'Ron DeSantis offers white nationalism for the country club crowd': former GOP congressman
14 May 2023
Last week, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) fumbled some comments about white supremacy in the military. According to Tuberville, they're nothing more than Americans. Since then, he's tried to explain away the comments. First, he asked how one defines a white nationalist. He then claimed he was just being sarcastic. Finally, he pivoted to another topic, complaining that people call supporters of Donald Trump white nationalists.
Speaking to MSNBC on Sunday, the political panel lamented that Republicans have grown increasingly accepting of radical right-wing extremism and extremists themselves.
Democratic Strategist Don Calloway explained Tuberville's "entire career has been made on the backs of mostly Black, unpaid labor."
For him to not be able to come out and outright denounce white nationalism when he had the very clear opportunity to do so is not only cowardly but immoral, it's evocative of somebody was a slaveholder's mentality," Calloway. "If there is a Republican Party in the South in 2023, these are the types of people you're putting in the United States Senate. But it's also important to note that he's right. Not all Trump supporters are white nationalists to the extent that the plane to this iteration of American democracies are certainly Trump supporters. It doesn't seem like the Senator has the gray matter to put that together and really explain to the American public why he's on the side of white nationalists."
Republican strategist Susan Del Percio agreed with Calloway's take about the white nationalists welcomed to the GOP. She recalled a 2022 rally in which Tuberville gave a speech at a Trump rally, and "it sounded like a klan get-together."
"He's exactly who he says he is," she said of Tuberville. "he thinks that there is nothing wrong with being a white nationalist, a racist, and a supporter of Donald Trump."
But it was former Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) who highlighted Calloway's comments that Tuberville, indeed all Republicans, had an opportunity at that moment to denounce white nationalism and how that reflects on the party and its future.
"The danger in what we see in these remarks is this normalization and mainstreaming of white nationalism within today's GOP," he continued. "You see it with Donald Trump and his nod to Oath Heepers and the Proud Boys."
As the conversation turned to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and his impromptu rally after Trump canceled his, Jolly said DeSantis sounded like an AI chatbot version of Donald Trump. The difference, he explained, is there is no difference.
"Donald Trump, I like to say, offers white nationalism for the working man," Jolly explained. "Ron DeSantis offers white nationalism for the country club crowd. They belong to the same party, the narrative is the same."
See the comments in the video below or at the link here.