Carl Higbie, an appointee in Donald Trump’s administration and the former chief of external affairs at the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal government volunteer organization that oversees services like AmeriCorps and Senior Corps, resigned Thursday after CNN’s KFile unearthed some radio clips that have Higbie making racist, sexist, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT statements.
Higbie hosted a radio show called Sound of Freedom, and it’s everything you would imagine a radio show called Sound of Freedom would be. It’s super racist and super misogynistic and disgusting. Higbie, a former Navy SEAL, was a surrogate for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. He was also a spokesman for the Trump-aligned Great America PAC, making several cable news appearances.
He was appointed to the CNCS in 2017 and tasked with creating a public image and messaging for federal volunteer programs. Well, not anymore.
“Effective immediately, Carl Higbie has resigned as Chief of External Affairs at CNCS,” Samantha Jo Warfield, a spokesperson for CNCS, said in a statement after CNN exposed him.
Here are some of the vile comments that Higbie made on his radio show, dating as far back as 2013. Recounting a time when he placed an ad to give away free firewood, Higbe noted that when he was dealing with black people, “only one person was actually cordial to me.”
Higbie added:
Every other black person was rude. They wanted me to either load the wood, completely split it for them or some sort of you know assistance in labor. Now, mind you the ad was for free firewood, come take it all you want. And I believe that this translates directly into the culture that is breeding this welfare and the high percentage of people on welfare in the black race. It’s a lax of morality.
He also offered this gem:
We’re promoting birth control to a black woman because of the incredibly high rate of children born out of wedlock that are under-cared for or not cared for at all. The taxpayers are tired of supporting government checks going to these people who think that breeding is a form of employment. I’m sorry if black people are the majority of the targeted audience. They are, statistically they are.
And this jewel:
I told this story the other day on my show. Somebody who lives in my condo association that has five kids, and it’s her and her husband with the five kids and the mother, the grandmother of the kids, and they don’t have jobs, they’re there all the time — I bet you can guess what color they are — and they have no job.
But it wasn’t just black folks at the pointed end of his forked tongue; Higbie also claimed that he was fine being labeled a racist because he doesn’t like Muslims, but added that this wasn’t Islamophobia because he wasn’t afraid of them—he just didn’t like them. He also argued that one way to solve the illegal-immigration problem was to have those with guns shoot anyone who crosses the border.
In 2013 he spoke of his lack of affection for LGBT people and gay marriage: “You know, I don’t like gay people. I just don’t.”
On another radio show, he called California Sen. Dianne Feinstein a “bitch” and added that he wanted to grab Feinstein and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s heads and smack them together.
And CNN notes that on another show, Higbie spoke for nearly an hour about former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, referring to it as “pixelated.”
How did Higbie’s racist, sexist, xenophobic, overall disgusting past get by White House …. sorry, forget it.
Read more at CNN’s KFile.