Donald Trump appointed a new White House chief of staff on Friday, removing Mick Mulvaney from the position and replacing him with North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, the Barack Obama birther who claimed he was going to have a hand in sending the former president “home to Kenya or wherever it is.”
MORE: Mark Meadows Showed Us The Six Stages White Men Go Through When Getting Called Out For Racism
Trump announced the change within the White House on Twitter. “I am pleased to announce that Congressman Mark Meadows will become White House Chief of Staff. I have long known and worked with Mark, and the relationship is a very good one….,” he wrote.
Meadows has promoted and supported several racist birther conspiracies about Obama, who is a U.S. citizen. “I see it as, if we do our job from a grassroot standpoint, we won’t have to worry about it,” Meadows said at the Blue Ridge Tea Party Patriots Congressional Candidate Forum in 2012. “We’ll send him back home to Kenya or wherever it is. We’ll send him back home. And so, in doing that I believe that what we will find is that we will get a new commander in chief.”
In fact, Meadows made birther comments about Obama on more than one occasion, but his racist track record extends beyond those instances.
During Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform to speak on his relationship with the president, Meadows called on Lynne Patton, the head of HUD and Eric Trump‘s former party planner – who once called April Ryan Miss Piggy, to prove that he isn’t racist.
Meadows said, “Lynne Patton says she would not work for a man who is racist… She disagrees with you. She says as a daughter of a man born in Birmingham, Alabama, that there is no way that she would work for an individual who was a racist.”
Because Black folks are a monolith and Patton represents all African Americans…right.
Meadows was then called out by Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib for using a Black person as a “prop,” calling that act in itself racist.
“Just to make a note Mr. Chairman, just because someone has a person of color, a Black person working for them, does not mean they aren’t racist,” Tlaib said. “And it is insensitive the fact that someone would actually use a prop, a Black woman in this chamber, in the committee is alone racist in itself.”
Meadows, evidently agitated and red in the face, began to cut Tlaib off as she tried to continue.
“Mr. Chairman,” Meadows said. “I ask that her words when she’s referring to an individual member of this body be taken down and stricken from the record. I’m sure she didn’t intend to do this, but if anyone knows my record as it relates, it should be you, Mr. Chairman.”
A tearful Meadows then said that his nieces and nephews are “people of color,” eerily similar to racist white folks pointing out their Black friend.
Referring to Tlaib saying he used Patton as a “prop,” Meadows added, “It’s racist to suggest that I asked her to come in here for that reason.”
Nonetheless, Meadows, whom Trump deemed fitting for the position, is the president’s fourth chief of staff in 38 months, according to The New York Times. Trump is said to have offered Meadows the position on Thursday and Mulvaney became aware of the decision on Friday.
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