Congress is a bastion of Republican bigotry
News media need to connect the ugly dots, because there are lots of them
Mainstream media don’t pay nearly enough attention to the fact that the Republican side of Congress is a bastion of bigotry. Members who are not spewing white supremacist garbage themselves are often ignoring it or defending it when their colleagues do it.
It’s not acceptable for one side of Congress to resemble a Klan cookout, and it’s also not acceptable for journalists to treat it as non-news. Because it’s getting worse all the time.
In 2019, back when Republicans bothered to pretend they weren’t racist, they stripped Iowa’s Rep. Steve King of his committee assignments because he defended white supremacy. But three weeks ago, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee tweeted, “Muslims don’t belong in American society,” and he faced no discipline.
Instead, House Speaker Mike Johnson defended him:
There’s a lot of energy in the country and a lot of popular sentiment that the demand to impose Sharia law in America is a serious problem. That’s what animates this. The language that people use — it’s different language than I would use — but I think that’s a serious issue. … It’s not about people as Muslims; it’s about those who seek to impose a different belief system that is in direct conflict with the Constitution.
That’s intellectual dishonesty. That’s a moral vacuum where a conscience should be.
AR-15 lapel pins come and go among congressional Republicans, but bigotry is a constant:
Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said in 2022 that Democrats want reparations for Black Americans “because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado said last year that Rep. Al Green, who is Black, had a “pimp cane.”
Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas said in 2024 that then-Rep. Cori Bush, who is Black, got death threats because she was “so loud all the time,” and that her husband, also Black, was a “thug.”
Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona appeared in 2021 at a conference founded by Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, and Gosar once made the preposterous claim that the neo-Nazi “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 was organized by “an Obama sympathizer.”
Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin said in 2022 that Black Lives Matter “doesn’t like the old-fashioned family.”
Republicans such as Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, and Rep. Brian Babin of Texas push the Great Replacement Theory, which claims that the left is deliberately orchestrating the cultural replacement of white people with non-white immigrants as part of some nefarious power grab. The most radical promoters of this theory specifically blame Jewish elites and refer to a “white genocide.”
In some cases, MAGA bigots apologize for their offensive comments or delete their tweets – after showing their followers what they really think.
Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana helped spread the lie in 2024 that Black immigrants from Haiti were eating people’s dogs and cats, tweeting: “These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters. … All these thugs better get their mind right and their asses out of our country before January 20th.” Higgins eventually deleted the post, earning an attaboy from Speaker Johnson: “That’s what you want a gentleman to do. … We believe in redemption around here.”
Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois said in prepared remarks outside the U.S. Capitol in 2021 that “Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future.’” After an uproar, she apologized for “using a reference to one of the most evil dictators in history.”
Miller also raised eyebrows last year after tweeting that “it’s deeply troubling that a Muslim was allowed to lead prayer” in the U.S. House since “America was founded as a Christian nation.” (The Constitution disagrees with Miller on the “Christian nation” claim, and she also was wrong about the prayer leader being Muslim. He’s Sikh.)
Christian nationalists in Congress who spread Islamophobia have made a special target of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim who was born in Uganda to Indian parents and came to the United States at age 7. Here are just a few of the gems:
Rep. Randy Fine of Florida tweeted: “Zohran Mamdani must be deported immediately. The only thing I want to see him running for is his gate at JFK for his deportation flight back to Uganda.”
Rep. Brandon Gill criticized Mamdani for eating biryani, a rice dish, with his hands: “Civilized humans in America don’t eat like this. If you do not embrace Western traditions, return to the Third World.” A strange claim given that eating biryani with one’s hands is common in South Asia, and plenty of supposedly “Western traditions” involve eating food (such as pizza, wings, burgers, and fries) with one’s hands.
Alabama’s Tuberville posted a photo of Mamdani next to a picture of the 9/11 attack, with the words “The enemy is inside the gates.”
Yet Wisconsin’s Grothman said that “the idea that we have a huge racial problem is preposterous.” I think Republicans’ racial problem is what’s preposterous. And not highlighted enough.
It’s what I call “the one-off problem.” News outlets often produce small stories focusing on individual acts rather than writing sweeping stories about an overall trend. They do the same thing with Donald Trump’s obvious mental unfitness, reporting narrowly about single examples of his unhinged behavior without noting that his behavior in general is unhinged.
A few news outlets, such as the New York Times and PBS, have occasionally reported on how the Republican side of Congress is an oasis for racists. More outlets need to say it, and say it loudly.
This week’s media atrocity
The New York Times headline and summary below credit Trump with “freestyle” and “improvisational” diplomacy. Words like “disorganized,” “amateurish,” and "haphazard” would be more accurate. And what’s with saying the standoff “raises fresh doubts”? There are no fresh doubts – there are longstanding doubts. Better to say “deepens doubts.”
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Thank you for rounding up this sad compendium of bigotry. I remember vividly when Steve King was sanctioned with loss of his committee assignments for one of his many white supremacist statements. That seems like a dream now.
And double thanks for continuing to shed light on The NY Times' continuing abdication of journalism to benefit Trump. Every once in a while, they actually "commit a journalism" as Jeff Tiedrich puts it, but then they negate it with this type of sanewashing. Trump is "free styling" and "improvising"? He's spewing incoherent nonsense about even more incoherent and inconsistent policies. And I'm still seething about The NY Times' weird decision about two months ago to quote a piece of speech by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, leaving in all the "ums" and pauses, something I've never done in my 40 years as a journalist interviewing tons of incoherent rock musicians, because that's just not what you do for the benefit of readers. But they have virtually never reported a Trump quote verbatim, leaving in his mid-sentence digressions, his odd word insertions, his misnomers and gaffes, and his flights of completely impenetrable nonsense. Their sanewashing constitutes journalistic malpractice.
Thank you, Mr. Jacob, for seeing and writing with such clarity. Your perspective is so valuable.