Folks on Twitter aren’t laughing at a sick, racist joke from Mississippi’s GOP U.S. Senator who’s in a runoff election against an African-American opponent.
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Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith was caught on video saying, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”
Hyde-Smith made the remark at a Nov. 2 event in Tupelo, Mississippi with cattle rancher Colin Hutchinson, according to the Clarion-Ledger.
Journalist Lamar White Jr. posted the 10-second video clip Sunday morning on social media.
Hyde-Smith was appointed to the Senate in April to replace Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, who retired because of an illness. She will face Democrat Mike Espy in a Nov. 27 runoff election. They finished ahead of a crowded field of candidates in a Nov. 6 special election in which no one won more than 50 percent of the vote.
If Espy wins the runoff election, he will become Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction. In a tweet, Espy called Hyde-Smith’s lynching joke “reprehensible.”
Here’s what else Twitter users are saying about Hyde-Smith’s remark.