Jeannine Lee Lake says she has a personal story about being told to "go back to Africa."
Jeannine Lee Lake, 2020 Democratic candidate for Indiana's 6th Congressional District. Photo provided.
(Lawrenceburg, Ind.) - Jeannine Lee Lake, a 2020 Democratic challenger to Greg Pence, is criticizing the Republican Indiana 6th District congressman’s dismissal of President Donald Trump’s recent remarks about four congresswomen.
In a live interview with Eagle Country 99.3 on Thursday, Pence said he does not believe the president is racist, as many have asserted since his tweetstorm about four freshman Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the tweets, Trump told the minority women to “go back” to the countries they came from.
“I don’t think the president is a racist. I don’t speak for the administration. I thought the president the day after that clarified what he meant, but it sure became an opportunity for the national media and the Democrats to just go back to the name calling, the ugly words,” Pence reasoned on the radio.
Lake said she could not believe Greg Pence’s take on the matter.
“He knows damn well that’s incendiary language,” she told Eagle Country 99.3 on Friday.
The Muncie businesswoman, who lost to Pence in a lopsided race for the Republican-leaning district in the 2018 general election, related her own experience with a statement similar to Trump’s. When She was a 17-year-old freshman student at Ball State University, she and friends were attacked while walking to a party.
“I was hit with eggs by guys in a pickup truck. They told us, ‘Go back to Africa, you n******,’” Lake shared.
Lake said she is planning a demonstration outside one of Pence’s offices in response to his dismissal of Trump’s tweets. No details have been announced yet, she said.
Lake added that she can’t understand how the president’s comments are being dismissed by Pence and others as not racist.
“Donald Trump is building on the same hate-filled, fearmongering campaign that was successful three years ago,” Lake said.
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