A rabid anti-choicer and vanity press publisher has entered the political fray just weeks after being pardoned by Donald Trump for her role in a car theft ring. In a move that’s certain to get her disinvited to every cookout ever, Angela Stanton-King qualified Friday as the Republican challenger to the inimitable Rep. John Lewis in Georgia’s 5th District, which encompasses most of Atlanta, and is 60% African American. (Lewis also has a challenger from the far left.) Ten Republicans have tried and failed to end the civil rights icon’s 33 years of service in the U.S. House, but Stanton-King, a BET reality show cast member who first made headlines after self-publishing not one, but two books that bashed another reality star, seems convinced that she’s the one who will succeed.
In an interview with Atlanta’s 11Alive, Stanton-King didn’t hesitate to dismiss the lifelong fight of Lewis, a bonafide national treasure. “With all respect to Congressman Lewis, when I think about him, I always have that image in my mind when he was on the Selma Bridge," Trump’s newest black friend said, seemingly unaware that Lewis had commemorated the 55th anniversary of the historic “Bloody Sunday” bridge crossing—which left him with a cracked skull—in Alabama just five days earlier, and that the actual anniversary was hours away.
"The truth of the matter is,” she rambled on, purporting to speak for all black people with her attempt to force the vocal Trump opponent into retirement, “with all that he has given towards the fight for civil rights—which we greatly appreciate—these are no longer the days of marching over the Selma Bridge."
So who is this woman? Stanton-King is a three-time convicted felon who served about two years in prison; she was pardoned by Trump on Feb. 18, in the same batch of pardons that “cleared” corrupt former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. With a whoosh of the Sharpie fumes that accompany Trump’s signature, the author says, she became eligible to run for federal office, which she claims is a lifelong dream. (She was always eligible.)
Notably, Stanton-King, who was born in 1977, appears to have gone by just “Stanton” until very recently—as an author, as a reality star, in her shady self-publishing business that promises to make any writer’s bestseller dreams come true for a fee, and even her Twitter handle.
So where does the “King” come from? Apparently, she borrowed it from Alveda King, the self-described “pro-life warrior” and Trump Black Friend™ who “knows he’s not racist.” King is the niece of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a proud Republican. Alveda King, a member of Donald Trump’s Frederick Douglass Bicentennial Commission, has long been reviled for her “work” and surname-dropping within the conservative realm, which includes appearing on Fox News, doing a rally with Glenn Beck, and even bashing her aunt, the late, great Coretta Scott King.
In 1994, she released a letter condemning Coretta Scott King’s support for abortion and gay rights, saying it would bring "curses on your house and your people ... cursing, vexation, rebuke in all that you put your hand to, sickness will come to you and your house, your bloodline will be cut off."
[...]
Alveda is dismissive of her aunt, who died in 2006, saying, "I've got his DNA. She doesn't, she didn't ... Therefore I know something about him. I'm made out of the same stuff.”
Stanton-King claims that she met King fifteen years ago, when, at the end of her rope, she stumbled into a shelter and King gave her a job. Depending on where you look or what’s convenient, Alveda King is described as the wannabe congresswoman’s “godmother,” her “adopted” mother, or her mentor. Here they are just last week, clinging to Trump like he’s a god.
I’m all for criminal justice reform, and respect both women’s work to that end, but in a news radio interview just a couple weeks before her pardon, Stanton-King went deep into her support for the current occupant of the White House; she asked black listeners to look past Trump’s obsession with the Central Park Five and focus on his anti-choice stance. “Every black baby aborted is a black vote aborted,” she told WAOK host Juandolyn Stokes on Feb. 3, before blaming black media for not promoting her books, insisting black Americans are being played by the press. “We’re being fueled by hate, and not looking at the facts,” she declared. In June 2019, Stanton-King also voiced support for Alveda King’s fight to “not only defund Planned Parenthood but to overturn Roe v. Wade.” She told the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Friday that “It is time for war” on Democrats’ support of reproductive choice and abortion access.
She’s also wildly homophobic, as this tweet—just one day old as of this writing—makes clear.
She voices these stances even though (or perhaps because) one of her children is gay.
BET, home to Stanton-King’s former reality show, pulled no punches with the headline “Black Trump Supporter Has The Audacity To Run For Congress Against Rep. John Lewis,” and questioned her sincerity: “It remains to be seen how genuine Angela Stanton-King’s motives are but her fate might be similar to Stacey Dash’s failed run for a congressional seat in a predominantly Black area in 2018,” the no-byline story notes.
Over on Twitter, one user predicted whose goals Stanton-King would serve.
This would-be constituent was not swayed in her support of Rep. Lewis.
Another user pointed out the level of arrogance required to challenge this particular incumbent.
The GIF responses are plentiful …
… but this GIF says it all.
Rep. Lewis, 80, is one of less affluent members of Congress; he announced he’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late December.
This American badass was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.