Rep. Mo Brooks will not back down from his controversial statement that Democrats are waging a "war on whites" — and says President Barack Obama always intended to divide the nation by race.
"It's a planned strategy on the Democrats' part, and the American people ought to reject it — because it's the wrong thing for America,'' Brooks, an Alabama Republican, said Tuesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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Brooks sparked a firestorm when he responded to National Journal writer Ron Fournier, who said on Fox News that the GOP "cannot be the party of the future beyond November if you're seen as the party of white people.''
In an interview Monday with radio host Laura Ingraham, Brooks said: "This is a part of the war on whites that's being launched by the Democratic Party, and the way in which they're launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else.''
Brooks, a member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, told Malzberg he is "absolutely'' sticking by his comments.
"Look at what the Democrats do on a regular basis, they appeal to specific racial groups by saying we will protect you, that specific racial group, and who are they talking about protecting them from?'' he said.
"Well, they're talking about protecting them from Republicans, but at the same time what do they say about those Republicans? That they're whites.
"[Senate Majority Leader] Sen. Harry Reid — recently when he was complaining about a Supreme Court decision, what did he say? White men . . . Democrats on a regular basis try to divide Americans up based on race, and I find that highly inappropriate.''
Brooks said lawmakers must make public policy decisions based on their merits and the nation's best interests.
"When you get Steve Israel, who is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman, saying, well, the Republican base is animated by racism, on CNN . . . [and] Nancy Pelosi saying the Republican effort to secure the borders and protect us from this huge influx of illegal aliens is based on race, that's wrong,'' he said.
The commander in chief is just as culpable, he says.
"He intended from the get-go to divide based on his conduct in office over the last six years, it's inescapable," Brooks said.
"Over the last six years, racial relations have declined in large part because the Democrats have decided that this political strategy of dividing us by race has worked, and so I'm going to call him out on it, and I might be the only one calling out on it.
"It's got to stop, and the only way to make it stop is to shine the light of day on it and help people understand the depravity of what the Democrats are doing by making race an issue . . . It should be repugnant to every American.''