Former GOP Congressman Denver Riggleman, of Virginia, slammed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene over her now-scrapped plan to organize an “America First” caucus in the Republican party focused on Anglo-Saxon values and political philosophy, calling it “racism in a jar.”
“It was sort of gobsmacking,” the former GOP Congressman said Monday on CNN’s New Day. “You read the first seven pages … and it sounds like what happened to me in my district with the same sort of vile language, like racism in a jar.”
Last week, GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.) announced they lead the formation of the group, dubbed the “America First” caucus.
The caucus platform stated a need to uphold former President Trump’s legacy and protect “Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”
“America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions,” the platform read. “History has shown that societal trust and political unity are threatened when foreign citizens are imported en-masse into a country, particularly without institutional support for assimilation and an expansive welfare state to bail them out should they fail to contribute positively to the country.”
The idea for the caucus has since been abandoned by GOP members.
Riggleman, who lost his seat in the U.S. House last June after being defeated in a GOP primary by Rep. Bob Good, an evangelical Christian with views more closely aligned with the party’s more conservative wing, said that Green “got her hand caught in the racist cookie jar.”
“This is not unique,” he said. “It is still there, it is still metastasizing … that kind of hate that kind of trying to project policy into a hate-filled bucket is what they’re trying to do. And then trying to rationalize it as something the Republican party does not stand for. And if the GOP does not stand up, and identify these individuals for who they are, again, I think there’s real trouble there.”
