Republican leaders in five Texas counties shared racist Facebook posts, some of which also floated conspiracy theories, leading Gov. Greg Abbott to call for two of them to resign.
Abbott and other top Texas Republicans called for the resignation of the GOP chairs in Bexar and Nueces counties after they shared on social media a conspiracy theory that Floyd’s death was a “staged event,” apparently to gin up opposition to President Donald Trump. There is no evidence to support that claim; Floyd, a black Minnesota man, died last week after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
“These comments are disgusting and have no place in the Republican Party or in public discourse,” Abbott spokesman John Wittman said in a statement Thursday morning.
Meanwhile, the GOP chairman-elect in Harris County, Keith Nielsen, posted an image on Facebook earlier this week that showed a Martin Luther King Jr. quote — “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” — on a background with a banana. The juxtaposition of the quote and the banana can be read as an allusion to equating black people with monkeys, a well-worn racist trope. Nielsen appears to have deleted the post and apparently addressed it on his Facebook page Thursday evening. On Friday he updated his comments to say he would not resign.
[…]
Even later Thursday, Democrats also criticized a fourth post from a GOP chair on Facebook. Sue Piner, chair of the Comal County GOP, shared a post on Sunday that included an image of liberal billionaire George Soros and text that said, “I pay white cops to murder black people. And then I pay black people to riot because race wars keep the sheep in line.”
Piner could not be immediately reached for comment about the post. The unfounded Soros conspiracy theory is among many that have spread online as Americans have protested policy brutality.
Republican Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush late Thursday said all four county leaders should step down.
Sorry, I was busy reading this classic Onion article and got distracted for a minute. Where was I? Oh, yeah. First, who knew that the Harris County GOP could suck even more than it already did? And that Bexar County GOP Chair, nobody could have predicted that she was an utter wacko. Remember when Republican leaders in Texas believed in more wholesome conspiracy theories? Boy, those were the days.
You can see this Patrick Svitek Twitter thread for more calls from these respectable Republicans for these not-so-respectable Republicans to resign. But that, as they say, is not all. News item: In false Facebook posts, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller accused George Soros of paying protesters to “destroy” the country. I’m not going to quote from this one, you pretty much get the picture from the headline. It’s just that spouting bizarre, racist, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on Facebook is pretty much Sid Miller’s core competence. I look forward to seeing George P. Bush and the rest of those Respectable Republicans call on him to resign, now that maybe Sid Miller may finally be too big an embarrassment even for them.
UPDATE: We’re now up to a dozen GOP county party chairs with truly Facebook posts about the George Floyd murder, and an equally vile lack of understanding of why they’re so disgusting.
UPDATE: And the new Harris County GOP Chair is out. My advice, leave the position vacant. Won’t make any difference whether they have a Chair or not, and there’s one less idiot to say something ugly and stupid in public.
Where do you find these people?
Line up 10 people that call themselves Republicans, pick one and there is a very good chance that they are no different than those Republican County Chairs.
Republicans is a white organization that mostly consists of three groups.
Those who don’t women to make a decision about their bodies.
Those who hate gays, because they are different than them.
Those who hate minorities.
There are exceptions, those that do it because it benefits their pocket.
correction
don’t want women
I dont know why anyone would want to be Harris County GOP chair. The over/under for GOP elected officals come November must be 2 or 3 . It figures they are scraping the bottom of the barrel for a Chair
It’s like someone left out pizza over night in the GOP kitchen and then in the morning some regular folks walk in, switch on the lights, and are repulsed when they see a whole slew of GOP roaches scurrying around. Not sure what these regular folks expected.
As for Sid Miller and his anti-Semitic tropes maybe he should whisper in a concerned horror movie way to Trump about his daughter and son-in-law: “Mr President, they are in your house right now….get out.”
That is one of the true classic Onion articles.
When you have a dozen chairs posting the same clueless and racist crap it is not an aberration but what the GOP really believes. This is who they are.
Indeed it is a classic Onion column. I remember reading that one, it’s not for the kids, though. I also remember one that I loved called something like this: “I’m Like a Chocoholic Except with Booze!”