Joe Arpaio: There Is Nothing Racist About 'Make America Great Again' Hats
All this talk about people wearing “Make America Great Again” hats being racists, including the Covington Catholic High School students, is ridiculous.
This is all geared to go after President Donald Trump.
You had a panelist proclaiming on CNN, “I’m so triggered” by MAGA hats and saying she looks at them like a “KKK hood.” How ludicrous.
This week you had a restaurant owner in the San Francisco area announcing he would refuse to serve anyone wearing a MAGA hat because it is a symbol of racism and hate, only to backtrack later in the day, probably because he knew the lawsuits could be coming in his near future.
I was so pleased to see the retractions rolling after the rush to judgement by many in the mainstream media regarding the Covington High students.
Though the damage was done, so it was a little too late.
Of course the threat of being sued likely helped spur at least some of those about faces from people like CNN’s S.E. Cupp and Jake Tapper, “The View’s” Meghan McCain, actress Jamie Lee Curtis, and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
An attorney representing students and alumni from Covington High days after the incident said that his clients had given the journalists and celebrities 48 hours to either retract false statements made about them or face libel lawsuits.
Those boys weren’t the ones being the racists at the Lincoln Memorial, it was a group of African-Americans calling themselves the Black Hebrew Israelites, who were throwing the racial slurs.
Further, it wasn’t the students who surrounded Native American Nathan Phillips; he was the one who approached the boys.
The media saw what they wanted to see until the truth came out and shamed them into retractions.
I expect Covington High students’ attorney to follow through, because the media needs to be held accountable.
I am currently suing, with the help of my attorney Larry Klayman, The New York Times, CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Huffington Post, and Rolling Stone because of the defamatory reporting they have done about me.
The latter three either accused me of being a convicted felon or going to prison because of how I performed my job as sheriff.
These media outlets owe me a retraction and apology. I have never been a convicted felon or served time.
In my whole life, I think I have had two parking tickets.
It is very unusual for me in my 55-year career to ever file lawsuits, but in this case it had to be done.
In my 24 years as sheriff, many frivolous lawsuits have been filed against me.
Sixty days after President Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, took office they started investigations on me, leading to multiple negative headlines about alleged racial profiling.
In October 2016, Obama Justice Department prosecutors filed a misdemeanor contempt of court charge — so they could refuse to allow me to have a jury trial — as Arizonans were voting by mail in my bid for a 7th term as Maricopa County Sheriff. It was an obvious political ploy to help my Democratic opponent.
A Clinton appointed federal judge then refused my request for a jury trial and convicted me herself of misdemeanor contempt of court. The same penalty you can receive for allowing your dog to bark too much. Give me a break.
During my re-election campaign, the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, decided to come over to Phoenix to campaign against me wearing a red shirt, with white large letters saying “Arrest Arpaio.” The same color scheme as the MAGA hats. It had an image of me in jail clothes.
Apparently, it’s freedom of speech in the eyes of the media when Garcetti marches in the streets of Phoenix in his red “Arrest Arpaio” shirt, but it’s hate speech when Covington kids like Nick Sandmann (or anyone else in the eyes of the media) wear red “Make America Great Again” hats with white letters.
Garcetti had been contemplating a run for the White House.
About a week ago, I made a post on social media about him wearing his obnoxious shirt, and this week he announced he would not run for president. It would be satisfying to me to think I had something to do with it, but he couldn’t win anyway.
Democrats are the ones engaging in hate speech like freshman Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib who called our president a “motherf–ker” and a racist.
The “Make America Great Again” hat is not hate speech, and it doesn’t stand for racism. It stands for restoring the country as a place of opportunity for all Americans, which President Trump and his supporters are well on their way to achieving, despite the opposition of the Democrats in Congress and the media.
I am proud to have been with President Trump since Day One. I think I’ll buy a thousand MAGA hats and make sure I send some to folks like Mayor Garcetti.
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