Michigan’s Pete Hoekstra, now Trump’s ambassador to the Netherlands, is once again in the news for being a racist

Remember Pete Hoekstra, the Michigan Congressman who made national news by running a racist attack ad against Debbie Stabenow during the Super Bowl? [Stabenow went on to kick his ass in their 2012 race for Senate.] Well, guess what? He’s back in the news. And, once again, it’s for being a lying, racist asshole.

Remember how we’ve talked in the past about how very few competent people want to serve in Trump’s Diplomatic Corps? Well, Hoekstra, it would seem, is one of those people who stepped up in the absence of qualified applicants, offering to serve as Donald Trump’s ambassador to the Netherlands. And, it would seem, the people of the Netherlands aren’t terribly happy about his portrayal of their country as a place where there are “no-go zones” full of Islamic militants who are wrecking havoc and setting people on fire. Here’s Ambassador Hoekstra being questioned about his comments by Dutch journalist Wouter Zwart just recently. Hoekstra, as you would expect from a Trump appointee, calls the assertion that he’d ever said any such thing “fake news.” Then, just a minute or so later, after apparently being told that video exists of him saying exactly that, Hoekstra says to the bewildered journalist that he never used the phrase “fake news.”

I know it’s not much of a silver lining, but at least Trump got Hoekstra out of Michigan.

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7 Comments

  1. Anonymous
    Posted December 22, 2017 at 9:38 pm | Permalink

    Jake Tapper just posted about this. “US ambassador denies own comments, then denies denial,” he said.

  2. stupid hick
    Posted December 23, 2017 at 2:25 am | Permalink

    Sadly, Trump’s base thrives on this kind of bullshit because they believe it only provokes liberals and foreigners. It’s another variant of “Fuck you, what are you going to do about it?” Hoekstra serves at the pleasure of Trump, not the Netherlands. And certainly not the ‘fake’ Dutch press. “Oh, Hoekstra provoked liberal foreign media? Well done!”

  3. Dan Blakeney
    Posted December 23, 2017 at 8:05 am | Permalink

    Beautifully, brilliantly, properly portrayed: “Trump’s base thrives on this kind of bullshit because they believe it only provokes liberals and foreigners. It’s another variant of “Fuck you, what are you going to do about it?”

    We are ugly Americans.

  4. Hayden said
    Posted December 23, 2017 at 8:43 am | Permalink

    Retired U.S. Air Force four-star general Michael Hayden didn’t mince words when it comes to Donald Trump’s “outrageous assault on truth, the free press and the first amendment.”

    “I have wasted 40 years of my life” if Trump’s lies represent “who we are,” Hayden said.

  5. wobblie
    Posted December 23, 2017 at 1:50 pm | Permalink

    I’m amazed at how the liberal establishment has lined up behind the National Security State. But I suppose I should not be. McCarthyism got its start with the Democrats under Truman who needed to suppress the Wallace and Progressive folks on the left.
    Russiagate is just the 21st century version.

  6. charlieRomeo
    Posted December 24, 2017 at 12:06 am | Permalink

    It’s good to see another trump partisan being exposed as an inveterate, incorrigible liar whose grasp on reality should be questioned relentlessly. They should be treated with nothing but contempt and derision.

  7. Meta
    Posted January 11, 2018 at 3:54 pm | Permalink

    UK Independent: “Donald Trump’s new ambassador to Netherlands struggles to defend claim Muslims ‘burned’ Dutch politicians”

    Peter Hoekstra, the newly minted US ambassador to the Netherlands, held his first conference with the Dutch media at his new residence in the Hague on Wednesday.

    It did not go well.

    Dutch journalists peppered Hoekstra, who became Donald Trump’s ambassador after serving 18 years as a Republican congressman from Michigan, with questions on unsubstantiated claims he made in 2015 about the chaos the “Islamic movement” had brought to the Netherlands.

    “There are cars being burned, there are politicians that are being burned,” he had said at a conference hosted by a conservative group. “And yes, there are no-go zones in the Netherlands.”

    The comments have widely been described as inaccurate, and reflect certain conspiracies about sharia law that crop up in some circles of the far-right in the West. When pressed by the Dutch reporters, Hoekstra declined to retract the comments or give specific examples to back them up.

    In fact, after saying that he would be “revisiting the issue,” he simply refused to answer the question at all.

    But the reporters were not done with the line of questioning yet. Instead of moving on, another reporter would simply ask a variation on the question again.

    “Everybody there had one question: that crazy statement you made, are you going to withdraw it?” said Roel Geeraedts, a political reporter at the Dutch television station RTL Nieuws in a phone interview about the event. “We were not getting answers, so we all kept asking it.”

    Geeraedts published a segment with video of the remarkable exchange on social media.

    After at least one person had asked the question, Geeraedts followed up to ask Hoekstra about a John Adams quote – Adams was the United States’ first ambassador to Holland – that was mounted right behind the ambassador. Hoekstra said he had read the quote, which expresses Adams’ hope that only “honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”

    “If you’re truly an honest and wise man, could you please take back the remark about burned politicians or name the politician that was burned in the Netherlands?” Geeraedts asked.

    An uncomfortable silence followed the question.

    “Thank you,” Hoekstra said, before trying to call on someone else over the clamour of the reporters in the room.

    “Excuse me, I asked you a question,” Geeraedts said.

    Another journalist jumped in.

    “Mr. Ambassador, can you mention any example of a Dutch politician who was burned in recent years?”

    Again, silence, as Hoekstra stared around the room.

    “This is the Netherlands, you have to answer questions,” another reporter said.

    Sherry Keneson-Hall, an embassy counselor who was helping run the news conference, pushed back, asserting that Hoekstra was answering the questions.

    Read more:
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/donald-trump-netherlands-ambassador-peter-hoekstra-islamophobic-comments-muslims-politicians-burned-a8152761.html

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