This is an opinion cartoon.

Rats, racism and ignorance, oh my! Alabama’s Florida Man goobernatorial candidate is a toxic triple shot of Troubleville.

My esteemed AL.com colleagues Kyle Whitmire and Roy S. Johnson have already said their piece and counted to three.

I’m happy to throw a third rat toon log on the Dumb and Dumberville fire.

From Whitmire’s column: Tommy Tuberville’s ‘rat’ talk isn’t just racist — it’s a warning

Excerpts:

This week, Tuberville went on the Benny Johnson Show. If you don’t know who Johnson is, a quick Google search will return important information — like how his show was once secretly sponsored by the Kremlin and how he helped spread the lie that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pets.

These sorts of things might once have caused elected officials to stay away. Today, they’re an ideal forum for Alabama’s senior senator.

When Johnson started asking Tuberville what he thought of the Great Replacement — a racist claim that white people are being purposefully replaced to steal control of America — Tuberville didn’t seem fazed at all. He rolled with it, calling immigrants in major cities “rats.”

“These inner-city rats, they live off the federal government,” Tuberville said. “And that’s one reason we’re $37 trillion in debt. And it’s time we find these rats and we send them back home, that are living off the American taxpayers that are working very hard every week to pay taxes.”

We’ve heard this sort of talk before — in Nazi Germany, and Rwanda, or the pre-Civil War South. When powerful people refer to minorities as vermin, horrible things tend to follow.

Read all of Whitmire’s column here.

From Johnson’s column: Tommy Tuberville’s racism and ‘rat’ talk isn’t welcome here; he shouldn’t be, either

Excerpts:

Tommy Tuberville wants to be Alabama’s governor, and his party is rolling over for him like puppies panting for a belly rub.

Instead of questioning his qualifications (y’all know the man barely lives here), they’re caving to the former football coach turned empty-suited U.S. Senator.

They’re paving a path to Montgomery for him even though it is clear Tuberville has no desire to lead, guard and protect Alabamians who may not vote for him or look like him.

And he certainly does not want to lead, guard and protect those who do not pray like him.

He made that emphatically clear this week. On a podcast, he said residents of major American cities are not welcome in Alabama if they are going to “bring that Communist, Islamic atmosphere with them,” he said.

“We’re not going to deal with it. I’m telling you right now,” he added.

Oh, and that was after calling them “rats.” Yes, the man who wants to be our governor called humans rats. Yes, he did.

Read all of Johnson’s column here.

JD Crowe is the cartoonist for Alabama Media Group andAL.com. He won the RFK Human Rights Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the Rex Babin Memorial Award for local and state cartoons by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Follow JD on Facebook, Twitter@Crowejam andInstagram @JDCrowepix. Give him a holler @[email protected].

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