North Carolina GOP official fired after racist comments in ‘Daily Show’ segment

A North Carolina Republican official has lost his job after making numerous racially charged comments during an interview with The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi, which aired on Wednesday night.

Buncombe County Republican precinct chairman Don Yelton was asked to resign after the segment aired. The county’s GOP Chairman Henry Mitchell confirmed to WRAL that Yelton officially stepped down on Thursday.

The segment covered the new Voter ID laws in North Carolina, which were enacted after the Supreme Court struck down key provisions in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Many have criticized laws like these as racist. Yelton’s comments did not deny this and he even admitted that they were put in place to stop Democrats.

“The law is going to kick the Democrats in the butt,” Yelton said, reports Politico. “If it hurts a bunch of college kids [that are] too lazy to get up off their bohonkas and go get a photo ID, so be it. If it hurts a bunch of whites, so be it.”

He also used the N-word and stated, “If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.”

Mitchell distanced himself from Yelton’s statements, calling them “offensive, uniformed and unacceptable of any member within the Republican Party.”

“Let me make it very clear, Mr. Yelton's comments do not reflect the belief or feelings of Buncombe Republicans, nor do they mirror any core principle that our party is founded upon,” Mitchell continued. “This mentality will not be supported or propagated within our party.”

Yelton has defended his comments though. He told WLOS-TV, “I've been laughed at by Democrats since I left the party. They try to make me look like a fool...This is being picked up in Raleigh, across the state. They're trying to say, 'Look at this guy. He's racist.' The whole question isn't about racism.”

Even during the Daily Show segment, he admitted that he'd been called a bigot before.

image: screenshot