Carl Higbie, the chief of external affairs for the Corporation for National and Community Service, resigned Thursday after CNN unearthed a litany of offensive and discriminatory remarks he’d made on various radio segments.
Formerly a surrogate for President Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign, as well as a former spokesman for the Great America PAC, the retired Navy SEAL was appointed to work in the federal body that oversees volunteer groups like AmeriCorps a mere six months ago.
In the segments, which occurred as recently as 2016, Higbie employs a number of offensive stereotypes about minorities, saying that black people suffer from a “lax of morality” and that they “think that breeding is a form of employment.” He also accused soldiers with PTSD of having a “weak mind.” And he claimed that people should have the right to shoot at immigrants “in the face” if they attempt to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
“Somebody who lives in my condo association that has five kids, and it’s her and her husband with the five kids and the mother, the grandmother of the kids, and they don’t have jobs, they’re there all the time ― I bet you can guess what color they are ― and they have no job,” Higbie said on one episode of “Sound of Freedom,” an internet talk radio show, according to clips discovered by CNN’s KFile.
Higbie also made a number of highly inflammatory comments about gay people and Muslims.
“Rhode Island, land of more liberals, has just OK’ed, gay marriage,” Higbie said in a May 2013 “Sound of Freedom” clip. “Congratuf’in’lations, you suck, Rhode Island. Why would you do that? Go ahead and twist the knife a little, little bit more. I mean, you are breaking the morals, the moral fiber of our country. You know, I don’t like gay people. I just don’t.”
The next month, he said of Muslims: “Go back to your Muslim shithole and go crap in your hands and bang little boys on Thursday nights.” He added: “I just don’t like Muslim people. People always rip me a new one for that. Carl, you’re racist, you can’t, you’re sexist. I’m like Jesus Christ. I just don’t like Muslim people because their ideology sucks.”
Higbie made headlines in November 2016 when he cited the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II― considered a low point in American history― in defending the Trump transition team’s idea to create a registry of Muslim immigrants.
”The president needs to protect America first, and if that means having people that are not protected under our Constitution have some sort of registry so we can understand ― until we can identify the true threat and where it’s coming from ― I support it,” said Higbie.
This story has been updated to include additional comments Higbie made.