Virginia Republican Defends Herself After Condoning Racist ‘Cotton-Picking’ Remark From Right-Wing Host

Here’s the thing: the GOP has a casual racism problem. To be sure, it has an overt racism problem as well — and our current president is the MAGA grand wizard in charge when it comes to fostering it — but the tendency for Republican officials to end up drowning in hot water of their own making comes as a result of a culture of dog whistles, microaggressions, soft bigotry and other forms of what white conservatives still consider to be acceptable racism. If the display of racism is anything less than a racial slur-free-for-all between hateful, self-described white supremacists — and sometimes even that isn’t enough — then confronting it at all will get a Republican panned as “woke” and a proponent of “cancel culture,” and a self-respecting Caucasian conservative can’t have that. And that’s precisely why Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) was unable to tell a racist to his face that he was saying something racist, and is now trying to clean up her failure to call out racism by shifting the blame to her Democratic counterparts.

Or, you know, maybe she’s just also racist.

On Monday, Kiggans made an appearance on Richmond’s Morning News with host Rich Herrera, who appeared to be really upset that Democrats have been playing the exact same gerrymandering games that Republicans were playing when Texas leaders allowed President Donald Trump and his administration to pressure them to draw Democratic representatives out of their districts to give the GOP a fighting chance in the upcoming midterm elections. Herrera was apparently upset that Democrats had been playing Republicans’ game better than Republicans had, to the point that they had to rely on the U.S. Supreme Court and, in this case, the Virginia Supreme Court to bail the party out of its self-inflicted political woes.

So, Herrera expressed his opinion to Kiggans that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries needed to stay out of Virginia politics, but he couldn’t simply make his hypocritical statement without opting to be a racist hypocrite, because Jeffries isn’t just a Democrat — he’s a Black Democrat.

Herrera argued that if Jeffries wanted to be involved in Virginia politics, then he should move from New York and run for office in the commonwealth.

“If not, get your cotton-picking hands off of Virginia,” Herrera said, to which Kiggans replied, “That’s right. Ditto. Yes, yes to that.”

That was three short sentences of affirmation in a row. Four, if you count her saying the word “yes” twice. Absent from her response, however, was any pushback whatsoever on Herrera’s racist use of the term “cotton-picking,” which, when intentionally applied to a Black man, is a clear reference to slavery. And Kiggans must have certainly realized that at one point, because in a tweet later that day, she said Herrera “should not have used that language,” but she also said she “did not condone it, which she clearly did three times — maybe four.

“This is precisely what’s wrong with Democrats,” Kiggans tweeted. “Every lie and distortion is intended to distract from getting their hats handed to them and the Virginia Supreme Court’s clear message: stop trying to rig our elections. The radio host should not have used that language and I do not -and did not – condone it. It was obvious to anyone listening that I was agreeing Hakeem Jeffries should stay out of Virginia. Democrats are trying to destroy Virginia’s court because they disagree with it. THAT is the real danger to our country.”

Nah — it was only “obvious to anyone listening” that you completely condoned and cosigned every word Herrera said, including the “cotton-picking” language, to which you replied: “That’s right. Ditto. Yes, yes to that.”

I’ve written recently about how, under Trump and the MAGA era, conservatives have an expectation that everyone ignore and deny what’s right in front of them, because that’s what MAGA supporters do as a regular practice, which is what the current GOP relies on to thrive politically. The problem that Trump and his Republican sycophants are going to continue running into is the fact that the strong majority of U.S. voters simply are not buying it anymore.

And that was reflected by the ratio under Kiggans’ tweet.

Look, maybe there’s a reason that the GOP has all but run out of Black congressmen to call their Black friends. These people are afraid of being called racist, but they’re also afraid of not appearing to be racist enough when they’re in racist company. And, again, that’s a conundrum of their own making.

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