The bar for “behavior Trump-supporting Republicans will excuse” is now set so low it’s subterranean.
This past week, a Haitian nonprofit organization in Springfield, Ohio, filed citizen criminal charges against Donald Trump and JD Vance over their dishonest and dangerous diatribes about the city’s Haitian community.
Rep. Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana, responded to that filing by posting this on social media:
“Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters … but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP. All these thugs better get their mind right and their a-- out of our country before January 20th.”
That’s pure, uncut racism. There’s no other way to spin it or excuse it. And yet, it was spun and excused by the Republican Party. Democrats in the House called for censure, but the GOP shut that down.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had the gall to say Higgins is “a very principled man,” adding: “He said he went to the back, and he prayed about it, and he regretted it, and he pulled the post down. That’s what you want a gentleman to do. I’m sure he probably regrets some of the language he used.”
The words “gentleman” and “probably” are doing a lot of work in that comment, and Higgins was kind enough to immediately make Johnson look like the soulless apologist he is, telling CNN on Wednesday that he stood by his offensive comments: “It’s all true. I can put up another controversial post tomorrow if you want me to. I mean, we do have freedom of speech. I’ll say what I want. … It’s like something stuck to........