Paul Gosar explains yet another appearance at a white nationalist conference by blaming his staff

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Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, whom God created to conclusively disprove white supremacy, is trying to explain away his video appearance at shrieking anti-Semite Nick Fuentes’ white power-palooza carnival in February, and that explanation is just as craven as you might imagine. 

Gosar, who has the intellectual heft of chilled monkey brains and looks like he cuts his own hair with an intermittent series of controlled burns, seems to think white people are superior to other races. Now, that’s an assertion that might seem slanderous if not for his repeated participation in white supremacist events. And now, more than a month after appearing via video at Fuentes’ America First Political Action Conference, Gosar is addressing the controversy—by blaming his staff. What a standup fella, huh?

What’s the old saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on my underpaid, overworked staff, who should have recalled from my appearance last year that this was a white nationalist event.

POLITICO:

Gosar’s denial — among the first public remarks he’s given on the matter — comes nearly a month after the furor over his appearance at Fuentes’ event consumed the House GOP. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Gosar both appeared at Fuentes’ America First Political Action Conference. Greene spoke in person, while Gosar’s office sent in a video.

What he’s saying: “It wasn’t supposed to go to Nick’s group,” Gosar told POLITICO, noting that a staffer “misconstrued” directions from his chief of staff. The tape was intended to go to other groups as a general “welcome video,” he added.

According to Gosar, his staff is currently shorthanded, and “there was a miscommunication.” Which is odd, because after he spoke in person at the same conference in 2021, you’d think he might have put his foot down and removed the white nationalist group from his iPhone or Rolodex or fish pail full of Post-It Notes or whatever the disgraced dentist uses to organize his contact list.

Famously, Gosar claims he “didn’t know anything about the group” before speaking at the event last year;  Rep. Greene made a similar comment following her appearance at the conference this year. That might pass as an explanation if not for this:

The first results when you Google Fuentes’ name identify him as a white nationalist who has compared baking cookies to the Holocaust’s mass murder of Jews, among other incendiary and discriminatory statements.

And Fuentes isn’t just content to marginalize the vast majority of humans. He also managed to slip in some Putin praise at the AFPAC as Greene awaited her turn to speak. Remember, this came shortly after Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Transcript!

FUENTES: “You know they say about America, they say diversity is our strength. And I look at China, I look at Russia. Can we give a round of applause for Russia? [Crowd cheers and chants ‘Putin, Putin, Putin!’] Absolutely, absolutely.”

And as Tim Wise notes, Greene still came on out.

While House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has vowed to give both Greene and Gosar (another) stern talking-to, the Republican Party appears unwilling to expose them to censure—an extraordinary disciplinary measure they appear to reserve solely for members who investigate coups against the legitimate government of the United States. 

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Meanwhile, according to POLITICO, both Gosar and Greene have apparently lost the benefit of the doubt among most congressional Republicans, who would likely prefer they keep their racism cloaked behind a thin veneer of respectability.

And, of course, Gosar and Greene were among the 63 House members (all Republicans) who on Tuesday voted against a resolution supporting NATO—which is likely the biggest gift they can get away with giving Putin at the moment.

Yes, the GOP is indeed the party of Putin and white nationalism. It’s past time we hang those moldering albatrosses around their treacherous necks, don’t you think?