Maine Gov. Paul LePage continues to be quite the piece of work.
LePage responded to a question about how he was tackling substance abuse in Maine. He began talking about how much of the heroin is coming into Maine from out-of-state drug dealers.
“These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty … these types of guys … they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home,” LePage told a large crowd. “Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue we have to deal with down the road.”
The governor's communication director was quick to clarify that LePage was "not making comments about race" in his warnings about drug dealers D-Money, Smoothie and Shifty impregnating Maine's young white girls.
“What is relevant is the cost to state taxpayers for welfare and the emotional costs for these kids who are born as a result of involvement with drug traffickers. His heart goes out to these kids because he had a difficult childhood, too. We need to stop the drug traffickers from coming into our state.”
Which is good to know, although it makes LePage's stated concern specifically and solely for Maine's "white girls" a bit puzzling.
So there you go. Oh—and don't go having any sympathy for the governor's "communication director" trying to bluster his way through an explanation for why the very, very racist sounding rant was not in fact a racist sounding rant, by the way. He knew what he was getting into. That man signed up for this.