Tag: GOP as racist as Trump

McCarthy slammed for threatening Maxine Waters with censure: ‘She didn’t incite an insurrection’

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House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is under fire after threatening U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), the chair of the Financial Services Committee, with censure and claiming she “broke the law.” Waters is being used by the right as a straw man after she traveled to Minnesota to speak with Black Lives Matter protestors and telling them they must continue confrontations.

“We’ve got to stay on the street and we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business,” Waters said on Saturday as activists protested the killing of 20-year old Daunte Wright by a Brooklyn Center police officer.

Waters on Monday clarified her remarks after right wing uproar. Continue reading.

Republicans race for distance from ‘America First Caucus’

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Republicans from various factions in the GOP are racing to distance themselves — and the party at large — from a band of hard-line House conservatives whose flirtation with forming a caucus espousing white nationalist views has ignited a firestorm of controversy on Capitol Hill.

GOP leaders, anti-Trump centrists and vulnerable Republicans in battleground districts wasted little time in recent days denouncing the “America First Caucus,” whose stated purpose in a platform document included the defense of America as a nation “strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”

While the Republicans reportedly behind the group — including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.) — appear to have abandoned the project in the face of bipartisan criticism, their very interest has created an enormous headache for Republican leaders seeking to steer the party away from an image of racial insensitivity and appeal to a broader swath of voters, including women and minorities, in the post-Trump era. Continue reading.

GOP struggles to rein in nativism

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House GOP leaders are struggling to rein in the increasingly open nativism within their conference and attempting to deflect from the controversy by training their ire against Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tweeted over the weekend that the GOP is not the party of “nativist dog whistles” without directly referencing the draft policy platform for a proposed caucus that called for promoting “Anglo-Saxon political traditions” and infrastructure that reflects “European architecture.”

Days later, McCarthy is backing an effort to take action against Waters, the House Financial Services Committee chairwoman, for saying that “we’ve got to get more confrontational” and “we’ve got to stay on the street, and we’ve got to get more active” about addressing police brutality against Black people.  Continue reading.

Maxine Waters rips GOP criticism: ‘I’m not going to be bullied’

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Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) ripped GOP lawmakers in a Monday interview, saying they were trying to “send a message” to white supremacists with their criticism of her. 

“I am nonviolent,” Waters told The Grio on Monday after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) accused her of condoning political violence by stating supporters of racial justice and Black Lives Matter should be “more confrontational.”  

“Republicans will jump on any word, any line and try to make it fit their message and their cause for denouncing us and denying us, basically calling us violent … any time they see an opportunity to seize on a word, so they do it and they send a message to all of the white supremacists, the KKK, the Oath Keepers, the [Proud] Boys and all of that, how this is a time for [Republicans] to raise money on [Democrats’] backs,” Waters said.  Continue reading.

Data leak exposes cops’ donations to Kyle Rittenhouse following Kenosha shooting

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A data breach of a Christian crowdfunding website has uncovered donations police officers and public officials made to Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teen accused of murdering two Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the officer-involved shooting of Jacob Blake. 

According to The Guardian, the transparency group known as Distributed Denial of Secrets shared the breach information with a number of journalists. Donors who contributed financially to Rittenhouse’s legal fund via GiveSendGo initially opted for anonymity have had their information disclosed.

Despite appearing anonymous after donating to the fund, the breach uncovered the email addresses those users entered when submitting the financial contributions. The publication reports many email addresses linked to the donations have been traced to police officers and other public officials. The use of professional email addresses also raises questions about public resources being used for these types of campaigns. Continue reading.

House Republicans’ claim about ‘known or suspected terrorists’ at the border

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As midterm elections were approaching in 2018, President Donald Trump and members of his administration falsely claimed that thousands of “known or suspected” terrorists were being caught at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The real number ranges from around three to a dozen per year, according to news reports, official statistics and a whistleblower complaint from a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security.

McCarthy and Katko, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, traveled to El Paso this week and apparently got updated statistics from U.S. border officials, covering the period from October to the present. We were skeptical at first, but the claim seems grounded in fact. Let’s take a look. Continue reading.

GOP senator: If insurrectionists had been Black instead of MAGA I would have been ‘concerned’

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Embattled U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), a top Trump supporter, admitted that he felt safe during the January 6 insurrection because he trusted the MAGA crowd, thousands of whom were breaking not only the law but government property and causing physical harm.

But he also admits that if those rioters had been Black Lives Matter protestors he would not have felt safe – he would he felt “concerned.”

His remarks are causing anger and accusations of racism. Continue reading.

When Matt Gaetz Met Up With White Nationalists At CPAC

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Trumpist Republican politicians like Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz appear to be mimicking their role model’s ability to send comforting signals out to white nationalists while managing to keep them at arm’s length for the sake of plausible deniability. He showed how it’s done this past weekend at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual convention in Orlando.

A cluster of young white nationalists attending the simultaneous America First Political Action Committee convention—organized by notorious “Groyper Army” leader Nicholas Fuentes—invaded the CPAC gathering, where Fuentes has been banned, on Saturday. They managed to find Gaetz, who took photos with one of the group’s leaders—an outspoken neo-Nazi who uses the nom de plume “Speckzo”—and briefly conversed with them, apparently acknowledging his familiarity with Fuentes.

The video of the interaction shows one of the Groypers asking Gaetz if he was familiar with Fuentes. Gaetz made an indistinct reply while walking away with an aide, pointing a raised index finger in the direction of the young men. Continue reading.