Paul LePage #racist thinkprogress.org

In a Friday press conference following his homophobic remarks about a state lawmaker, Maine Governor Paul LePage (R) called people of color and people of Hispanic origin “the enemy” and implied they should be shot.

“A bad guy is a bad guy. I don’t care what color he is. When you go to war, if you know the enemy, the enemy dresses in red and you dress in blue, you shoot at red,” he said. “You shoot the enemy. You try to identify the enemy. And the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in are people of color or people of Hispanic origin.”

The governor has offered a veritable potpourri of racist and homophobic remarks over the years. In his voicemail to state Rep. Drew Gattine (D) on Thursday, in an apparent attempt to convince people that he is not a racist, he said, “I want to talk to you. I want you to prove that I’m a racist. I’ve spent my life helping black people and you little son-of-a-bitch, socialist cocksucker.”

On Wednesday, he called Khizr Khan, the father of a fallen Muslim soldier, a “con artist.” During a town hall on that same day, he said nearly all of Maine’s drug dealers are black or Hispanic. “I don’t ask them to come to Maine (to) sell their poison, but they come,” he said. “And I will tell you, that 90 percent-plus of those pictures in my book?—?and it’s a three-ring binder?—?are black and Hispanic people from Waterbury, Connecticut, the Bronx and Brooklyn.”

LePage grabbed national headlines earlier this year when he said men named “Smoothie, D-Money, and Shifty” were dealing drugs in Maine. He added, “Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue that we’ve got to deal with down the road. We’re going to make them very severe penalties.”

Among his other comments, he told the NAACP to “kiss my butt,” accused asylum seekers of bringing the “ziki fly,” and told the president to “go to hell.” LePage is an enthusiastic supporter of the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump.

14 comments

Confused?

So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

To post a comment, you'll need to Sign in or Register. Making an account also allows you to claim credit for submitting quotes, and to vote on quotes and comments. You don't even need to give us your email address.