Republican House candidate Carl Paladino has a very bad habit of spontaneously offering bigoted comments and then complaining that people are taking them out of context, even though the context never seems to help.
The most recently-uncovered moment where Paladino would have benefitted from a generous quantity of duct tape across his mouth came in a radio interview in which he defended himself against allegations of racism when he said Michelle Obama should “return to being a male” and be “let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe” to live in a cave with a female gorilla, by saying that Black people were “held hungry and dumb” and “captive in our inner cities” so they could be “conditioned” to vote for Democrats.
Yes, you read that correctly. He defended himself against accusations of racism for calling the former First Lady a male gorilla by saying Black people are stupid and brainwashed.
Mediaite wrote about Paladino just over a week ago, for his comments during a February 2021 radio interview with Buffalo, New York Station WBEN where he brought up Adolf Hitler completely unprompted in response to the show host’s question about how politicians could inspire people to get involved. Paladino praised Hitler as “the kind of leader we need today” and called him “inspirational” and “someone that is a doer, has been there and done it,” as opposed to New York Republicans, who he derided as RINOs and “sound asleep.”
Both Paladino and House GOP Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), one of his most prominent endorsers, attempted to walk back his Hitler fandom as being taken “out of context,” but as I wrote on June 9: