It's been less than a month since the primaries, and Florida GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis is caught up again in another example of his campaign's endless racism against Democrat Andrew Gillum, this time one of DeSantis's major donors was more than happy to go on a massive racist tirade on Twitter.
A Republican activist who donated more than $20,000 to Ron DeSantis and lined up a speech for him at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club called President Obama a “F---- MUSLIM N----” on Twitter recently, in addition to other inflammatory remarks.
Steven M. Alembik told POLITICO Wednesday he wrote the Obama tweet in anger, that he’s “absolutely not” a racist and that he understood that DeSantis’s campaign for governor would need to distance himself from the comments — which the campaign promptly did.
“We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: we adamantly denounce this sort of disgusting rhetoric,” DeSantis campaign spokesman Stephen Lawson said in a written statement.
The controversy comes after DeSantis sent his campaign into a tailspin the day after the Aug. 28 primary by using the awkward phrase “monkey this up” in describing how the economy could falter under the plans of his opponent, Andrew Gillum, the Florida Democratic Party’s first African-American nominee for governor.
That comment drew harsh criticism for its racist dog whistle connotations — Gillum called it a bullhorn — with the state Democratic Party chairwoman calling the remark "disgusting."
DeSantis denied he had any racial intent in using the phrase. But the pattern of racial controversies, including the Alembik remarks, highlights a problem that is getting harder to overlook in this racially diverse swing state: Despite DeSantis’ denunciations of bigotry, this is the fifth race-related issue concerning the candidate, the campaign or one of its supporters to erupt since the start of the general election campaign.
Five in under a month, guys. And Steve Alembik here? He's a real piece of work.
Alembik, a self-employed data and email services provider in Boca Raton who has had some Republican campaign clients, said it was unfair to call DeSantis a racist. Alembik, who has contributed a total of $22,920 over the years to DeSantis, said there was a double standard for white people when it came to using the N-word.
“So somebody like Chris Rock can get up onstage and use the word and there’s no problem? But some white guy says it and he’s a racist? Really?” the 67-year-old Alembik said, noting that what’s considered racially charged language now wasn’t racist when he was a kid. “I grew up in New York in the ‘50s. We were the k----. They were the n------. They were the goyim. And those were the s----.”
I mean I know the joke is that Trump and his party want to take America back to the 1950's before the civil rights era, but this is literally what Alembik is complaining about, that socially it's not the 1950's anymore.
And guess what? He wants that era back so badly that he's willing to give Ron DeSantis tens of thousands of dollars in order to make it happen in Florida.
Oh, but that's not even the only bigoted DeSantis-related mess his campaign is dealing with THIS WEEK.
As was reported on Monday, just a few months before DeSantis formally announced his candidacy for governor, the then member of Congress attended and spoke at an event organized by the nation’s most vile anti Muslim group: ACT For America. To Muslim Americans like myself, this organization is akin to neo-Nazis who seek to demonize and marginalize blacks and Jews. But in the case of ACT, they target Muslims.
So what is ACT about? Its leader, Brigitte Gabriel, has made it clear that every Muslim in America is a threat with her infamous remark that Muslims “cannot be loyal citizens of the United States.” The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has stated point blank that ACT “is the largest anti-Muslim group in the United States.”
Gabriel, who has no known expertise in the field of counterterrorism but personally profits from demonizing Muslims, has claimed that 25 percent of all Muslims support violence. And, as the ADL notes, ACT recently “circulated a document in Minnesota featuring Muslim elected officials and a warning about an imminent Muslim takeover.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which also designates ACT as an anti-Muslim hate group, has documented the recent comments of ACT local chapter activists such as one who stated last year, “Islam is a supremacist, totalitarian political ideology masquerading as a religion. It's as dangerous as Nazism or communism and must be eradicated.”
DeSantis is more than happy to get support from people like this, and take their money to further his campaign. But gods above and below, don't actually call the racists "racist" or you'll just motivate them to do more racist things!
The racism was always there. Trump just made it socially acceptable again.
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