A controversial Texas Republican called a prominent fact-checking site a liar for saying he called for deporting Native Americans from the United States — but observers quickly hit him with the receipts.
Bo French, the fiery former chairman of the Republican Party of Tarrant County, is running for the Texas Railroad Commission, one of a number of GOP candidates challenging incumbent Chairman Jim Wright. The Texas Railroad Commission is a body that regulates the oil and gas industry throughout the state, and therefore has far-reaching impacts on energy and environmental policy.
On Friday, he took issue with an article from Snopes titled, “Texas GOP candidate Bo French called for deporting several Native Americans.”
“Snopes knows I didn’t call for deporting all Native Americans, but they published this FAKE NEWS story anyway,” wrote French. “There are no honest people on the left. None.”
But several people, including Texas Observer journalist Steven Monacelli and Texas state House candidate Sara McGee, posted screenshots of his original X post saying this.
In that post, French shared an image of a Native American family flipping the bird at Mount Rushmore — a monument broadly reviled by tribal groups as it was carved into a sacred mountain in violation of a treaty with the Sioux Nation — and wrote, “Since we are going to denaturalize and deport all the third world savages who hate our country, I am calling for adding these third world savages, who we conquered, then bizarrely let have a nation inside our nation, to the list.”
According to French, he only meant he wanted to deport the family shown in the photo — something the Snopes article has included. But as Monacelli pointed out, “The inclusion of ‘nation’ reads like you were referring to a broader group of people, instead of the people in the photo, who aren’t deportable.”
French, who has previously received condemnation from Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick for running an online poll asking whether Jews or Muslims were a greater threat to America, proclaimed he was seeking the Railroad Commission office to “stop the Islamic invasion.” As the Snopes article noted, he has also called for denaturalizing and deporting U.S. citizens, and particularly targeted Carlos Noguera Ramos, a Texas Tribune journalist who wrote about him, as “soon to be deported.” Noguera Ramos is Puerto Rican, and thus a citizen by birth.
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