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Sen. Tommy Tuberville relents and says white nationalists are racist
By John Wagner
Updated July 11, 2023 at 3:49 p.m. EDT|Published July 11, 2023 at 8:17
a.m. EDT
“My opinion of a white nationalist, if someone wants to call them white nationalist, to me, is an American. It’s an American,” Sen. Tommy
Tuberville (R-Ala.), left, with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), said in a
TV interview Monday night. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
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Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), facing a barrage of criticism over a
Monday night television interview in which he refused to say white
nationalists are racists, relented Tuesday afternoon, acknowledging to reporters on Capitol Hill that they in fact are.

“White nationalists are racists,” Tuberville told reporters, after earlier exchanges with reporters in which he continued to insist that was a matter
of opinion, a position that echoed his comments from an interview the
night before.

Appearing on CNN on Monday night, Tuberville was given the opportunity to clarify remarks from this spring when he appeared to be advocating for
white nationalists to serve in the U.S. military.

Tuberville said he rejects racism but pushed back against host Kaitlan
Collins when she told him that by definition white nationalists are racist because they believe their race is superior to others. He said that was
only her opinion and at one point in the back-and-forth characterized
white nationalists as people who hold “a few probably different beliefs.”

Tuberville’s remarks drew a sharp rebuke Tuesday from Senate Majority
Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who urged Tuberville to apologize.

“The senator from Alabama is wrong, wrong, wrong,” Schumer said on the
Senate floor. “The definition of white nationalism is not a matter of
opinion. White nationalism, the ideology that one race is inherently
superior to others, that people of color should be segregated, subjected
to second-class citizenship, is racist down to its rotten core. For the
senator from Alabama to obscure the racist nature of white nationalism is indeed very, very dangerous.”

Tuberville’s CNN interview resurrected another controversy for the first-
term senator, who has been in the news mostly for stalling scores of
senior military nominations in an attempt to stop a Defense Department
policy that helps ensure access to abortions for service members and their families. His holds were a topic Tuesday at a confirmation hearing for
Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr., President Biden’s choice to lead the Joint
Chiefs of Staff.

Defending white nationalists, Tommy Tuberville fears a military that is
‘going wrong’

In a brief interaction with reporters on Capitol Hill earlier on Tuesday, Tuberville struggled to clarify his views on white nationalists.

“Listen, I’m totally against racism,” he said. “And if the Democrats want
to say white nationalists are racist, I’m totally against that too. … My definition is, racism bad.”

Even fellow Republicans were reluctant to defend Tuberville’s CNN
interview.

“I am not sure exactly what he was trying to say there,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the chamber’s minority whip, told CNN. “I mean, I would just say
that there is no place for white nationalism in our party.”

Asked about Tuberville’s comments during a news conference Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) didn’t comment directly but said, “White supremacy is simply unacceptable in our military and in our entire country.”

In a May interview with a local public radio station in Alabama,
Tuberville, a former football coach, criticized Defense Secretary Lloyd
Austin for his efforts “to get out the white extremists, the white nationalists” from the military. Tuberville said it was part of an effort
to politicize the armed services and accused Pentagon leaders of “ruining
our military” and driving away supporters of former president Donald
Trump.

Tuberville subsequently told reporters that he looks “at a white
nationalist as a Trump Republican,” adding, “That’s what we’re called all
the time.”

On Monday night, Collins pressed Tuberville on whether white nationalists should be allowed to serve in the military, offering a definition of a
white nationalist as someone who “believes that the white race is superior
to other races.”

“Well that’s some people’s opinion,” Tuberville said.

Asked for his opinion, Tuberville said: “My opinion of a white
nationalist, if someone wants to call them white nationalist, to me, is an American. It’s an American. Now if that white nationalist is a racist, I’m totally against anything that they want to do because I am 110 percent
against racism.”

Tuberville then accused Democrats of using the term to push “identity politics,” which he said is “ruining this country.”



Collins continued to press Tuberville on whether white nationalists should
be able to serve in the military, saying they are people who believe
“horrific things.”

“Well that’s just a name that has been given,” Tuberville said of white nationalism.

Collins told him, “It’s a real definition.”

“If you’re going to do away with most White people in this country out the military, we’ve got huge problems,” Tuberville responded.

“It’s not people who are White. It’s white nationalists,” Collins said.

“That have a few probably different beliefs, they have different beliefs,” Tuberville said. “Now if racism is one of those beliefs, I’m totally
against it. I’m totally against racism.”

Earlier in the interview, Tuberville cited his coaching experience at
Auburn University and elsewhere.

“I was a football coach for 40 years and had the opportunity to be around
more minorities than anybody up on this Hill,” Tuberville said.

“A white nationalist is racist, Senator,” Collins said.

“Well that’s your opinion, that’s your opinion,” Tuberville said.

He added, “I’m totally against any type of racism.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, among the Democrats to criticize Tuberville
on Tuesday, suggested in a tweet that Tuberville’s comments were driven by ignorance. With an attached clip of the CNN interview, Newsom wrote: “That moment in which Sen. Tommy Tuberville admits he does not know what it
means to be a white nationalist, and then goes on to defend them.”

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “white nationalist groups
espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies, often focusing
on the alleged inferiority of nonwhite persons.”

“Their primary goal is to create a white ethnostate,” the group says on
its website. “Groups listed in a variety of other categories, including Ku
Klux Klan, neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi, racist skinhead and Christian
Identity, could also be fairly described as white nationalist.”

Military leaders have long worried about extremist views in their ranks.

A study by the Center for Strategic International Studies found that 6.4 percent of all domestic terrorism incidents in 2020 involved active-duty
or reserve personnel, more than quadrupling the tally from the previous
year. Hate groups actively target troops to become recruits while
encouraging their own extremists to join the military ranks.

The presence of many military veterans at the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol further alarmed senior Pentagon officials and prompted Austin to
create a counter-extremism working group in April 2021.

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