Another Republican gubernatorial campaign, another casual slide into bigotry. No, not Florida; this one is in Tennessee, where Republican Bill Lee and his campaign just-as-an-aside asked a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper assigned to Democrat Karl Dean's security detail if he could snap a picture of Dean making a campaign appearance inside a mosque.
If that sounds bizarre, it is. The state trooper, who had been working security for both campaigns and was therefore known to both, casually let slip to the Lee campaign that he couldn't make it to a Lee event because he was already working Dean events elsewhere, including a "Muslim community event." It wasn't a mosque, though. It was a community event inside a falafel restaurant, and it wasn't religious (unless, like Bill O'Reilly, you find more meaning in a falafel than most people might). And Lee's campaign didn't need to ask a trooper to provide pictures of the supposedly scandalous event, because Dean posted pictures on Twitter for all the world to see.
Everyone involved is trying to play the exchange off as a joke—though the trooper in question was reassigned afterward for divulging the Democratic campaign's plans for the day to the opposing Republican campaign, which is a big official no-no. But why would that be funny?
"The nominee [Lee] heard the staff member's inquiry and stated immediately, 'I would love to have a photo of that,'" a memo from the lieutenant states.
A campaign staff member then “jokingly" asked if the lieutenant could have a "trooper take a photo for us," according to the memo.
Oh? And why would you "love" to have a photo of your opponent speaking to members of a mosque even if he did, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Lee? Of what use would that be to you?
It's Tennessee and he's a Republican, so we know the answer to that. He thought a photo like that might be useful so that he could send the reliably racist members of his base into a pants-wetting panic that his opponent was Being Nice To Muslims. In Tennessee!
Lee claims he doesn't remember the conversation described in the memo, which appears to be the post-Kavanaugh Republican answer to every untoward thing a prominent Republican does. Ah well. Perhaps his campaign will still be able to make something of his opponent's appearance at a falafel restaurant.
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