Five Texas GOP county leaders share racist Facebook posts, including one juxtaposing an MLK quote wi
Republican leaders in five Texas counties shared racist Facebook posts, some of which also floated conspiracy theories, leading Gov. Greg Abbott to call for two of them to resign.
Abbott and other top Texas Republicans called for the resignation of the GOP chairs in Bexar and Nueces counties after they shared on social media a conspiracy theory that Floyd's death was a "staged event," apparently to gin up opposition to President Donald Trump. There is no evidence to support that claim; Floyd, a black Minnesota man, died last week after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
"These comments are disgusting and have no place in the Republican Party or in public discourse," Abbott spokesman John Wittman said in a statement Thursday morning.
Meanwhile, the GOP chairman-elect in Harris County, Keith Nielsen, posted an image on Facebook earlier this week that showed a Martin Luther King Jr. quote — "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" — on a background with a banana. The juxtaposition of the quote and the banana can be read as an allusion to equating black people with monkeys, a well-worn racist trope. Nielsen appears to have deleted the post and apparently addressed it on his Facebook page Thursday evening.
"It is unfortunate that the sentiment of the quote and my admiration for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been overshadowed by people's misinterpretation of an image," Nielsen wrote, calling for "racial reconciliation" in America. "My hope is I will continue to be part of the solution and never part of the problem."
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/04/texas-greg-abbott-bexar-GOP-conspiracy/?utm_campaign=trib-social&utm_content=1591322646&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
