Opinion: Trump's GOP excuses racists, loons and criminals. There's no bottom anymore.
The bar for “behavior Trump-supporting Republicans will excuse” is now set so low it’s subterranean.
This past week, a Haitian nonprofit organization in Springfield, Ohio, filed citizen criminal charges against Donald Trump and JD Vance over their dishonest and dangerous diatribes about the city’s Haitian community.
Rep. Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana, responded to that filing by posting this on social media:
“Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters … but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP. All these thugs better get their mind right and their a-- out of our country before January 20th.”
That’s pure, uncut racism. There’s no other way to spin it or excuse it. And yet, it was spun and excused by the Republican Party. Democrats in the House called for censure, but the GOP shut that down.
Trump's GOP spends half its time excusing racists and loons
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had the gall to say Higgins is “a very principled man,” adding: “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 a gentleman to do. I’m sure he probably regrets some of the language he used.”
The words “gentleman” and “probably” are doing a lot of work in that comment, and Higgins was kind enough to immediately make Johnson look like the soulless apologist he is, telling CNN on Wednesday that he stood by his offensive comments: “It’s all true. 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 like something stuck to the bottom of my boot. Just scrape it off and move on with my life.”
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First off, Rep. Higgins, get lost. Seriously. You’re like something stuck to the bottom of America’s boot, and hopefully, voters will find a way to scrape you off sooner rather than later.
But what matters here is less the racist rant of a decidedly doltish dipstick and more the ease with which Republicans excuse the monsters in their midst.
The list of racists and weirdos the GOP excuses is long
To be a Trump-supporting Republican right now means you effortlessly excuse the Clay Higgins of the world and their casual racism.
It means you read reports of North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s calling himself “a black NAZI” on porn site message boards ? writing that “I’d take Hitler over any of the sh-t that’s in Washington right now!” and saying that slavery wasn’t bad ? and you don’t much care.
Trump endorsed Robinson and received Robinson’s endorsement, and he hasn’t said a word to disavow the Republican gubernatorial nominee.
It means you excuse GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance for fabricating racist claims about legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets.
It means you excuse the chaos, threats and hatred that have upended Springfield in the wake of those insidious comments.
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It means you excuse Trump’s increasingly vile, xenophobic lies, like this one from a Thursday speech, again putting a target on Springfield: “You have to get them out, we have to save our country, you have to save these towns. They flooded the job market with low-wage migrants, but in many cases migrants that also have horrible criminal records, murder, drug dealing, so many different things, a lot of human traffickers, and it’s mostly human traffickers in women.”
That’s utter nonsense, and the vast majority of Haitians in Springfield are legal immigrants, so the idea to “get them out” means rounding up and deporting people who are in the country legally.
Will the Republican Party condemn that hideous rhetoric?
Of course not. It will be excused, like everything else. At worst, there will be a tut-tut from a self-described "moderate" who doesn't like what Trump has done to the party ? but will still vote for him come November because the party comes first.
Crimes? No problem. Racism? No problem. That's today's GOP.
If you’re a Trump-supporting Republican, you excuse Trump’s 34 felony convictions. You excuse the fact that he’s an adjudicated rapist and the fact that he owes hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for business fraud.
You excuse your party’s presidential candidate spending time in the closing weeks of a campaign selling gaudy watches and coins and other merchandise to enrich himself by fleecing your party’s base.
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You excuse your party’s presidential candidate when he questions Vice President Kamala Harris’ biracial identity and says she “happened to turn Black.”
You excuse nutball conspiracy theorists like Laura Loomer – who is closely associated with Trump – when she hurls a racist comment at Harris, calling her a“DEI Shaniqua.”
Excuse, excuse, excuse. Accept, accept, accept.
I guess the GOP is a collection of people who can do no wrong
This is a political party that will tolerate any form of intolerance. Its members have shown this over and over, from Higgins to Vance to Trump to Loomer, and far more than I have room to mention. They do this while pushing laws targeting LGBTQ+ people and the very idea of diversity, banning books and threatening teachers they deem too "woke."
They accept demeaning, dehumanizing rhetoric as long as it serves their purposes and then have the audacity to hide behind their faith and a one-way-street version of forgiveness.
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Nothing resembling any of these examples would be tolerated coming from a Democrat. If Harris refused to disavow a Democrat wrapped up in a porn/Naziism scandal, Republicans would scream about it from now to eternity. Fox News headquarters would spontaneously combust from the intensity of the outrage.
Democrats are far from perfect, but they're in no way the same. When lawmakers get charged with crimes, be it New York City Mayor Eric Adams or Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the party turns on them. When Democratic voters and party officials were unhappy with President Joe Biden's campaign, he was replaced with Harris.
It's doubtful any such thing will happen in the Republican Party of Donald Trump. It has become a collection of people who can do no wrong, standing in constant judgment of those who refuse to bend the knee.
When deciding who’s worthy of your vote, consider how much that person or the political party behind them is willing to excuse.
If telling legal immigrants to “get their mind right and their a-- out of our country” is A-OK with the candidate, that should tell you all you need to know.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Opinion: Trump's Republican Party rushes to excuse racist Higgins post