Ron DeSantis is the Trump-backed Republican candidate in Florida‘s upcoming gubernatorial election, and one of his biggest donors has come under fire for an incredibly racist tweet aimed at former President Barack Obama. Earlier this month, the Republican National Committee Twitter account blasted Obama for criticizing the GOP in a speech, accusing the Republican party of decades of divisive politics, resentment, and paranoia.
In response, Republican activist Steven Alembik, who has donated $20,000 to DeSantis’ campaign and even booked him a speech at Mar-a-Lago, very reasonably quoted the tweet — adding in all-caps, “F*** THE MUSLIM N*****.”
When contacted by Politico this week about the tweet, Alembik, a 67-year-old self-employed data and email services provider based out of Boca Raton, admitted to using the N-word, but claimed that he did so out of anger and is not actually racist.
Then, somehow he made things so much worse:
“So somebody like Chris Rock can get up onstage and use the word and there’s no problem? But some white guy says it and he’s a racist? Really?”
Yes, really! In fact, the following are the only appropriate situations in which “a white guy” can use the N-word:
See what I did there?
“I grew up in New York in the ’50s. We were the k****. They were the n******,” Alembik helpfully added. “They were the goyim. And those were the s****.”
The most ludicrous thing about the “Chris Rock” defense however, is that it comes straight out of the season one episode of The Office, “Diversity Day.” In the episode, Dunder Mifflin sends a sensitivity trainer (Larry Wilmore) to Scranton in response to Michael Scott constantly reciting a fairly controversial Chris Rock standup routine, which goes about as well as one can expect.
https://youtu.be/-N-lix79zuk
To make matters worse for DeSantis, this is apparently the fifth race-related issue to have stunk up his campaign. Late last month, just one day after the gubernatorial primary election, the candidate used the unfortunate phrase “monkey this up” to describe how his Democratic opponent Andrew Gillum, Florida’s first African-American nominee for governor, could hurt the economy.
“When I write anything inflammatory, it’s because I’m seriously pissed off,” Alembik told Politico. “I’m an emotional human being. Do I have a filter on what I say? In public, yes. Would I use that word in public? No. This is Twitter.”
Cool, cool, cool. In the wake of the controversy, Alembik has since protected his tweets, despite the fact that he admits to no malice on his part.
(Via Politico)