MAGA influencers slam GOP governor for not being racist enough

MAGA influencers are slamming Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders for an ad released by the state that pushes welfare-to-work requirements without conforming to racist, anti-Black tropes.

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Huckabee Sanders, who previously served as President Donald Trump’s press secretary, released the ad on Monday. It depicts a young white man lazily playing video games as Huckabee Sanders describes him as someone who “chose not to work.”

Almost immediately, Huckabee Sanders came under fire from the right.

“This Republican ad calling out welfare leeches uses a young white male named ‘Brad’ as the villain,” complained right-wing pundit Matt Walsh. “Meanwhile, back in reality, women are significantly more likely to be on welfare than men. And black people are astronomically more likely to be on welfare than white people.”

MAGA activist and serial hoaxster Jack Posobiec, who has been a credentialed journalist under the Trump administration despite his ties to white supremacists, also freaked out over the “attack” on white men.

“This Antiwhite ad should be taken down, the comms team fired, and the Governor’s Office issue an apology. We are 35 days out from an election and they are attacking young White men,” he wrote on X.

Failed Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, who ran a racist campaign, also chimed in.

“White men named Brad don’t typically commit welfare fraud,” he wrote on X. “I’d recommend you start with the baby-momma with a BMW who just got back from her Carnival Cruise.”

And Auron MacIntyre, a contributor to conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck’s Blaze Media, said, “The first political party to stop hating young white men will win for a generation.”

The initiative from Huckabee Sanders is steeped in conservative orthodoxy about attacking government assistance. 

At the federal level, Republicans have passed legislation like the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” arguing that “able-bodied” people are abusing the system—an excuse that Republicans have used to cut off aid for millions of vulnerable people. 

Now Huckabee Sanders is executing this vision of government indifference at the state level, but these activists are upset that she isn’t doing so in a racist fashion.

The data on these services clearly shows that most recipients of assistance, like food stamps, are in fact white—a majority of the U.S. population is white—and children. 

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But conservatives have spent decades promoting propaganda that minorities—and, in recent years, minority immigrants—are purportedly scamming the system and living high on the hog. 

Infamously, former President Ronald Reagan spent much of his political career pushing the myth of the Black “welfare queen” who lived a life of luxury while falsely crying poverty. This was never true, but it’s a pillar of right-wing rhetoric. 

Ultimately, MAGA influencers are just upset because Huckabee Sanders—who has been one of their own since the beginning—isn’t being racist enough.

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