GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville Doing Racist 'Birth Of A Nation'-Style Rants At Trump Rallies Now

Scary stuff.

Donald Trump held a rally Saturday in Minden, Nevada, on behalf of Republican gubernatorial nominee Joe Lombardo and Senate nominee Adam Laxalt. The primary was over months ago, and the general election is less than a month away. Conventional wisdom when you're running in a swing state is that you'll moderate your positions, so independent voters will think you're normal. You might also want to keep your distance from Mr. International Man of Espionage himself, who lost Nevada twice. Republicans don't do this anymore, though, and Saturday's event played out like a Klan rally.

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 Nevada 'Sundown Town' Air Siren Isn't A Dog Whistle, It's An ... Oh, We Just Said. It's An Air Siren. 

   Tommy Tuberville Vying For Senate's Dumbest Republican, Prob Somehow Lose That To Vanderbilt Too 

The location was perversely ideal for the rhetoric. Minden was once a sundown town, where “colored people" weren't welcome after dark. Special guest racist Tommy Tuberville, the senator from Alabama who remains in office despite being an enabler of Trump's coup attempt, denounced Democrats as not just "soft on crime" but actively "pro-crime." Calling Democrats "soft on crime" was traditionally Republicans' coded way of accusing Democrats of failing to keep minorities in line, but you didn't need a decoder ring to interpret Tuberville's blatantly racist appeal. 

“A reminder that Tommy Tuberville was a collegiate coach for nearly 30 years, during which he coached scores of Black players. He made millions off their abilities, but here’s what he really thinks about Black folks.”

— Jemele Hill (@Jemele Hill) 1665318552 

TUBERVILLE: Some people say [Democrats are] soft on crime. No, they're not soft on crime. They're pro crime! They want crime because they want to take over what you've got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think that the people who do the crime are owed that. Bullshit!

Mitch McConnell said that Barack Obama’s presidency, which he didn’t support and obstructed at every opportunity, was a form of “reparations,” as if white people didn’t benefit from the Affordable Care Act or the auto bailout. Rush Limbaugh, who’s still dead, had also grossly referred to the ACA as “reparations.” 

Linking crime to reparations is a new racist twist, as if progressive prosecutors are offering get-out-of-jail-free cards to Black rapists and murderers. The whole push for police reform has been about not letting cops get away with actual murder, which is a crime even if you have a badge. Liberals are hardly pro-crime. That’s Republicans, including Tuberville, who cover up for crooks like Trump. But the core Republican proposition is that the law shouldn’t apply to them while marginalized groups should bear the full weight of legalized oppression.

Tuberville earned his fortune and fame from the modern-day plantation that’s college football. During an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union," political analyst Bakari Sellers said, “The fact is, [Tuberville] made tens of millions of dollars off unpaid black men as a football coach … He literally has the stature he has because people went out there and assumed the risk and incurred the risk of concussions, playing hard and everything.”

Former Republican Joe Scarborough tweeted, "You don't have to be a Southerner like me to understand that 'they' is Tuberville's substitute for a racial slur he can't say behind a microphone in 2022."

Although Scarborough repudiated Tuberville's "open appeal to racism," Republicans who still want to win Republican primaries mostly kept quiet. Rep. Don Bacon took a break from shamelessly defending Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker on "Meet the Press" to shamelessly defend Tuberville. Chuck Todd upgrade Kristen Welker asked the congressman from Nebraska if Tuberville's remarks "cross a racial line?"

"I'm not going to say he's being racist. I wouldn't use that language. Be more polite."

We however will say that Tommy Tuberville is a gross racist, and the crowd that applauded his comments is also probably racist. They can't hide behind legitimate concerns about crime. The FBI released data last week showing that the murder rate slowed in 2021 after a significant jump in 2020. Just so we're clear, Donald Trump was still president in 2020.

This is not about crime or law and order. It's about racism, plain and simple. Republicans have just stopped using the dogwhistle.

[ Newsweek ]

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