Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana offered up a mealy-mouthed nonapology on Thursday for posting a deeply racist diatribe against Haitian people on his social media account.
Reporters followed him to an elevator at the Capitol, where one of them asked Higgins whether or not he “believed those things” he wrote about Haitians in a Wednesday post on X. “Those things” included claiming that Haitian people participate in “eating pets,” practice “vudu,” and come from the “nastiest country in the western hemisphere” before demanding that “All these thugs better get their mind right and their ass out of our country before January 20th.”
Higgins claimed he was talking about “Haitian gangs” before saying he listened to the concerns of one congressional “colleague from Florida” and having “prayed about it, but just a few seconds,” he then took the post down.
“And I hadn’t even seen it,” Higgins added. “At that point I hadn’t even seen the post. I have still not seen it. Never saw it when it was up, never saw it since it’s been down. I don’t even have Twitter on my phone, ya understand.”
This was a marked change from Higgins’ unapologetic Wednesday night statement to CNN.
"It’s all true,” he said. “I can put up another controversial post tomorrow if you want me to. I mean, we do have freedom of speech. I’ll say what I want. It’s not a big deal to me. It’s like something stuck to the bottom of my boot. Just scrape it off and move on with my life.”
Higgins’ bigoted post was prompted by the news that a Haitian community organization filed a lawsuit against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance over their heinous lies that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating residents’ pets.
The post was deleted two hours after it was first published. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus took to the House floor and called for Higgins to be censured, while the GOP closed ranks around the notorious congressman.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a fellow Louisianan, attempted to claim ignorance about the inflammatory tweet before a gaggle of reporters told him what Higgins had written.
"Ok, he was approached on the floor by colleagues who said that was offensive," Johnson responded. "He went to the back—I just talked to him about it—he said he went to the back and he prayed about it, and he regretted it, and he pulled the post down. That's what you want the gentleman to do. I'm sure he probably regrets the language he used. But you know, we move forward. We believe in redemption around here."
Johnson’s defense of Higgins is just one more example of the GOP’s lowered standards. In 2019, House Republicans punished Rep. Steve King by stripping him of his committee assignments for being too overtly racist. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene faced similar punishment in 2021 for spreading dangerous conspiracy theories. Behavior that establishment Republicans once considered unacceptable is now the Grand Old Party’s everyday brand.
Democrats led by Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford are reportedly planning to force a vote on a resolution to censure Higgins when the House returns from recess following the November election.
"We have to explore, sadly, every action possible,” Horsford told reporters about Higgins’ tweet, “and this was one that we have available because it does violate the rules."
