Rep. Matt Gaetz looked just so pleased with himself for flashing a white power hand sign on Fox News tonight.
In case you missed it, there was an internet conspiracy theory that Zina Bash, a Trump aide sitting behind Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing, had deliberately signaled on behalf of white power when she made the “OK” symbol with her thumb and second finger twice on screen. The Washington Post has the complete story and, for the record, I’m not on Team She Was Sending A Message.
Nevertheless, it takes a special kind of racial jerk to deliberately make the symbol on television in order to stick it to liberals. But Gaetz, the guy who took Charles C. Johnson to the State of the Union, was up to the task. Johnson, in case you’re not familiar with the name, is a Holocaust denier who was permanently banned from Twitter after asking for help “taking out” a Black Lives Matter activist.
During the discussion, host Jesse Watters brought up the “major conspiracy theory” about Bash at the Kavanaugh hearings. Watters conveniently omitted Bash’s second, far more overt, “OK” sign that she made the day after her first “OK” gesture became a Twitter meme.
Gaetz, whose face seems frozen in a perpetual spoiled-frat-boy smirk (his father is the very wealthy former president of Florida’s state senate), snarked as he held up his hand in the “OK” gesture: “Well, Jesse, imagine how embarrassed I was. I saw her thumb and index finger together and I thought she was expressing Kavanaugh’s support for marijuana reform.”
Watters laughingly warned Gaetz against making the gesture. “They’re going to freeze-frame it and it’s gonna look really bad. It’s gonna look bad for me, too,” Watters said.
This, of course, is little more than a week after Gaetz’s pal, Rep. Ron DeSantis fear mongered that his African American opponent in the state’s gubernatorial race, Andrew Gillum, would “monkey up” the state if elected. As a matter of fact, DeSantis had been on Fox News earlier that day and had refused to express any regret for his remarks.
It’s also a little more than a month after a Watters guest called an Asian writer for the New York Times “Crazy-nese” and said, “There’s something wrong with them fortune cookies that Ling Ling is eating.”
Fox News: The go-to network for race baiting.
Watch Gaetz smirk while he sends a dog whistle to racists below, from the September 8, 2018 Watters World, via Raw Story.
Zina Bash, even though her own ethnicity is Jewish/Mexican, was despatched SPECIFICALLY by the White House to give a wink and a nudge to the rotten core racists. Holding your hand in that position for an extended period is anything but natural, comfortable or accidental. Coming back the next day and making such a show of it was intended to remove any doubt it was deliberate.
It is hard to believe an American government in the 21st Century could play to such base instincts, but there can be no doubt. The Bannon mentality is alive and well at 1600 Pennsylvania.
It’s not surprising Fox News, the crusader against political correctness, would have a lot of fun with this. Don’t fall for the bait is my advice.
