Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) took down his vituperative X post denigrating Haitian immigrants after the blowback — in Congress and elsewhere — became too loud to ignore.
[House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Higgins’s post was “vile, racist and beneath the dignity of the United States House of Representatives.”]
But before removing his rant from the social media platform, Higgins first had to pray, he told colleagues. Only then, having taken time to himself to pray on the situation, did the Congressman conclude that he should delete the post.
For some, this secondary action — asserting that he had to pray in order to learn whether he’d been wrong and to determine what action to take — was at least as offensive as the tweet itself.
Brandon Wolf, a prominent LGBTQ+ advocate, addressed the issue when sharing House Speaker Mike Johnson‘s statement on Higgins, which itself did not rise to the level of strong condemnation. (Johnson claimed not to have seen the actual post.)
Wolf wrote, in response to Johnson and Higgins: “A word of advice for MAGA members of Congress: you don’t have to pray about whether to take your tweet down if you don’t tweet racist garbage to begin with.”
A word of advice for MAGA members of Congress: you don’t have to pray about whether to take your tweet down if you don’t tweet racist garbage to begin with. https://t.co/8tbGAMDOau
— Brandon Wolf (@bjoewolf) September 26, 2024
In the same vein, an angry Gretchen Carlson (see below) said Higgins’s alleged prayer moment made his original transgression that much worse.
“Like he went to the corner and prayed,” she said. “That should be offensive to every Christian in this country and across the world — that you’re going to use religion…and suddenly decide ‘oh I guess I’m not racist now.’”
Carlson added: “I was highly offended as a Christian woman.”
Carlson: That should be offensive to every Christian in this country that you’re going to use religion to go back in the corner and suddenly decide that, oh, I guess I’m not racist now.. pic.twitter.com/fGXcVcrBzJ
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 26, 2024
Johnson, calling Higgins a “very principled man,” said the Congressman “was approached on the floor by colleagues who said that was offensive. He said he went to the back and he prayed about it, and he regretted it, and he pulled the post down. That’s what you want a gentleman to do. I’m sure he probably regrets the language he used. But you know, we move forward.”
Johnson then doubled down on the use of religious language to defend Higgins, saying: “We believe in redemption around here.”