Rep. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) apparently didn’t get the memo that this was a red line. And just as with King, Gosar suddenly appears to be a problem his party can no longer ignore.
The question increasingly for Republicans is how much its tolerance for this kind of thing has changed in the past two years.
Images cropped up on social media Monday night advertising a Gosar fundraiser with America First PAC, a group run by young far-right operative Nick Fuentes, who has promoted white-nationalist ideas and whom the Justice Department has labeled a “white supremacist.” Below is a tweet from former GOP congressman Denver Riggleman (Va.).
There was some question Monday night as to whether the joint event between Gosar and Fuentes was legitimate, and Gosar’s office and campaign haven’t responded to requests for comment. But the congressman appeared to defend it late Monday night.
“Not sure why anyone is freaking out. I’ll say this: there are millions of Gen Z, Y and X conservatives. They believe in America First,” Gosar said in an apparent reference to the America First PAC, which caters to young members of the far right. “They will not agree 100% on every issue. No group does. We will not let the left dictate our strategy, alliances and efforts. Ignore the left.”
Crucially, the fundraiser would represent a doubling down for Gosar. Back in February, Gosar was criticized for serving as a keynote speaker at an America First PAC event in Orlando in which Fuentes delivered a white-nationalist speech.
A day later, Gosar defended reaching out to new audiences but said in a speech to another conservative audience, “I want to tell you, I denounce … white racism. That’s not appropriate.” He later told The Washington Post’s David Weigel that the comment specifically referenced Fuentes’s speech. In the speech, Fuentes made the remarks about the Capitol riot being “awesome” and the country losing its “White demographic core.” Fuentes also claimed Black Lives Matter wanted to create “a new racial caste system in this country, with Whites at the bottom.”
It’s in some ways a wonder that Gosar’s situation hasn’t blown up in the way, say, as has that of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Part of that is that Gosar hasn’t really built anything amounting to a movement within the GOP. Part of it is also undoubtedly that his speech to the America First PAC crowd in February overlapped with another, more well-attended event: the Conservative Political Action Conference, at which former president Donald Trump spoke.
But the doubling down on allying with Fuentes would certainly seem to force the issue. Republicans put up with plenty from King before deciding his comment about white supremacy and white nationalism went too far. King, for his part, claimed he was only talking about “Western Civilization” when he said, “How did that language become offensive?” Here we have a Republican congressman not just toying with defending white nationalism, but actually aligning with its adherents — and apparently repeatedly so, after he suggested he was somewhat chastened by the first instance.
At the same time, we’ve increasingly seen the kind of “replacement theory” that self-proclaimed white nationalists espouse seeping into the mainstream. King used to be in a small minority of his party in talking about such things; now it’s featured in prime time on Fox News.
Message not received, it would seem. McCarthy’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Gosar on Tuesday morning.
Update: The No. 2-ranking House Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), told CNN late Tuesday morning that he hadn’t seen the news of Gosar’s fundraiser. McCarthy’s office still hasn’t responded to the request for comment.
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GOP Rep. Paul Gosar appears to ally with white nationalists — again - The Washington Post
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