Blacks lack 'morality,' Islam 's****,' Trump-appointee fired for racism

Washington: An appointee of President Donald Trump resigned from the federal agency that runs AmeriCorps and other services after CNN brought to light his comments slandering blacks, Muslims, homosexuals, women, veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and undocumented immigrants.

Carl Higbie was the chief of external affairs in the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), but lasted less than six months at his job.

Higbie's Thursday afternoon resignation was prompted by increased scrutiny for racist or anti-Muslim statements made by the president's appointees in the past.

On Saturday, Higbie took to Twitter to apologise profusely for the incident.

"I’m sorry. I’m not sorry that my words were published, I am sorry that I said them in 2013. Those words do not reflect who I am or what I stand for, I regret saying them. Last night I informed the WH that I was resigning so as not to distract from POTUS’ many success. #noexcuses," he wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security's Jamir Johnson, another of Trump's appointees resigned in November 2017 after his comments linking blacks to "laziness" and "promiscuity" came to light.

The new US ambassador to the Netherlands, former Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra apologised last week after there was an uproar over baseless anti-Muslim theories he has spread many times in the past.

The CNN report that was published on Thursday which was substantiated with audio clips showed that Higbie's folly was not a one-time slip, but he had a lengthy track record of being strongly racist and anti-Muslim before his appointment.

In 2013, while he was working in Virginia Beach on "Sound of Freedom," an internet talk show that he hosted, Higbie said that black women think "breeding is a form of government employment," and that blacks were "lax of morality," and that culture "is breeding this welfare and the high percentage of people on welfare in the black race."

In another talk show appearance in 2013 itself, he expressed disdain for the term "African-Americans."

"99 per cent people who write down African-Americans have never been to America," he said.

If this was not enough, Higbie's dislike of Muslims takes it a notch higher.

He disparaged Islam saying that he disliked them "because their ideology sucks," and he did not care if his views were racist.

"I just don't like Muslim people. People always rip me a new one for that. 'Carl, you're racist, you can't, you're sexist.' I'm like Jesus Christ," Higbie said on "Sound of Freedom" in 2013.

On another podcast, Warrior Talk Radio he struck a similar chord again in 2014, according to the CNN report.

"I was called an Islamophobe and I was like, 'no, no, no, no, no, I'm not afraid of them. I don't like them. Big difference,' " he said on the show. "And they were like, 'Well, you're racist.' I was like, fine if that's the definition of it, then I guess I am.'"

Higbie worked as the spokesperson for pro-Trump super PAC Great America before the 2016 US elections. He got into a controversy by comparing Japanese internment camps during World War II to some of Trump's upcoming immigration plans, which drew flak from all quarters.

In another audio that has come to light, Higbie, a former Naval officer himself, passed off military veterans with PTSD as having a "weak mind" and said he thought a large number of those suffering from it were actually faking it.

"I'd say 75 percent of people with PTSD don't actually have it, and they're either milking something for a little extra money in disability or they're just, they honestly are just lying," he said on another talk radio show in 2014.

CNCS spokesperson Samantha Jo Warfield, however, declined to comment on the circumstances that led to Higbie's resignation.

On yet another episode of "Sound of Freedom," Higbie said that Americans with guns should be able to shoot undocumented immigrants who attempted to cross into the US at the border.

"What's so wrong with wanting to put up a fence and saying, 'Hey, everybody with a gun, if you want to go shoot people coming across our border illegally, you can do it fo' free,'" Higbie said.

"You cross my border, I will shoot you in the face. I will go down there. I'll volunteer to go down there and stand on that border for, I don't know, a week or so at a time and that'll be my civil duty," he added.

Higbie also expressed a strong will to smack together the heads of California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The former, he also referred to as a "bitch."

"Nothing gets me going like Ted Cruz, when he went off on that Feinstein bitch about the Second Amendment. And he put her in her place, that was just fantastic. I can't stand that woman. Her and Pelosi. I'd love to just take both their heads and smack them together a couple of times," Higbie said.

Speaking on legalization of gay marriage in Rhode Island on "Sound of Freedom," he expressed strong dislike for homosexuals.

"Congratuf'in'lations, you suck, Rhode Island. Why would you do that?' he said. "I mean, you are breaking the morals, the moral fiber of our country. You know, I don't like gay people. I just don't," he commented, probably not realising the world's axis does not spin on his likes and dislikes.

White House correspondents were not available for a comment on his resignation.