{"id":12905,"date":"2025-09-04T07:22:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T07:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/sen-eric-schmitt-lets-his-extremist-flag-fly-in-racist-speech-at-natcon\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T07:22:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T07:22:10","slug":"sen-eric-schmitt-lets-his-extremist-flag-fly-in-racist-speech-at-natcon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/sen-eric-schmitt-lets-his-extremist-flag-fly-in-racist-speech-at-natcon\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Eric Schmitt lets his extremist flag fly in racist speech at NatCon"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-testid=\"byline-container\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/author\/jahan-jones-ncpn371241\" tabindex=\"-1\"><picture data-testid=\"picture\" data-flavor=\"focal\" data-original-height=\"48\" data-original-width=\"48\"><source media=\"(min-width: 320px)\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_focal-60x60,f_auto,q_auto:best\/newscms\/2021_37\/3505463\/jahan-jones-msnbc_1.png\" alt height=\"48\" width=\"48\"><\/source><\/picture><\/a><\/div>\n<div>\n<p id=\"anchor-9c8c1b\">The stench of racism is emanating from Sen. Eric Schmitt&rsquo;s office.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-355f76\">I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/top-stories\/latest\/eric-schmitt-nate-hochman-desantis-campaign-video-nazi-imagery-rcna211509\" target=\"_blank\">wrote in June<\/a> about the Missouri senator hiring Nathan Hochman, who was fired from Ron DeSantis&rsquo; presidential campaign after he circulated a promotional video that included Nazi imagery. On Monday, Hochman <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/njhochman\/status\/1962579502854230277\" target=\"_blank\">posted on social media<\/a> to tease what proved to be unmistakably white supremacist speech by Schmitt at Tuesday&rsquo;s National Conservatism Conference, <a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/article\/national-conservative-conference-josh-hawley-j-d-vance.html\" target=\"_blank\">a gathering where Republicans have been known to commingle with avowed racists<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-a63715\">Schmitt unleashed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailysignal.com\/2025\/09\/02\/schmitt-what-is-an-american\/\" target=\"_blank\">a diatribe<\/a> against nonwhite immigrants and depicted the United States as the rightful inheritance of descendants of European settlers. His speech &mdash; titled &ldquo;What Is an American?&rdquo; &mdash; articulated a political vision that&rsquo;s not so far removed from that of racist organizations like <a href=\"https:\/\/forward.com\/news\/733168\/return-to-the-land-arkansas-jews-eric-orwoll\/\" target=\"_blank\">Return to the Land<\/a>a white nationalist group that is trying to establish a whites-only community in Arkansas and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/top-stories\/latest\/arkansas-whites-only-community-missouri-return-to-the-land-rcna221090\" target=\"_blank\">has sought to expand its footprint to Schmitt&rsquo;s home state<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-cf3222\">The senator denounced fellow conservatives who support legal migration, accusing them of aiding immigrants who he baselessly claimed &ldquo;take the jobs, salaries and futures that should belong to our own children.&rdquo; Invoking the image of a violent mob, he claimed the MAGA movement is &ldquo;a pitchfork revolution, driven by the millions of Americans who felt that they were turning into strangers in their own country.&rdquo; He talked at various points about the U.S. being &ldquo;our birthright,&rdquo; as &ldquo;a nation of settlers, explorers and pioneers&rdquo;; about &ldquo;the real American nation,&rdquo; represented by Donald Trump and his movement; and about &ldquo;we Americans &hellip; the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe&rsquo;s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-512764\">As writer Philip Bump explained with data <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/america-201-we-are-a-nation-of-immigrants-from-places-besides-europe-too\/\" target=\"_blank\">in a recent blog post<\/a>this racist, whitewashed claim conveniently excludes non-European immigrants &mdash; both those who came voluntarily and those, like enslaved Africans, who did not &mdash; whose brilliance and backbreaking labor, along with those of Native tribes, <a href=\"https:\/\/obamawhitehouse.archives.gov\/blog\/2012\/07\/12\/Ten-ways-immigrants-help-build-and-strengthen-our-economy\" target=\"_blank\">literally built the United States<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-0b430c\">The truth is that the U.S. has never been the homogenous white, European utopia Schmitt&rsquo;s speech envisions. Since Day 1, the United States has not achieved lasting progress without contributions from the non-European immigrants whose Americanness the freshman senator from Missouri sees fit to question. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-3f1d48\">But Trump&rsquo;s Republican Party has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.liberalcurrents.com\/nobody-cares-white-supremacists-are-calling-the-shots-now\/\" target=\"_blank\">promoted and empowered unabashed white supremacists<\/a> known to preach, as Schmitt did, about the purported superiority of white Europeans and their descendants. It&rsquo;s a cynical play that aims to groom white Americans to believe they are at war in defense of a fictional history that exists only in their imagination.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-activity-map=\"expanded-byline-article-bottom\">\n<div data-testid=\"byline-thumbnail\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/author\/jahan-jones-ncpn371241\" tabindex=\"-1\"><picture data-testid=\"picture\" data-flavor=\"focal\" data-original-height=\"48\" data-original-width=\"48\"><source media=\"(min-width: 320px)\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_focal-60x60,f_auto,q_auto:best\/newscms\/2021_37\/3505463\/jahan-jones-msnbc_1.png\" alt height=\"48\" width=\"48\"><\/source><\/picture><\/a><\/div>\n<p><span data-testid=\"byline-name\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/author\/jahan-jones-ncpn371241\"> Ja&#8217;han Jones<\/a><\/span><span><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/_Jahan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Ja&rsquo;han Jones is an BLN opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut&nbsp;Blog. He is a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include &ldquo;Black Hair Defined&rdquo; and the &ldquo;Black Obituary Project.&rdquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/nbcnewsgroup.slack.com\/archives\/D02C43GB16U\/p1741207204964889\" target=\"_blank\" data-stringify-type=\"replace\" data-stringify-text=\"[3:40 PM]\" data-stringify-requires-siblings=\"true\" data-ts=\"1741207204.964889\" data-ske=\"tooltip_parent\"><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/top-stories\/latest\/eric-schmitt-natcon-speech-national-conservatism-rcna228874\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The stench of racism is emanating from Sen. Eric Schmitt&rsquo;s office. I wrote in June about the Missouri senator hiring Nathan Hochman, who was fired from Ron DeSantis&rsquo; presidential campaign after he circulated a promotional video that included Nazi imagery. On Monday, Hochman posted on social media to tease what proved to be unmistakably white [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}