It ain’t just Trump
by digby
From the great state of Maine:
Gov. Paul LePage left a state lawmaker from Westbrook an expletive-laden phone message Thursday in which he accused the legislator of calling him a racist, encouraged him to make the message public and said, “I’m after you.”
LePage sent the message Thursday morning after a television reporter appeared to suggest that Democratic Rep. Drew Gattine was among several people who had called the governor a racist, which Gattine later denied. The exchange followed remarks the governor made in North Berwick on Wednesday night about the racial makeup of suspects arrested on drug trafficking charges in Maine.
“Mr. Gattine, this is Gov. Paul Richard LePage,” a recording of the governor’s phone message says. “I would like to talk to you about your comments about my being a racist, you (expletive). I want to talk to you. I want you to prove that I’m a racist. I’ve spent my life helping black people and you little son-of-a-bitch, socialist (expletive). You … I need you to, just friggin. I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you. Thank you.”
Gov. LePage’s message to Rep. Drew Gattine. Warning: This audio contains obscenities.
LePage later invited a Portland Press Herald reporter and a two-person television crew from WMTW to the Blaine House, where during a 30-minute interview the governor described his anger with Gattine and others, told them he had left the phone message and said he wished he and the lawmaker could engage in an armed duel to settle the matter.
“When a snot-nosed little guy from Westbrook calls me a racist, now I’d like him to come up here because, tell you right now, I wish it were 1825,” LePage said. “And we would have a duel, that’s how angry I am, and I would not put my gun in the air, I guarantee you, I would not be (Alexander) Hamilton. I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt and he has not done a damn thing since he’s been in this Legislature to help move the state forward.”
Gattine is the House chair of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, which has opposed some of LePage’s welfare, drug enforcement and other reforms. He said the governor’s phone message was uncalled for.
“Obviously that message is upsetting, inappropriate and uncalled for,” Gattine said Thursday night. “It’s hard to believe it’s from the governor of the state of Maine, but again, we need to stay focused on the drug problem we are facing here in Maine and cannot allow this story to be about the governor’s inappropriate and vulgar behaviors.”
LePage left the message after a television reporter asked the governor what he would say to people who are calling him a racist. LePage asked who had called him that and the reporter said he had talked to Gattine, but didn’t say Gattine had called the governor a racist.
LePage then reacted, told the reporters “you make me so sick,” and stormed off.
He later called the same reporters to the Blaine House for an interview, told them he had called Gattine and said he hoped the lawmaker would make the governor’s phone message public. The Press Herald made a Freedom of Access Act request for the phone message, and Gattine provided a copy to the Press Herald around 8:50 p.m.
That was the same Governor LePage who said this, which started the whole thing:
Gov. Paul LePage on Thursday fiercely defended comments he made about race and drug dealers at a town hall meeting Wednesday in North Berwick, where he said he keeps a binder of photographs of drug dealers arrested in Maine and that more than 90 percent of them are black or Hispanic.
In a tense exchange with two reporters outside his State House office, LePage said: “Let me tell you something: Black people come up the highway and they kill Mainers. You ought to look into that!”
He’s one of 50 Governors in this country. So why are people shocked that Republicans wouold nominate a white nationalist for President?
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