The wish of Mark Meadows in 2012 to send Obama "to Kenya" resurfaced

WASHINGTON – After Rep. Mark Meadows defended himself against accusations of racism at a House Committee meeting Wednesday, critics have resurfaced two videos of the 2012 North Carolina Republican in which he s & # 39; 39 was committed to sending President Barack Obama "home to Kenya".

The videos were shared by liberal commentators in response to an exchange between Meadows and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., At a hearing featuring former President Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen . Meadows invited Lynne Patton – a long-time Trump Associate and current Housing and Urban Development Officer – to the hearing and relied on it while disputing Cohen's allegation that the President would be racist.

"It's not because someone has a person of color, a black person who works for her, that she's not racist," Tlaib said. She added that Patton's use as "accessory" policy was "racism in itself".

Meadows angrily denied the involvement of racism and asked that Tlaib's comment be "struck off the record".

"There is nothing more personal than my relationship, my nieces and nephews are people of color, and not many people know it," Meadows said. He also denied having summoned Patton to the hearing as an "accessory" human and stated: "It is racist to suggest that I asked him to come here for this reason."

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Patton also bristled at Tlaib's suggestion. In a Wednesday statement on Facebook, she listed a number of her accomplishments before adding: "This is not the summary of an accessory."

On Wednesday night, the 2012 videos began to gain ground on social media.

"In 2012, we will send Mr. Obama home to Kenya or elsewhere," said Meadows at a rally on June 9, 2012. "We will do it!" Three days later, he made a similar remark at a tea party.

Critics have described Meadows' remarks as an endorsement of "birtherism" – a term denoting the unfounded belief that Obama was not born in the United States. Many have argued that efforts to deny the citizenship of the first African-American president without evidence were rooted in racism.

The official Twitter account of the anti-Trump Democratic Coalition said that "Meadows defends the theory of racist conspiracy".

In an interview with Roll Call in 2012 shortly after his remarks, Meadows said it was "probably a mediocre word choice on my part more than anything else".

"I believe he's an American citizen," said Meadows at the time.

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore said that Meadows was racist in a tweet referring to the video.

"The day of the white, racist and angry man, will soon be a thing of the past, goodbye," added Moore.

"I wonder how Rep Meadows rationalized his position" I'm not racist "by questioning the legitimacy of the first black American president because he was born in Kenya or whatever his position?" wondered the human rights activist Qasim Rashid.

The Meadows office did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment.

The congressman had expressed the wish to replace John Kelly as Trump's chief of staff, but he finally fell out of the race.

Tlaib asserted that she maintained the statement that the act of taking Patton was racist, but she was sorry if her comments seemed to indicate that she thought Meadows himself was racist.

Here are other responses on Twitter to Meadows' past remarks.

Contributor: Ryan W. Miller

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