Homeland Security Official Resigns Over Past Racially Tinged Remarks

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Jamie Johnson resigned as the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships on Thursday following a CNN report revealing his past comments about black people and Muslims.

“His comments made prior to joining the Department of Homeland Security clearly do not reflect the values of DHS and the administration. The Department thanks him for his recent work assisting disaster victims and the interfaith community,” DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton said in a statement confirming Johnson’s resignation, which was first reported by The Hill.

In a Thursday report, CNN revealed comments Johnson made during radio appearances before his time at DHS.

In 2008, he explained why he felt black people are anti-Semitic in response to a question.

“I think one of the reasons why is because Jewish people from their coming to America in great waves in the early part of the 1800’s immediately rolled up their sleeves and began to work so hard and applied themselves to education and other means of improvement and other means of climbing the, I hate this phrase, but the social ladder if you will,” Johnson said. “And it’s an indictment of America’s black community that has turned America’s major cities into slums because of laziness, drug use and sexual promiscuity.”

In another radio appearance, he said that Muslims “are not our friends.”

“I never call it radical Islam, if anything, it is obedient Islam. It is faithful Islam,” Johnson said. “I agree with Dinesh D’Souza, your friend and mine, who says all that Islam has ever given us is oil and dead bodies over the last millennia and a half.”

Read CNN’s full report here.

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Notable Replies

  1. “His comments made prior to joining the Department of Homeland Security clearly do not reflect the values of DHS and the administration."

    
    ***Actually his comments do reflect administration values.***
    

    Donald Trump Says Central Park Five Are Guilty, Despite DNA Evidence
    by BENJY SARLIN

    Wading into a racially-charged case from his past, Donald Trump indicated that the “Central Park Five” were guilty, despite being officially exonerated by DNA evidence decades after a notorious 1989 rape case.

    “They admitted they were guilty,” Trump said to CNN in a statement.

    “The police doing the original investigation say they were guilty. The fact that that case was settled with so much evidence against them is outrageous. And the woman, so badly injured, will never be the same.”

    The five men were convicted as teenagers after implicating each other under intense questioning over a brutal sexual assault on a jogger that dominated the tabloids. Defenders said they were coerced into confessing and all five were later cleared by DNA evidence and a separate confession in 2002 from another criminal who took credit for the assault.

    New York paid them $41 million in a settlement in 2014 over their ordeal.

    Trump took out a full-page ad at the time of the crime calling for New York to reinstate the death penalty in response.

    The case was notable for its racial politics: Four of the Central Park Five were black and one was Latino while the victim was a white banker.

  2. Only the best people, every time. The Federal government is being turned into a snake pit.

  3. I was just about to post a similar, “actually they do.” I’m just surprised he wasn’t offered an immediate promotion.

    In a way that has nothing to do with Russian interference: we’re grappling with the self-exposure of neo Nazis, unqualified and incompetent idiots and racist scumbags.

    What a time to be alive!

  4. Guess who appointed this guy? I won’t tell you his initials but his name is John Kelly, the famous adult in the room. Remember how pleasant it was when anyone in public life had enough damn sense not to say this stuff out loud? I really do hate starting every day feeling disgusted with my own damn country but anyway have a nice Friday, folks. Fuck.

  5. Avatar for paulw paulw says:

    In charge of interfaith programs.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

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