Source: Jon Cherry / Getty
Do y’all remember Daniel Cameron, the Kentucky Attorney General who proved himself to be 100% useless in bringing justice for Breonna Taylor? You know, Cameron, the sunken place Trump-humper who, in May, won the Republican primary in the Kentucky gubernatorial race. Well, what if I were to tell you Cameron was recently set to attend an event hosted by a bigoted radio host with a track record of making explicitly racist remarks, and it took a fellow Republican, who is white, to talk him out of it?
According to the Lexington Herald-Ledger, Cameron said in June that he “can’t wait to go” to Eric Deter’s annual “Freedom Fest” event. Now, you might not be unfamiliar with Deters, especially if you’re not a fan of racist radio hosts who call themselves “provocative” when they really mean “white supremacist.” So, just to catch some of you up, here’s Deters in 2011 apologizing for saying, “If you want to conquer an African nation, send white women and pot,” then whitesplaining that the “joke” was justified because “every Black guy on my flag football team, went out with, lived with, and was married to a white woman and smoked pot.”
And here’s a much more recent video of Deters complaining that “You can’t watch a television commercial now that doesn’t have either a gay, a Black, Asian character in it, and it’s messed up.”
Continuing, Deter added: “Blacks are 13% of the population. And it’s not about equality—they want to control. The minority don’t want equality, they want to take over!”
For the record, according to Forbes, last year, white actors accounted for 72.5% of people who appeared in TV and digital video ads, despite white people representing less than 60% of the population. Then, of course, there’s the indisputable fact that white people have, for the vast majority of America’s existence, overwhelmingly dominated every pillar of popular culture from TV to film to broadcasting to, you guessed it, advertising.
But listen: A white conservative Republican being blatantly racist is about as surprising as cold weather in Antarctica, so let’s get back to the part where a Black man appeared to need convincing that attending the event of a loud and wrong racist wasn’t the move.
To be fair, it was a white conservative Republican, Northern Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, who appeared to publicly shame Cameron into changing his mind.
From the Herald-Ledger:
In videos across social media channels, where Deters has regularly posted for years, the former attorney and aspiring politician has used the N-word, used a homophobic slur, and claimed that “blacks want to control everything,” among other racist and offensive comments.
“This plays into a trope about Republicans and I’m disgusted and discouraged that Republicans in Kentucky are going to show up to this event,” Massie told the Herald-Leader in a recent interview. Massie said that Cameron made a grave political mistake in first planning to attend the event and personally advised him not to go. The congressman’s Fourth Congressional District covers the entirety of Northern Kentucky, a key battleground in Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s 2019 close win over former Republican governor Matt Bevin.
“I want Daniel Cameron to beat Andy Beshear this Fall, and I think he’s putting that all in jeopardy by showing up at this event. The national media is going to have a field day with this,” Massie said.
Here’s the truth: While Massie is claiming that Cameron sharing a stage with a slur-slinging bigot who’s apparently allergic to melanin on TV “plays into a trope about Republicans,” the reality is it’s not really a trope. It’s a demonstrable fact that today’s white supremacists identify politically with the GOP, and vice versa.
Here’s what I wrote last month when a passionate Trump supporter was charged with hate crimes for allegedly harassing his Latino neighbors and a Black motorist with racial slurs and violence:
Why were white supremacist protesters holding flags with swastikas alongside flags in support of Gov. Ron DeSantis outside of Disney World earlier this month? Why do KKK members keep showing up on Republican campaign trails? Why is former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, who has run for office multiple times as a Republican, crediting himself for rhetoric spewed by the ex-president and ex-Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson? Why is racist Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron an apparent believer in the same Great Replacement Theory (or “White Replacement Theory“) often touted by Carlson and other white conservatives?
I’m not saying all conservative Republicans are white supremacists (I’m not saying that today, anyway), I’m just saying white supremacists tend to be conservative Republicans. There’s just something about MAGA and the GOP that ne-Nazis find very inviting.
And the party of white nationalists is, unfortunately, also very inviting to Black people like Cameron who would tap-dance barefoot through a Klan rally and across a river of hot coals if it meant sitting at their table.
Anyway, Cameron’s campaign was questioned about the Deters event in September and Massie’s remarks, and conveniently enough, the campaign suddenly had other plans.
“As it turns out, we’re going to be doing other campaign events that day in another region of the state. We plan to campaign in northern Kentucky often between now and November 7,” the Cameron campaign told the Herald-Ledger.
Cameron continues to be an embarrassment.
And we still want justice for Breonna.
SEE ALSO:
‘He Was Dead Wrong’: Breonna Taylor’s Mother Calls Out Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron
