismissals and disses of Dukes’ “European-American Unity and Rights Organization” even though Scalise was courting those very same voters basically using David Duke’s electoral strategy for years! Even if you can’t understand Duke’s worldview, it’s not hard to understand his frustration.
But that was back in January, and a whole lot has changed since then. Changed in ways that should make folks like David Duke look far more kindly on the GOP than they may have in January:
“So this is a great opportunity...So although we can’t trust him to do what he says, the other Republican candidates won’t even say what he says. So he’s certainly the best of the lot. And he’s certainly somebody that we should get behind in terms, ya know, raising the image of this thing.”
It sure sounds like David Duke has found his candidate for 2016! But as we just saw, the rest of the GOP establishment is basically trying to take down Duke’s new candidate of choice. And this less than a year after the GOP publicly unfriended Duke in a round of epic ass-covering.
All that leaves some obvious questions: Will Trump actually stick with the GOP despite the fact that its trying to take his candidacy down? And what about David Duke and his threat to run for Scalise’s House seat? Duke threatened to run in January and, lo and behold, the presidential candidate that’s running on the kind of platform we would probably expect from a Duke candidacy is dominating the GOP field. Doesn’t Steve Scalise, the House Majority Whip, deserve a primary challenge at this point given the GOP’s War on Trump? It seems like something Duke should be considering right now.
Donald Trump responded to questions about his response to David Duke’s quasi-endorsement: Of course Duke prefers Trump over all the other candidates. Everyone likes Trump! Also, Trump doesn’t actually know anything about Duke but, sure, he’ll repudiate Duke...if that makes everyone happy:
So the only White Nationalist that could possibly be upset about that entire non-repudiation ‘repudiation’ is David Duke since Trump allegedly doesn’t know who he is (which probably stung a bit, all things considered).
Will the growing list of antics like this impact Trump’s chances of actually getting the GOP nomination? Probably, although not necessarily negatively.
“I did give him a book about Hitler....But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting.”:
“If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”
Huh. He must be a natural (that was probably a poor choice of words).
What’s that high-pitch, inaccurate, and highly racist whistling sound coming from Donald Trump’s twitter feed? Is he blowing that dog-whistle again?
Oh. According to various media reports, Donald Trump was just blowing a ‘controversial crime statistics’-whistle (that he just happened to get from a neo-Nazi):
“The image began spreading on Twitter when it was posted by a neo-Nazi who uses a swastika as his avatar. The account almost exclusively tweets racist memes.”
Wow. We sure have come a long way...on the treadmill of bigotry...
There are reports that a Trump supporter yelled “Sieg heil” during a Trump rally last night as a protester was getting violently dragged out by security. Sadly, we can reasonably predict a lot more stories like this in coming months...based on all the stories like this from prior months:
“The toxicity seemed to peak Monday night in Las Vegas, where Trump supporters reportedly yelled a Nazi salute and called for a protester to be set on fire.”
Well, let’s hope we’ve seen peak violence from the Trump’s brownshirts. Probably not, but let’s hope so. You have to imagine the GOP’s leaders are kind of hoping it’s peaked too.
Maine’s GOP governor Paul Le Page had an interesting explanation for why he shouldn’t apologize for saying that heroin dealers from New York City were coming to Maine and often “impregnate a young, white girl before they leave.” There’s no need to apologized because he meant to say “Maine women” and just accidentally said “white women”. Also, Maine is 95% white. So it was an accident that’s also 95% accurate so it’s all good. That’s his explanation:
“Instead of ‘Maine women,’ I said ‘white women’ and I’m not going to apologize to the Maine women for that because if you go to Maine, you’ll see that we’re essentially 95 percent white.”
Well that’s all cleared up. What’s next for the GOP’s never-ending forays into white nationalist politics? How about a foray of white nationalists into the GOP’s politics:
“I urge you to vote for Donald Trump because he is the one candidate who points out that we should accept immigrants who are good for America...We don’t need Muslims. We need smart, well-educated white people who will assimilate to our culture. Vote Trump.”
One of the fascinating things about the Trump phenomena is that getting associated with a stunt like this probably won’t hurt Trump’s campaign directly because white nationalist dog-whistling is a central theme of his whole campaign. He’s clearly very comfortable with his fellow travelers. But you have to wonder how the growing open embrace of Trump by the white nationalists in 2016 will have on the GOP’s generic party brand in 2016 and beyond because the Trump campaign sort of doubles as free advertising for an array of white nationalist organizations and that’s why this is probably just the start of neo-Nazi’s openly robo-calling people in support of a GOP candidate in 2016. The Trump phenomena is just too big an opportunity for these groups to pass up.
It’s a dynamic that has to be keeping GOP strategists up at night. Maybe not super late.
Maine’s governor, Paul Le Page, really, really, really wants everyone to know that just because he insists on publicly asserting that the state’s heroin epidemic — which appears to largely be a predictable side-effect of the state imposing tighter restrictions on prescription opioid painkillers — is primarily a consequence of out of state black and Hispanic drug dealers (who then proceed to impregnate a white girl before they leave, according to Le Page), despite the evidence showing most of Maine’s dealers are white people from Connecticut. He’s “totally not racist” at all and has a desire to shoot anyone would suggests otherwise:
“The next day, Drew Gattine, a Democratic state legislator, criticized LePage and said his comments did nothing to help fight heroin. LePage responded by leaving Gattine a voicemail saying he was not a racist, calling Gattine a “socialist cocksucker” and “son of a bitch,” and daring the Democrat to release the voicemail, which Gattine did. Elsewhere, he said he wished that dueling was legal so that he could challenge Gattine and “point it right between his eyes.””
As we can see, Paul LePage really, really, really doesn’t like anyone even insinuating that he’s a racist. He also really, really, really seems to want to see heroin dealers shot. Specifically all the black and Hispanic ones:
Yes, Governor LePage has identified the enemy to the people of Maine: people of color. But this is totally not a racist assertion because he has evidence that they really are “the enemy” in terms of disproportionately trafficking heroin into the state. He just happens to be the only person to possess that evidence and curiously refuses to share it:
So now we know: don’t call Paul LePage a racist. Also, if you’re black or hispanic, you are the enemy of the people of Maine. Of this, Paul LePage is extremely confident. If that seems racist to you, you’re the bigot:
And now you know why he’s referred to as Maine’s mini-Trump. So what can we expect to hear next from Maine’s mini-Trump? Well, based on today’s press conference, not much. Ever again. Or, more likely, an explanation from LePage for why he’s once again speaking with reporters since he just declared he’s never speaking to the press ever again because he’s sick of these racist ‘gotcha’ moments. Also, he’s totally not mentally ill:
“I will no longer speak to the press ever again after today...And I’m serious. Everything will be put in writing. I am tired of being caught — the gotcha moments.”
Aww...no more self-inflicted gotcha moments for Maine’s mini-Trump. Hopefully this means LePage can refocus during his remaining days in office and actually address an area that’s very, very dear to his heart: the discrimination that comes with poverty:
Ok, if Maine’s mini-Trump wants to show how caring he is tackling poverty is a pretty good start. Poverty certainly is a pervasive form of discrimination.
That said, the issue of poverty may not have been the best topic to use to deflect from his blatant bigotry. Just be sure not to mention this to him. We don’t need anyone getting shot.