An activist who helped arrange a speech for Ron DeSantis at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in February, and who has donated more than $20,000 to DeSantis over the years, called former President Barack Obama a “FUCKING MUSLIM N****” on Twitter recently, Politico reported.
The Republican activist is Steven Alembik, a 67-year-old data and email services provider in Florida. He has also donated to GOP Gov. Rick Scott, who is running for Senate, and other Republican politicians in the state. Alembik told Politico he was angry when he posted the tweet and suggested he was not racist and would never say the n-word in public.
“When I write anything inflammatory, it’s because I’m seriously pissed off,” he told Politico. “I’m an emotional human being. Do I have a filter on what I say? In public, yes. Would I use that word in public? No. This is Twitter.”
Alembik reportedly deleted the tweet after speaking with Politico, but he went on to make a slew of other racist and inflammatory comments during his interview with Politico about Muslims and Jewish people. While he said he understood why the campaign may need to distance itself from him, he also bragged that he had more pictures with DeSantis “than I have with my kids.”
DeSantis’s campaign was quick to condemn Alembik’s tweet.
“We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: we adamantly denounce this sort of disgusting rhetoric,” DeSantis campaign spokesman Stephen Lawson told Politico.
This is the fifth time DeSantis or someone affiliated with his campaign has been embroiled in a race-related issue.
