And in Wisconsin and North Carolina, Democratic candidates for the Senate have faced a barrage of ads on crime that feature mug shots of Black defendants.
As the campaign heats up in the final weeks before November’s midterm elections, so have overt appeals to racial animus and resentment. And the toxic remarks appear to be receiving less pushback from Republicans than in past years, suggesting that some candidates in the first post-Trump election cycle have been influenced by the ex-president’s norm-breaking example.
“Anybody who’s got a title in the party could say something — senator, governor, anybody,” said Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, who noted a deafening silence in the party after Tuberville’s comment. “Anyone could stand up and say, ‘Can we stop this please?’ But they won’t.”
At the Nevada rally that was staged by Trump in the town of Minden last Saturday for the state’s top Republican candidates, Tuberville called Democrats “pro crime.”
“They want crime,” he continued. “They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”
A debate over whether to provide reparations, or compensation, to the descendants of people enslaved in the United States has existed in the country for decades. By invoking it, Tuberville appeared to link Black people to crime in a battleground state where Republicans are fighting to gain one Senate seat — and with it potentially the majority in the chamber.
The remark drew condemnations from civil rights leaders and Democrats, but most national Republicans stayed silent or offered only mild responses.
“I’m not going to say he’s being racist,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked about the comment. “But I wouldn’t use that language, be more polite.”
A spokesman for Tuberville did not respond to a request for comment.
The racial invective has come at a time when Democrats are dealing with their own scandal in Los Angeles, where Democratic city council members and a labor leader were recorded making racist statements. Two of them resigned this week, after Democrats including President Biden called on them to do so.
“Here’s the difference between Democrats and MAGA Republicans. When a Democrat says something racist or antisemitic, we hold Democrats accountable,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “When a MAGA Republican says something racist or antisemitic, they are embraced by cheering crowds.”
A day after Tuberville’s comment, Greene appeared to invoke a version of the “replacement” conspiracy theory at a Trump rally in Arizona for GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters and other Republicans.
“Joe Biden’s five million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you, replacing your jobs and replacing your kids in school and, coming from all over the world, they’re also replacing your culture,” she said, in what seemed to echo a white nationalist conspiracy theory that claims elites, and sometimes more specifically Jewish people, are importing immigrants to “replace” White people. “And that’s not great for America.”
Republican Senate candidates, including J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona, have used language that is similar to Greene’s.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, which works to counter antisemitism, said it has been “stunning” to see a concept akin to the one shouted by white supremacists in…
Read More: Racist appeals heat up in final weeks before midterms
