Sigal Chattah says she simply cannot understand why people in Nevada are so upset by a text message she sent calling for her black Democratic opponent, incumbent Attorney General Aaron Ford, to be hanged “from a crane.”
Chattah, who is hoping to be the Republican nominee for the office of Nevada AG, claims her offensive text was totally “tongu-in-cheek” and not even a tiny bit racist, the Las Vegas Review Journal reports:
“When I say to my friends, ‘I’m going to hang you from a crane,’ I don’t literally mean I’m going to hang you from a crane,” Chattah said in an interview this week, characterizing her use of the “smartass comment” as “tongue-in-cheek.”
Oh, and Chattah also says that she often calls for people to be executed by hanging them from a crane:
Chattah, who emigrated from Israel with her family as a teenager, said her mother’s dark skin, as a Yemenite Jew, invited taunting from other Jews with a Yiddish slur that translates to “black animal.” The brutal method of execution she referenced is common in places such as Iran and by groups such as the Taliban.
“I would never attribute a racial context to hanging from a crane,” Chattah said, stopping short of expressing regret.
“That is my culture,” she added. “That’s what is done to people in the Middle East, to traitors. And that’s just part of my vernacular.”
Oddly enough, the text message was one Chattah sent to a former friend, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, a trans woman who is also running for office in Nevada and felt the public needed to know the sort of disgusting things that come from Chattah’s mouth:
“I ran it because I believe that she’s unfit from an emotional standpoint, to understand how to interact in a position of that magnitude of being attorney general,” Ashton-Cirillo said in a phone interview this week.
She said she waited until after Jan. 15, the deadline for candidates to report their initial round of campaign contributions, wanting “Republicans to realize this is a person so unfit for office, you guys need to do something.”
Chattah continues to insist that she won’t apologize for the offensive text message, proving yet again that many Republicans in the Age of Trump have absolutely no shame.
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