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   Sen. Tommy Tuberville relents and says white nationalists are racist   
   By John Wagner   
   Updated July 11, 2023 at 3:49 p.m. EDT|Published July 11, 2023 at 8:17   
   a.m. EDT   
   “My opinion of a white nationalist, if someone wants to call them white   
   nationalist, to me, is an American. It’s an American,” Sen. Tommy   
   Tuberville (R-Ala.), left, with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), said in a   
   TV interview Monday night. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)   
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   Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), facing a barrage of criticism over a   
   Monday night television interview in which he refused to say white   
   nationalists are racists, relented Tuesday afternoon, acknowledging to   
   reporters on Capitol Hill that they in fact are.   
      
   “White nationalists are racists,” Tuberville told reporters, after earlier   
   exchanges with reporters in which he continued to insist that was a matter   
   of opinion, a position that echoed his comments from an interview the   
   night before.   
      
   Appearing on CNN on Monday night, Tuberville was given the opportunity to   
   clarify remarks from this spring when he appeared to be advocating for   
   white nationalists to serve in the U.S. military.   
      
   Tuberville said he rejects racism but pushed back against host Kaitlan   
   Collins when she told him that by definition white nationalists are racist   
   because they believe their race is superior to others. He said that was   
   only her opinion and at one point in the back-and-forth characterized   
   white nationalists as people who hold “a few probably different beliefs.”   
      
   Tuberville’s remarks drew a sharp rebuke Tuesday from Senate Majority   
   Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who urged Tuberville to apologize.   
      
   “The senator from Alabama is wrong, wrong, wrong,” Schumer said on the   
   Senate floor. “The definition of white nationalism is not a matter of   
   opinion. White nationalism, the ideology that one race is inherently   
   superior to others, that people of color should be segregated, subjected   
   to second-class citizenship, is racist down to its rotten core. For the   
   senator from Alabama to obscure the racist nature of white nationalism is   
   indeed very, very dangerous.”   
      
   Tuberville’s CNN interview resurrected another controversy for the first-   
   term senator, who has been in the news mostly for stalling scores of   
   senior military nominations in an attempt to stop a Defense Department   
   policy that helps ensure access to abortions for service members and their   
   families. His holds were a topic Tuesday at a confirmation hearing for   
   Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr., President Biden’s choice to lead the Joint   
   Chiefs of Staff.   
      
   Defending white nationalists, Tommy Tuberville fears a military that is   
   ‘going wrong’   
      
   In a brief interaction with reporters on Capitol Hill earlier on Tuesday,   
   Tuberville struggled to clarify his views on white nationalists.   
      
   “Listen, I’m totally against racism,” he said. “And if the Democrats want   
   to say white nationalists are racist, I’m totally against that too. … My   
   definition is, racism bad.”   
      
   Even fellow Republicans were reluctant to defend Tuberville’s CNN   
   interview.   
      
   “I am not sure exactly what he was trying to say there,” Sen. John Thune   
   (R-S.D.), the chamber’s minority whip, told CNN. “I mean, I would just say   
   that there is no place for white nationalism in our party.”   
      
   Asked about Tuberville’s comments during a news conference Tuesday, Senate   
   Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) didn’t comment directly but said,   
   “White supremacy is simply unacceptable in our military and in our entire   
   country.”   
      
   In a May interview with a local public radio station in Alabama,   
   Tuberville, a former football coach, criticized Defense Secretary Lloyd   
   Austin for his efforts “to get out the white extremists, the white   
   nationalists” from the military. Tuberville said it was part of an effort   
   to politicize the armed services and accused Pentagon leaders of “ruining   
   our military” and driving away supporters of former president Donald   
   Trump.   
      
   Tuberville subsequently told reporters that he looks “at a white   
   nationalist as a Trump Republican,” adding, “That’s what we’re called all   
   the time.”   
      
   On Monday night, Collins pressed Tuberville on whether white nationalists   
   should be allowed to serve in the military, offering a definition of a   
   white nationalist as someone who “believes that the white race is superior   
   to other races.”   
      
   “Well that’s some people’s opinion,” Tuberville said.   
      
   Asked for his opinion, Tuberville said: “My opinion of a white   
   nationalist, if someone wants to call them white nationalist, to me, is an   
   American. It’s an American. Now if that white nationalist is a racist, I’m   
   totally against anything that they want to do because I am 110 percent   
   against racism.”   
      
   Tuberville then accused Democrats of using the term to push “identity   
   politics,” which he said is “ruining this country.”   
      
      
      
   Collins continued to press Tuberville on whether white nationalists should   
   be able to serve in the military, saying they are people who believe   
   “horrific things.”   
      
   “Well that’s just a name that has been given,” Tuberville said of white   
   nationalism.   
      
   Collins told him, “It’s a real definition.”   
      
   “If you’re going to do away with most White people in this country out the   
   military, we’ve got huge problems,” Tuberville responded.   
      
   “It’s not people who are White. It’s white nationalists,” Collins said.   
      
   “That have a few probably different beliefs, they have different beliefs,”   
   Tuberville said. “Now if racism is one of those beliefs, I’m totally   
   against it. I’m totally against racism.”   
      
   Earlier in the interview, Tuberville cited his coaching experience at   
   Auburn University and elsewhere.   
      
   “I was a football coach for 40 years and had the opportunity to be around   
   more minorities than anybody up on this Hill,” Tuberville said.   
      
   “A white nationalist is racist, Senator,” Collins said.   
      
   “Well that’s your opinion, that’s your opinion,” Tuberville said.   
      
   He added, “I’m totally against any type of racism.”   
      
   California Gov. Gavin Newsom, among the Democrats to criticize Tuberville   
   on Tuesday, suggested in a tweet that Tuberville’s comments were driven by   
   ignorance. With an attached clip of the CNN interview, Newsom wrote: “That   
   moment in which Sen. Tommy Tuberville admits he does not know what it   
   means to be a white nationalist, and then goes on to defend them.”   
      
   According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “white nationalist groups   
   espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies, often focusing   
   on the alleged inferiority of nonwhite persons.”   
      
   “Their primary goal is to create a white ethnostate,” the group says on   
      
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