Sasse Rips ‘Brown Shirt Pajama Boy Nazi’ Richard Spencer
Nebraska senator evokes founding documents to deconstruct white supremacy
Sen. Ben Sasse may not have the tech savvy to properly thread a series of tweets.
But the Nebraska Republican showed he’s more than capable of savaging white supremacists on the app.
On Thursday, he ripped into Richard Spencer, calling the alt-right leader a “clown” and a “brown-shirt-pajama-boy Nazi” and implying he and other neo-Nazis lived in their parents’ basements.
It all started — and ended — with some good old fashioned name-calling.
Sasse linked to a Reuters article in which his Republican colleague Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma claimed Russian internet trolls fanned the flames of racial division last weekend in the wake of President Donald Trump blasting NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.
Spencer quote-tweeted Sasse’s initial tweet and added his own commentary.
“In the minds of goober conservatives, the Russians are to blame for racial divisions,” Spencer wrote.
That teed up Sasse, who grabbed his biggest, heaviest club — and swung for the green.
“Let goobers & nongoobers agree on this: Racists like you are to blame,” he said. “But Putin’s agencies also love using you as their divisive tool.”
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Oh let goobers & nongoobers agree on this: Racists like you are to blame. But Putin’s agencies also love using you as their divisive tool https://t.co/DaD4XaNvI5— Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) September 28, 2017
Sasse went on to administer a lesson in “American 101,” as he called it. He discussed abstract topics such as human worth and the potential of the individual as laid out in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
“Sadly, you don’t understand human dignity,” Sasse tweeted at Spencer, who gained notoriety last November for leading a group of roughly 200 people in a Nazi salute at one of his speeches in Washington, D.C., shortly after President Donald Trump was elected.
“A person’s skin, ancestry, and bank balance have nothing to do with their intrinsic value,” Sasse wrote.
Sasse characterized Spencer’s ideas on race as “[not] just hateful,” but “un-American poison.”
Sasse wrapped up his rant with another name for Spencer.
“Get a real job, Clown,” he wrote. “Find an actual neighbor to serve. You’ll be happier. Have a nice day.”
The freshman senator is well-known among his constituents and in Washington for his — dare it be said — sassy behavior on Twitter, like when he instigated a 140-character brawl among congressional staffers last fall.
He has also taken digs at butt-of-all-jokes rock group Nickelback and decried the popular Hispanic pastry dessert flan.
To whoever just subscribed my email accts (family, work, obsolete) to multiple @Nickelback promotional & fan newsletters:
It’s. Not. Funny.
— Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) June 16, 2017
WHY WOULD YOU EAT FLAN?!?!?#YoureOnTheList https://t.co/XRp3INOBvw
— Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) October 19, 2016
Spencer apparently did not check Twitter Thursday evening. But early in the morning Friday, he got around to responding.
“Wow. I take an evening off and miss epic butthurt from America’s cuckiest senator,” he wrote, using a racially coded slur that has seeped into the vernacular of alt-right circles.