June 7, 2009: Gingrich: Supreme Court Nominee a ‘Racialist’

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who recently seemed to retract his characterization of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as a “racist” (see May 27, 2009 and June 3, 2009), now calls Sotomayor a “racialist.” On CBS News’s Face the Nation, Gingrich says: “When I did a Twitter about her, having read what she said, I said that was racist—but I applied it to her as a person. And the truth is I don’t know her as a person. It’s clear that what she said was racist, and it’s clear—or as somebody wrote recently, ‘racialist’ if you prefer.” [Think Progress, 6/7/2009]