Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama didn't mince words Saturday in Nevada as he joined Donald Trump on stage for a greatest hits rally of GOP delusion, conspiracy theories, and racist rants.
Democrats are "pro-crime," Tuberville asserted at the event to boost support for GOP Senate candidate Adam Laxalt and gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo. "They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. Bullshit!”
To be clear, Tuberville means that Black Americans are 'the people that do the crime' and Democrats think 'the people that do the crime' are owed reparations.
Yes, Tuberville's remarks are obviously racist: Black people are the real criminals. Need he say more?
But Tuberville's comments are also objectively racist. In 2020, the latest year for which the FBI has stats, white Americans committed the majority of crimes in the U.S.
By race, more than half (50.8%) of known offenders were white; 29.6% were Black or African American; and 2.2% were of other races. The race was unknown for 17.4% of reported known offenders.
That doesn't even account for the systemic racism already inherent in the U.S. justice system.
Don't worry, though: Republicans aren't backing away from Tuberville or denouncing his racist rant. By and large, we've heard nothing but crickets from Tuberville's GOP counterparts in Congress, according to The Washington Post:
Tuberville and most Republicans contacted by The Washington Post remained silent about the comments Monday.
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Forced to confront the matter Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, the best GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska could offer was that he would have rephrased the sentiment.
"I wouldn’t say it the same way, but there is a problem in our country with crime," Bacon said before offering up slightly more coded racist slurs. "Major cities have seen a 40 to 50% increase in violent crime. And the primary reason, in my view, is we have these far-left prosecutors, county attorneys and mayors who are releasing violent criminals back on the street."
Because cities = people of color = crime, apparently.
When Meet the Press host Kristen Welker pressed Bacon on Tuberville’s racist comments, he added, "I would be more polite" than Tuberville.
Because polite racism is apparently less racist and less offensive than impolite racism.
But asked if Tuberville's comments "crossed a racial line," Bacon was a hard no, because admitting his colleague's remarks were racist would be, well, impolite.
"I don’t, I don’t, I’m not going to say he’s being racist," Bacon responded, "but I wouldn’t use that language, be more polite."
Democratic Rep. Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, former president and CEO of the NAACP, was livid, telling the Post that Tuberville's racist slur fuels violence against Black folks.
“His comments are the most vicious, vile, repugnant, parochial, racist thing I’ve heard in a long, long time,” Mfume said on MSNBC. “People take that — the sick ones — and they figure that they have to do something to extend the senator’s philosophy.
“I would hope that every elected official on both sides of the aisle condemns that,” Mfume added. “He is a bigot. And until he says something different, he will always be seen as a bigot.”
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