Tuberville: Communist, Islamic Rats in Our Cities

I have, from time to time, mentioned Senator Coach Tommy Tuberville (or is it Coach Senator?). I think the first time was just over five years ago when he was opining about “the cities” and Sharia law. I also mentioned his foray into the branches of government. I also noted his views on education (which also dealt with white nationalism in a way that is quite relevant to this post), which again found him speaking poorly of American cities (here and here). I will quote myself, and be immodest in doing so, noting that this is a good line from one of those 2023 posts linked above:

Without hesitation, I can say that every time I hear Tuberville speak I am reminded of the importance of education.

I will confess that prior to my retirement, I was somewhat circumspect in direct criticisms of Tuberville, as I was aware that my position as dean might have caused some problems if my university needed funding or other legislative support from the federal government. In retirement, I can say that Tuberville may well be the dumbest member of Congress that I have observed in almost half a century of paying attention to American politics, at least based on his public pronouncements. In private, he may well be an erudite genius, capable of nuanced policy discussions and who deploys vocabulary and syntax with alacrity and precision.

But based on his public pronouncement, I think I am not exactly going out on a non-empirical limb to note that he doesn’t sound very smart. Worse, he sounds like a white nationalist, if not simply someone who uses and endorses fascist views.

To quote a certain fictional Alabamian, “Stupid is as stupid does,” I guess.

Have I mentioned that he may soon be governor of my state? Well, at least if he is working in Montgomery, he will be closer to his home in Florida. The only other positives I can conjure are that he will be out of Washington and that, since I am retired, my odds of having to be in the same room with him are quite small.

Quite frankly, I don’t know why the man doesn’t just retire. He has to have plenty of money in the bank, and Santa Rosa, Florida, is pretty nice. But I guess some people can’t live without the spotlight.

But I digress.

Here’s what started me down the pathway with ol’ Coach. I honestly got drawn in first by wondering, “Words, what do they mean?” (I mean, just parsing out his statements is a bit of challenge) and then got suck in by the white supremacy of it all.

From AL.com: Tuberville says ‘inner city rats’ live off the American taxpayers: Trump should send them ‘back home’.

“You can stop the federal funding,” Tuberville said. “President Trump can do anything he wants when it comes to the federal. Again, these inner-city rats, they live off the federal government. 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.”

I am drawn to the phrase “President Trump can do anything he wants when it comes to the federal” both because it is largely nonsensical (“the federal”?) and because it is yet another Republican politician who seems to love the notion of letting Trump do whatever he wants.

There is also the outright lie that there are all these people living for free off of, you know, “the federal” and that’s why we are in debt. This is just dishonest scapegoating with huge white nationalist/proto-fascist points for using the language of infestation to describe people he doesn’t like. (I suspect that reaching for “vermin” taxes the Senator’s vocabulary a tad, so we just get “rats.”)

Tuberville drew fire for some comments about whether people from urban areas should come to Alabama.

“Well, don’t be expecting a free lunch, I promise you,” he said. “Bring your lunch with you because you’re not going to be welcomed if you’re going to bring that Communist, Islamic atmosphere with you. We’re not going to deal with it. I’m telling you right now…

“They are going to try and overwhelm us….We have got to fight back.”

And what, pray tell, is “that Communist, Islamic atmosphere”? It is as if he knows that a lot of his voters probably don’t like communists or muslims, and so why not just fear-monger both? And in terms of fearmongering, please note that “they” are going to “overwhelm us” (emphasis mine).

Gee, I wonder who the “they” are and the “we” are in this scenario?

The comments came after Johnson asked Tuberville about Zohran Mamdani, a New York State assemblyman who won the Democratic primary for the New York City mayor’s race on Tuesday. 

Mamdani, a democratic socialist born in Uganda to Indian parents, became an American citizen in 2018, shortly after graduating college, according to the AP. 

Johnson called Mamdani a “communist,” and said Democrats are encouraging illegal immigration to expand the party’s voting bloc. Tuberville said large cities, like New York and Los Angeles, are havens for undocumented immigrants. 

“That’s the easiest place to do it, Benny, in these big cities with all these government handouts, where they can hang out on the street, steal whatever they want to steal,” Tuberville said. 

“Chicago, Detroit, they’re all next. It’ll happen in the big cities, it’ll sweep across the country, and then they’ll try to start going into the medium-sized cities. But we can’t wait ‘til that point.”

So, we have the lie that illegal immigrants are voting for Democrats and that communism is about to sweep the nation. And, you know, especially in cities where you can “hang out on the street” and “steal whatever you want to steal.”

I also found the notion that our cities were once great, but now they’re not, to be noteworthy.

“Our great cities of L.A. and New York have to be the spotlight for our country, but they’re gone,” Tuberville said.

I have heard conservatives complain about cities my whole life. But here we have the typical reactionary notion that in some mythical past, it was all better. I wonder when Tuberville thought cities were better?

It is actually worse to see the interchange, wherein Johnson cites the great replacement theory.

Sen. Tuberville warns The Great Replacement is happening and demands we hunt down the criminal “rats” in America’s inner cities, cut off funding, and deport them:⁰
“President Trump.. Can stop the funding. Inner city rats live off the government. Find them, send them home.” pic.twitter.com/oOZbWhrXsw

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 25, 2025

AL.com columnist Kyle Whitmire (Tommy Tuberville’s ‘rat’ talk isn’t just racist — it’s a warning) adds context.

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.”

[…]

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.

Whitmire notes a few things about Tuberville’s vacuity on policy, and then notes this.

“Poisonous ideologies like Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), which teach our kids to hate each other, should have no place in our government or our schools,” Tuberville says.

That’s funny coming from a guy who just referred to human beings as rats.

Indeed.

All of this is part of a very ugly trend in American politics that too many people are ignoring and, worse, that too many people are actively embracing.