Republican congressman's racist tirade sparks immediate backlash

The consequences of Donald Trump and JD Vance's ugly lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are quite real. Threats of violence in the community have become painfully frequent in recent weeks, and some locals have decided to take things to a new level.

As my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim explained, a national nonprofit called the Haitian Bridge Alliance announced this week that it plans to file charges against the former president and the Ohio senator, accusing the Republicans of setting off false alarms, making serious threats and harassing citizens via telecommunications.

Republican Rep. Clay Higgins saw the message and responded in an openly racist manner. NBC News reported:

Even by today's standards, the Republican congressman's tirade was unusually ugly. “These Haitians are savage,” Higgins wrote in the now-deleted tweet. “Eating pets, Vudu, worst country in the Western Hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters… but damn if they don't feel all cultured right now and bring charges against our President and Vice President. All these gangsters better get their minds together and get their asses out of our country before January 20th.”

There's no point in fact-checking every single claim in Higgins' nonsense. I would like to mention, however, that “vudu” is probably a misspelling of “voodoo,” and that January 20th almost certainly refers to the day Donald Trump would be sworn in for a second term if voters re-elect him.

The backlash was immediate, especially from many of the Republican's black colleagues, although House Speaker Mike Johnson – also a far-right Louisianan – offered tacit support. Higgins, the spokesman told reporters, “is a dear friend of mine and a fellow Louisianan and a very open and outspoken person.”

Johnson added that he had spoken to Higgins about the tweet and that Higgins had “gone behind the scenes and prayed. He regretted it and deleted the post.”

Shortly thereafter, Higgins made a fool of the Speaker of the House by ignoring his defense.

“I can put out another controversial post tomorrow if you want me to,” he told CNN amid the uproar. “I mean, we have freedom of speech. I say what I want. … To me, it's no big deal. It's like there's something stuck to the bottom of my boot. I just scrape it off and move on with my life.”

The idea that Higgins “regretted” his racism was evidently refuted as absurd by his public indifference.

What consequences will he face within the party? Probably none, because in current Republican politics, open racism is all too often tolerated.

For those unfamiliar with the far-right congressman, in his role as local sheriff, Higgins appeared in a 2016 video in which he referred to several black suspects as “animals” and “heathens,” adding, “You will be hunted, you will be captured, and if you raise a gun against a man like me, we will return fire with superior fire.”

After the video surfaced, Higgins resigned – paving the way for his election to Congress, where he is best known for his deeply strange conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack. Of course, that didn't stop GOP leadership from assigning him to a task force investigating the shooting at the Trump rally.

But taking a step back, Higgins' racism follows accusations that North Carolina Republican Mark Robinson called himself a “Nazi” for arguing that slavery wasn't necessarily a “bad” thing, after Trump and Vance spread racist lies about Springfield.

This came immediately after Trump's racist rhetoric about Vice President Kamala Harris.

And this came shortly after Trump expressed the view that black people liked him more because he was a criminal.

Shortly before, Trump had told Time magazine: “I think there is clearly anti-white sentiment in this country, and we cannot tolerate that.” (The Republican added that he hoped to focus on the “problem” related to “white bias.”)

Shortly before, Axios reported that in a possible second term, Trump and his team want to “dramatically change the administration's interpretation of civil rights-era laws to focus on 'white racial discrimination' rather than discrimination against people of color.”

A few years ago, Republican politicians expressed confidence that the party's strategic outreach to black voters was beginning to pay off. The Hill reported that Republicans were confident their messages “resonate with key constituencies.” The New York Times reported shortly after that Republicans saw “a new opportunity” to “poach some black voters.”

I don't know if Republicans can gain black voters in the 2024 election, but I do know that the Republican Party is asking black voters to overlook a staggering amount of Republicans' recent, overt racism.