OPINION:
Carl Higbie, the chief of external affairs for the Corporation for National and Community Service, just resigned after CNN found evidence of offensive remarks he had made in the past.
Who?
Never heard of Higbie? Never heard of the office of the Corporation for National and Community Service? You’re not alone. It oversees initiatives like AmeriCorps and the Social Innovation Fund — but the fact that has to be explained says much.
Still, when it comes to the media, it doesn’t matter.
Suddenly, Higbie is a “surrogate for President Donald Trump,” as the Huffington Post put it. And here’s why the media is so intent on making a connection — a tight, very tight one — between Higbie and Trump: Higbie’s past remarks put him squarely in the camp of “deplorables,” the label affixed to half of conservative-thinking America back in 2016.
CNN found an audio of him in June 2013 saying this: “I just don’t like Muslim people. Well people are like, ’well, you can’t hate somebody just for being Muslim.’ It’s like, yeah, I can.”
CNN found a recording of him in December 2013 suggesting this, of black women: “Breeding [for them] is a form of government employment.”
And CNN found a tape of him on an Internet talk radio show saying this: “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.”
Why was CNN digging around in this man’s past in the first place?
Doesn’t matter.
What does matter, to the mainstream, left-leaning, Trump-hating media, is that Higbie was appointed by Trump — and that means Trump must be one and the same with Higbie. If Higbie’s guilty of racist, offensive statements, then Trump, by default, is as well. If Higbie’s a racist, then Trump must be, too. If Higbie hates Muslims, then Trump does, as well.
And now, the Democrats, the media and the courts — the courts that are considering the likes of Trump’s case on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — have all been handed a golden egg.
Watch as the media cycle in the coming 24 hours makes the most of it. Soon enough, Higbie, a previous unknown, will be the most famous man in America — the president of the United States’ long-time best friend and behind-scenes political adviser, in fact.
Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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