Originally Posted by PaulS
So that guy is representative of all Dems. What do the following say about Reps?
Carl Paladino, a western New York builder, one-time Republican candidate for governor of New York and political ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, came under fire on Friday for racially offensive comments about President Obama and the first lady, who Mr. Paladino said should be “let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe.”
Mr. Paladino’s comments were published in Artvoice, a weekly Buffalo newspaper. They came in response to an open-ended feature in which local figures were asked about their hopes for 2017.
“Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford,” said Mr. Paladino, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2010, making an apparent reference to the Hereford cattle breed. He said he hoped the disease killed the president.
Asked what he most wanted to see “go away” in the new year, Mr. Paladino — who has a reputation in New York political and business circles for speaking in an unfiltered manner reminiscent of Mr. Trump’s — answered, “Michelle Obama.”
“I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla,” he said.
Condemnation of the remarks was swift on social media and among elected officials around the state. The local county executive called for Mr. Paladino to immediately resign his post on the Buffalo school board.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat who defeated Mr. Paladino in 2010, called the comments “racist, ugly and reprehensible.” He said in a statement that Mr. Paladino had a “long history” of making similar comments and that he had “embarrassed the good people of the state with his latest hate-filled rage.”
Mr. Trump did not personally step to the defense of Mr. Paladino, who served as a New York co-chairman of the president-elect’s campaign and describes himself as a personal friend of Mr. Trump’s. “Carl’s comments are absolutely reprehensible, and they serve no place in our public discourse,” Jessica Ditto, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said.
“I did it to wake people up; I did it to get people’s attention,” he said in the telephone interview. He pointed to a page-long statement, published after the comments were made, in which he outlined his grievances with the Obama administration. “He couldn’t care less about the people,” he said of the president in the statement.
Pamela Ramsey Taylor, the director of Clay County Development Corp. near Charleston, wrote about Melania Trump becoming first lady after Donald Trump won the election. On her Facebook page, Taylor said: “It will be so refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady back in the White House. I’m tired of seeing a Ape in heels.
In October this year, Dan Johnson, a GOP candidate for Kentucky’s state legislature, posted pictures of President Obama and the first lady with ape-like features. Johnson, a Lousiana bishop, also captioned a picture of a baby chimpanzee as being a picture of the president when he was a child.
“It wasn’t meant to be racist. I can tell you that. My history’s good there. I can see how people would be offended in that. I wasn’t trying to offend anybody, but, I think Facebook’s entertaining,” he reportedly said.
West York, Pennsylvania, Mayor Charles Wasko was under scrutiny in September this year for a June post in which he said a picture of a monkey was actually a picture of Michelle Obama. He also captioned a picture of a wagon of orangutans as “moving day at the White House.”
Patrick Rushing, mayor of Airway Heights, Washington, was asked to stepped down for calling the first lady “Gorilla face” on Facebook. “Gorilla face Michelle, can't disagree with that. The woman is not attractive except to monkey man Barack. Check out them ears. LOL,” the mayor posted in July, 2015.
He refused to resign, saying: “I made a mistake. I owned up to my mistake. If I do resign that’s admitting I’m a racist and I’m not.”
“It’s just playful back and forth banter that my friends and I do,” he added.
In 2011, a GOP activist from South Carolina said a gorilla which escaped from a zoo was Michelle Obama’s “ancestor.”
Rusty DePass, also a former chairman of the state election commission, commented on a Facebook post on the animal’s escape from Columbia’s Riverbanks Zoo saying, “I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors — probably harmless.”
He admitted later he was referring to the first lady and apologized for his comment: “I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest.”
Mr. Paladino, in the interview with The Times, said he was “not politically correct,” though he disputed the notion that his comments were racist. Asked why he wanted to see the first lady live with a gorilla in Africa, he paused for a long time, then said: “What’s wrong with that?”
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