Well-known bigot and top-tier hatemonger Ann Coulter had a full-on racist Twitter tantrum Thursday, after an Asian-American reporter for Media Matters for America revealed that a senior immigration official is a huge devotee of her special brand of racist spewings. There’s a lot of layers to this story, so let’s start at the top.
Midday on Thursday, journalist Eric Hananoki told the tale of a one-sided love story between former Trump campaign adviser and current top ICE honcho Jon Feere and famous xenophobe Ann Coulter.
Before joining U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a senior official, Jon Feere repeatedly praised Ann Coulter and promoted her bigoted columns against immigrants.
Feere is a senior adviser for ICE at the Department of Homeland Security. He also worked as an adviser on President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and as a legal policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies, a virulently anti-immigrant and nativist group that was founded by white nationalist John Tanton.
Hananoki went on to present a collection of Feere’s tweets from years gone by, which painted a picture of a virulent bigot who has absolutely no business working at the department responsible for enforcing American immigration policies. Feere, like racist Iowa Rep. Steve King, apparently is also a huge fan of anti-immigrant and white supremacist website VDare.
But this is about Feere, and his love for Ann Coulter. Here are just a few of the fanboy tweets Hananoki uncovered, posted between 2014 and 2016.
Yep, that’s disgusting.
Clearly they’re soulmates if they scream the same hateful things, right?
Nothing creepy about this picture at all.
Nothing wrong with sizing up the competition for the love of your hate-crime dreamgirl, right? Powerlifting and doughnuts?
ICE, predictably, offered no comment on its senior staffer’s adoration of Coulter. Hananoki hit “publish,” tweeted out his piece, moved on with his day. Within an hour, Coulter had seized upon the article, and proceeded to go on a seemingly endless anti-Asian rant on Twitter. We’re talking totally nonsensical, Trump-level Twitter temper tantrum.
First, she missed the entire point of the post, namely that a top ICE official is a fan of her special brand of hate. She was so busy missing the point, she forgot to be flattered.
Obviously this makes zero sense, and reflects nothing covered in Hananoki’s Feere story. Racism affects Asian-Americans, African-Americans, immigrants of most origins, and other marginalized groups. That’s basically how white supremacy works.
Then, Coulter decided to celebrate Black History Month by attacking an Asian-American writer with this list of Black People Things She’s Heard Of.
Next, the blonde monster tried to turn every black person against Hananoki with this intelligent accusation that, like her other tweets, has literally nothing to do with his article on Feere.
Just in case all the black people weren’t listening the first time, she attempted to use her succubus powers to summon them a different way. Check out this cool nickname she gave Hananoki!
Personally, I’d wear that on a T-shirt and know plenty of people who also deserve to rock that title. At this point, Matt Gertz, another journalist at Media Matters, noticed that Coulter had been coming for his colleague for nearly 30 minutes straight.
Coulter then appointed Gertz to the Racism Slayer team.
Coulter also didn’t hesitate to point out that he was Jewish in this nonsensical tweet. Just in case, you know, he forgot.
And just like that, 38 minutes after she began, an apparently depleted Coulter retreated to her hatred cave, ostensibly to recharge her bigot batteries before her next attempt to pit people of color against each other. (News flash, Annie: You’re not the first to try this Asian-American vs. African-American rock ‘em sock ‘em game for your own benefit.)
Kimberly Yam of the Huffington Post checked in with Hananoki after the dust settled. He seemed as puzzled by the whole thing as anyone.
“It surprised me because her attacks on me for being Asian seem so beside the point of the article, but it didn’t because she has a long history of open racism,” Hananoki told HuffPost. “Her whole thing is trying to get her followers mad at others ― and you’ve definitely been seeing that with how she constantly demonizes immigrants to this country. And it only reinforces how disturbing it is that Jon Feere, a senior official at ICE, loves her work.”
Hananoki also pointed out that Asians and Asian-Americans have a long history of experiencing racism in this country, which Coulter willfully chose to ignore.
Ultimately, Coulter’s attacks didn’t make much sense, Hananoki said, especially since Asian-Americans have long been targets of racism in the U.S. The very first major legislation that explicitly banned a group of people from entering the U.S. based on ethnicity was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which put a 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration that was eventually made permanent and extended to other Asian nationalities. Restrictions on immigration from Asia were lifted with the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.
“Of course Asians can and should speak about racism, especially given the history of Asian immigration to this country and the xenophobic reactions to that,” Hananoki said.
Which brings us back to the beginning. Anti-racism is work that should be done by all of us, and those who openly embrace Coulter’s brand of hate have no place anywhere in the hierarchy of American immigration enforcement. Coulter was blatantly trying to distract from the fact that one of her devotees is a top dog at ICE, but that simply won’t abide.
So the question remains: What, if anything, will Homeland Security do, now that it knows (and we know that it knows) it has a Coulter-obsessed bigot among its ranks?