White supremacist, Christian extremist and fFormer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tweeted a photo suggesting that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) campaign committee to “take back” the House of Representatives is made up of MS-13 gang members.
Here is the racist tweet:
The tweet was a clear effort to associate Pelosi and other Democrats with being sympathizers of gang members who supposedly cross into America because of so-called soft border-control policy.
“[Donald] Trump and his surrogates will continue to repeat blatantly false attacks as long as the media continues to take the bait and print them,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill told the Washington Post.
The genesis of Huckabee’s attack started May 16 at a roundtable Trump held on immigration and crime where Fresno County, Calif., Sheriff Margaret Mims complained that California state laws impeded police work that could apprehend dangerous gang members.
“There could be an MS-13 member I know about—if they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] about it,” Mims said.
Trump gave a typical response: “We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in—and we’re stopping a lot of them—but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals.”
Given that Trump opened his presidential campaign with a speech in which he called Mexicans “rapists,” his obsession with a U.S.-Mexico border wall, and the fact that being a racist wins elections for Republicans, it is no surprise that Huckabee would carry Trump’s water with a tweet associating a sitting House minority leader with a gang.
Of course, Huckabee knew that his racist tweet would generate condemnation, and of course, he was on Twitter defending himself:
There is no low for Huckabee, his daughter who lies for the white supremacist in chief, or Trump supporters.
This is the new normal for American politics in the Trump era.