Mike Pence Is Going to a Fundraiser With a Group That Employs a Vile Racist

Carl Higbie, a frequent Donald Trump backer with a history of making racist statements and then claiming his comments were misinterpreted, is at it again.

Earlier this year, Higbie, a staffer at America First, an advocacy group closely aligned with Trump, apologized after getting caught making some pretty racist comments.

CNN found Higbie had made racist, sexist, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ comments on his radio show. According to CNN, in 2013 and 2014 Higbie claimed “the black race” has “a lax of morality” and that black women “think that breeding is a form of employment.” Higbie also said, “I believe wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly, that the black race as a whole, not totally, is lazier than the white race, period.”

Higbie apologized for his comments shortly after.

Now, CNN has discovered Higbie defending the very same racist comments he apologized for earlier this year. Higbie claims his comments were taken “out of context” and were just a“statistical observation.”

“They dig up a couple things, a couple. Look, I had a radio show,” Higbie said on The John Fredericks Show, a Virginia-based local radio program. “How many times have you said something on radio that could possibly be construed as very controversial when taken completely out of context? What, daily?”

Higbie has a history of taking back his racist remarks.

In November 2016, he was a guest on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show and said the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was a “precedent” for then Trump’s plan for a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries.

“Come on, you’re not proposing we go back to the days of internment camps, I hope,” Kelly asked Higbie.

“I’m not proposing that at all,” Higbie told her. “But I’m just saying there is precedent for it.” The next day he said he was shocked Kelly brought up internment camps. Here are the receipts:

Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence is appearing at a fundraiser with Higbie’s organization tonight. Pence has done at least 15 events with them, according to CNN. Higbie will be in attendance.