TJ Walker criticizes Maine Governor Paul LePage for racist statements about heroin and migrants, including a vulgar voicemail to a legislator. Recorded August 30, 2016, Walker speculates LePage may face resignation as some Republicans turn against him.
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Is the issue political correctness or common decency? That's the issue with Governor Ron LePage, the flamboyant, some would say eccentric governor of Maine. Now, if you haven't heard of this guy, he is known for making wildly controversial statements, sort of Donald Trump asked without the hairstyle or model wife. He may have gone too far this time. I want to share with you some statements he made just in the last week that many, many people, including his fellow Republicans, perceived as wildly racist. Not a little bit racist or racist friendly, but just wildly racist. Here are some of the things he said. Black people come up the highway and kill Mainers. If I a racist for trying to get black people and Hispanic people and white people and Asian people who come up I95 with heroin, that will kill Mainers, then I plead guilty. But then he says a bad guy is a bad guy. I don't care what color he is. When you go to war, you don't know the enemy. The enemy dresses in red, you dress in blue, you shoot at red. Don't shoot can. You've been in uniform. You shoot the enemy. You try to. Here's where it gets interesting. 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. I can't help that he essentially seems to be saying that black and brown people are enemies and that white people are the victims. Now, the interesting thing about this guy is every time he holds a press conference or takes questions to apologize or sort of clean up for one mess, he says something even worse. Apparently some legislator had said something he didn't like. And the governor then left a vehement, nasty, vile voicemail message that called the guy all sorts of something or other suckers. You can fill in the dots, all sorts of obscenities, homophobic slurs. And that just made matters worse. Now, this has gone on really for the entire tenure that he has been in office and he was recently re elected. Now it appears it's not just Democrats and liberals and the media who are upset. Members of his own party have finally had enough. Governor LePage was quite contrite. Excuse me, it's Paul LePage. I may have said Ron LePage. Forgive me if I did. He's now making hints, making suggestions that he may even have to resign. And he has talked about how it's one thing to sort of be against certain people and be seen as politically correct and flamboyant, but it's another to have your own party after you and apparently members of his own party party have had enough. Is Paul LePage going to resign? I don't have any inside information on that as of August 30th at 2:30pm when I'm recording this, but certainly his days of wielding any power seem to be diminishing given the fact that he is considered anathema to every Democrat in this state and increasingly every Republican is looking for excuses to get out of the room once he enters. It does go to show you everyone likes to talk about how they're not politically correct, but if you just say obnoxious, vile, racist, disgusting things all the time, it can eventually catch up with you and you have no support left whatsoever.
