MTV News distanced itself Wednesday from a writer who joked that Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions was using his Asian granddaughter to show he isn’t racist.
MTV culture writer Ira Madison III tweeted that Jeff Sessions needs to “kindly return the Asian baby to the Toys ‘R’ Us you stole her from,” when the Alabama senator was waiting to begin his confirmation hearing for attorney general on Tuesday.
The child is actually Session’s granddaughter and Madison III has since deleted the tweet (which we have in a screen capture here below):
In a statement, an MTV News spokesperson told TheWrap, “The opinions Ira expresses on Twitter are his own and do not reflect the views of MTV News.”
Madison later explained why he deleted the tweet.
https://twitter.com/ira/status/818859326018293760
While Madison deleted the original tweet, he didn’t delete a series of messages defending it. At one point he wrote, “Why is she a prop? Sessions argued for policy that in the 1880s was used to discriminate against Asian Americans.”
https://twitter.com/ira/status/818842004452966400
https://twitter.com/ira/status/818859772791427072
Sessions is under scrutiny by Democrats and civil rights groups. His confirmation hearing is off to quite a start: It has been interrupted by a variety of protestors, including two men dressed up like KKK members.
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Sessions to a federal judgeship was rejected over racial remarks he was accused of making while a U.S. attorney in Alabama. He was only the second judicial nominee rejected by the panel in its 50-year history, even though he denied making most of the comments.
Sessions did admit to saying that he was fine with the Ku Klux Klan “until I found out they smoked pot,” but called the remark a joke.
Sessions discussed these issues during his hearing on Capitol Hill. “I abhor the Klan, and what it represents and its hateful ideology,” he said on Tuesday.