Mo Brooks hammers ‘racist’ $5 billion carve-out for minority farmers in COVID ‘stimulus’ at Dothan campaign stop — ‘This is insulting’

DOTHAN — Fresh off his announcement of a run for U.S. Senate days earlier, U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville) made a stop in the southeastern corner of the state on Thursday to woo GOP voters more than a year ahead of the 2022 Republican primary.

In his 2017 bid for U.S. Senate, Brooks struggled in the Wiregrass region, finishing a distant third to then-U.S. Sen. Luther Strange (R-Mountain Brook) and former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Roy Moore, who was the eventual Republican nominee. Brooks is seeking to change that in next year’s Republican U.S. Senate primary and started early with an appearance at the Houston County Republican Women’s monthly luncheon.

During his speech, Brooks defended his decision to challenge the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and also discussed the consequences of Democrat control of the federal government. Among those, he addressed the nearly $2 trillion COVID-19 relief package passed earlier this month, which included $5 billion for “farmers of color.”

Brooks slammed Democrats’ decision to include that provision in the coronavirus package, deeming it “insulting” and “racist.”

“There’s something really bad in this bill — their $2 trillion borrow-and-spend bill passed a couple of weeks ago,” he said. “How many of y’all are familiar with the $5 billion that has been set aside for farmers? Raise your hand if you’ve heard of it. A few of you have. This is insulting. It is racist to the worst degree because you know which farmers have access to it? All of them except for whites. If you’re a Native American farmer, you get a slice of that $5 billion. If you’re an Asian-American farmer, you get a slice of that $5 billion. If you’re a Spanish-American farmer, you get a slice of that $5 billion. If you’re an African-American farmer, you get a slice of that $5 billion. But if you happened to have been born with a white complexion — if you’re Caucasian, forget it. You’re out. Whites need not apply.”

“Now, racism is wrong everywhere, OK?” Brooks added. “We fought a Civil War about it, where hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives in large part because of that issue. There were other issues, but that was a big part of it. And the 14th Amendment says equal protection. But these socialists, who exploit and create racial division for political gain — they’re doing this for political gain. They’re seeking bloc votes based solely on skin pigmentation. And I would submit to you that is repulsive and that is wrong. It was wrong when African-Americans were discriminated against. It is wrong if Asian-Americans are discriminated against. It is wrong if Native Americans are discriminated against. It wrong with respect to any kind — we’re all Americans. And we need to be skin color-blind because skin pigmentation is an accident of birth. But that’s not the way it is on the socialist side of the coin. They want to magnify it, and they want to exploit it. They want to divide us rather than bring us together. That is horrible, and we should never let them get away with it.”

Brooks told the audience the key to stopping those efforts was getting involved in elections.

@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly, and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.