Former Republican Gov. Nikki Haley this past weekend called for the apparent deportation of the Rev. Raphael Warnock, who was born in Georgia and is the state’s first Black U.S. senator. Haley made the remark during a campaign stop for one-man abortion provider Herschel Walker.
“Legal immigrants are more patriotic than the leftists these days,” Haley claimed in her remarks. “They knew they worked to come into America, and they love America. They want the laws followed in America. So the only person we need to make sure we deport is Warnock.”
In video from the event, rallygoers, many of them appearing to be white, cheered in response. Haley then moved on to complaining about school closures during the novel coronavirus pandemic, not clarifying exactly where she would send a Black, Savannah-born American.
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During her offensive remarks, Haley also invoked her own family’s immigration history—but only in order to take a potshot at asylum-seekers and other migrants seeking safety and new lives in America today.
“Now I am the daughter of Indian immigrants,” she said. “They came here legally, they put in the time, they put in the price. They are offended by what’s happening on that border.” Of course, arriving to the border and asking for asylum is exactly how it works. But Republicans prefer to have people believe that there’s some line that migrants are just refusing to get into, when the reality is no line exists.
Haley also seems to suggest that immigrant families lacking permanent legal status in the U.S. don’t “put in the price,” when they pay tens of millions of dollars in taxes annually in her state alone. But your state gladly took those dollars, right governor?
Haley has over the years been painted as a moderate, but she is no moderate, clearly now echoing the racist rhetoric frequently spewed by the previous president. She went to go work for him, after all, and it’s all from the same playbook the insurrectionist president used in telling Democratic congress women of color to “go back.” All four targeted by that president are U.S. citizens, three of them U.S. born.
“Reverend Warnock was born in Georgia; his dad served in the U.S. Army in World War II, and he is currently serving in the U.S. Senate,” Jezebel’s Caitlyn Cruz reported. “Essentially saying this man should ‘go back to Africa’ is quite a closing message, two days before a midterm election.”
One back and forth I saw on Twitter tried to defend Haley by saying that she meant deport Warnock from the Senate. Like that makes it any better. But nowhere in her specific remarks does she actually say that anyway. In her Twitter feed Monday, Haley ignored her deportation threat against this Black American, but did promote other campaign stops, including one for Don Bolduc, who is challenging incumbent Democrat Maggie Hassan. Did Haley invoke this same deportation rhetoric against Hassan, who is white? Not as far as we can tell.
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On The Brief podcast we discuss what the polls are saying—and what the polls cannot predict. The traditional and right-wing narrative continues to champion polling that downplays Democratic candidates’ successes, while ignoring polling (including their own, in some cases) that flies in the face of that narrative. Either way, it does not change the fact that you need to get out and vote! And after you vote, make sure to encourage others to get out and vote—especially those younger folks in your life.
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