Trump appointee Carl Higbie resigns after report reveals series of racist remarks
On Thursday, Donald Trump’s appointee to the federal agency that runs AmeriCorps resigned after CNN published a report of his bigoted statements.
Carl Higbie, who had been appointed by Trump as the chief of external affairs for the Corporation for National and Community Service, appeared on cable news as a surrogate for Trump during the election. He was also the public face of the Great America PAC.
But now, he has left CNCS, which oversees volunteer programs like AmeriCorps, after racist, sexist, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT comments came to light.
“Effective immediately, Carl Higbie has resigned as Chief of External Affairs at CNCS,” Samantha Jo Warfield, a spokesperson for CNCS, said in a statement.
CNN published a report of several of Higbie’s comments, several of which are below.
“I bet you can guess what color they are”
Higbie made many of the derogatory comments on his “Sound of Freedom” radio talk show, hitting women, people of color, Muslims, and even veterans suffering from PTSD.
In one comment, he described a family living in his condo complex:
“I told this story the other day on my show. Somebody who lives in my condo association that has five kids, and it’s her and her husband with the five kids and the mother, the grandmother of the kids, and they don’t have jobs, they’re there all the time – I bet you can guess what color they are – and they have no job,” he said.
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He also made comments about Black people having “lax” morals and suggested that Black women think “breeding is a form of government employment.”
“I just don’t like Muslim people”
In June 2013, Higbie also went on a rant against Muslims, saying, “I just don’t like Muslim people.”
“Well people are like, ‘well, you can’t hate somebody just for being Muslim,'” Higbie said. “It’s like, yeah, I can. Do you hate people who rape little boys? They say, ‘oh, of course. They’re just terrible people.’ Well, yeah, most Muslims believe that to have sex with men is OK, which I don’t like it all. But second off, it’s the ideology of a child molester. The ideology of a Muslim is what I don’t like. They are screwed up in the head and it makes, pisses me off.”
“I don’t like gay people”
Muslims aren’t the only group that Higbie “just doesn’t like,” either. In May 2013, he went on a rant against LGBT people.
“Rhode Island, land of more liberals, has just OK’ed, gay marriage,” Higbie said. “Congratuf’in’lations, you suck, Rhode Island. Why would you do that? Go ahead and twist the knife a little, little bit more. I mean, you are breaking the morals, the moral fiber of our country. You know, I don’t like gay people. I just don’t.”
“You cross my border, I will shoot you in the face”
Another comment in February 2013 suggested that Americans should shoot undocumented immigrants crossing their border.
“What’s so wrong with wanting to put up a fence and saying, ‘hey, everybody with a gun, if you want to go shoot people coming across our border illegally, you can do it fo’ free,'” Higbie said. “And you can do it on your own, and you’ll be under the command of the, you know, National Guard unit or a Border Patrol, I think stick a fence six feet high with signs on it in both English and Spanish and it says ‘if you cross this border, this is the American border, you cross it, we’re going to shoot you.'”
“You cross my border, I will shoot you in the face,” Higbie added. “I will go down there. I’ll volunteer to go down there and stand on that border for, I don’t know, a week or so at a time and that’ll be my civil duty. I’ll volunteer to do it.”
“75 percent of people with PTSD don’t actually have it”
Higbie also suggested on an internet radio show that veterans suffering from PTSD were simply lying or covering a “weak mind.”
“I’d say 75% of people with PTSD don’t actually have it, and they’re either milking something for a little extra money in disability or they’re just, they honestly are just lying,” Higbie said in August 2014. “Twenty-five percent legitimately do have problems. They have bad dreams. They can’t cope. They have problems with noises and things like that. And I really think there are people that cannot deal with the stress of combat and some people can.”
