Angie Nixon says Trump or Senate opponent Ashley Moody may have ‘paid off’ Laura Loomer for racist attack
TheGrio...
The Florida Democrat tells theGrio she believes the racist attack was meant to distract from a $10 million controversy involving her Republican opponent.
U.S. Senate Democratic nominee Angie Nixon is speaking out after conservative personality Laura Loomer called her and other prominent Black female Democrats “ghetto Black bitches.”
“It’s frustrating because I should not have to continually be attacked,” Nixon, a Florida state representative, told theGrio on Monday following the racist remark from Loomer, a close ally of President Donald Trump.
As theGrio previously reported, Loomer’s remarks were directed at Nixon, U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar, former U.S. Congresswoman Cori Bush, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Nixon, who is running to unseat U.S. Senator Ashley Moody, believes Loomer’s attack was a deliberate move to distract from a recent political scandal in Florida involving the alleged misuse of taxpayer funds to prop up Republican political campaigns. The Democrat said she believes either Trump or Moody “paid off” Loomer for the racist attack to distract attention from the Florida misappropriation scandal.
“It distracts from the real issues, and the issues are the fact that we have people like Ashley Moody who’s stealing $10 million from kids, and it just gets to be annoying,” Nixon told theGrio. “I feel as though Ashley Moody or Trump may have paid off Laura Loomer to try to distract away from the fact that she—her, Ron DeSantis and James Uthmeier—stole $10 million.”
As reported last week, a grand jury found that Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration diverted $10 million from a Medicaid settlement to provide health insurance for poor children into the Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit started by DeSantis’s wife, Casey DeSantis. The funds were then transferred to two political action committees and the Republican Party of Florida as “part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities.”
The grand jury also found that Ashley Moody, who was the attorney general at the time before being appointed by DeSantis to the U.S. Senate, was aware of the plans to divert the $10 million to Hope Florida. Moody reportedly “authorized” her former chief deputy, John Guard, to sign the settlement agreement “without conducting his due diligence to ensure the proper appropriation of taxpayer funds.”
“We have to get rid of this corruption that continues to happen under the direction of the Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis administrations,” Nixon told theGrio.
The Democrat said of Moody, “She was rewarded this senatorial seat because she stole $10 million. That is egregious, and it should have never happened, and it is very shameful because there are children who are suffering because of it.”
Nixon also slammed Trump and said his continued attacks on Black women, including herself, have created a permission structure for figures like Loomer to spew racist attacks like the one she endured.
Nixon said that, in addition to Loomer and Moody, President Trump and Gov. DeSantis have talked about how she speaks, telling theGrio, “It was a concerted effort. They don’t like Black people. Period.”
The White House did not immediately respond to theGrio’s request for comment about Loomer’s remarks about Nixon and other Black women Democrats.
Noting that Florida has the second-highest Black population in the United States, the Florida lawmaker added, “To be so disrespectful to Black people, and you say that you want to serve them is so hypocritical and is so shameful, and we see that cruelty is the point, but the attacks on DEI, the attacks on woke, they just want Black people and many other working families to suffer.”
Bringing the focus back to her “people-powered” campaign, Nixon, who is seeking to make history as Florida’s first Black U.S. Senator, told theGrio, “We have the opportunity to do something different to elect someone who is accessible, who’s ethical, someone that [voters] can trust, and who wants to put a stop to the elected officials only looking out for their campaign donors and their these corporations.”
Pointing out that Senator Moody is a millionaire, she added, “We should start electing people who know what it’s like to struggle or to go through what everyone else is going through, and not just these millionaires.”