Tommy Tuberville calls effort to rid military of white nationalists an attempt to go after ‘MAGA Republicans’ 

Republican Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Thursday tried to clarify what he meant when he told a reporter that he calls white nationalists “Americans,” arguing that liberals consider supporters of former President Donald Trump to be white nationalists. 

Tuberville raised eyebrows on Wednesday when he responded to WBHM reporter Richard Banks’ question about whether the Biden administration “should allow white nationalists in the military” by saying, “Well, they call them that. I call them Americans.” 

On Thursday, the Alabama Republican explained that since his first day in the Senate, he has observed Democrats portraying all Trump supporters as white nationalists. 

“The Democrats characterize all MAGA Republicans in the military as white nationalists. Wrong, OK?” Tuberville told reporters Thursday. “We can’t get politics in the military. This has nothing to do with extremists.” 

He added, “My first day here was Jan. 6, [2021.] I had several senators stand up on the Senate floor saying to me, ‘We got too many white nationalists around here.’ What the heck is that? I mean, we all got different beliefs, you know. I’m a church of Christ. We’ve got Catholics, we’ve got different people. And we all have to make one military. We can’t start distinguishing different types of people.” 

When pressed by NBC News reporter Julie Tsirkin on whether he believes white nationalists should serve in the armed forces, Tuberville demanded that she define the term. 

“What is a white nationalist?” he asked. 

When she responded that a white nationalist “is someone who propagates Naziism. Someone who doesn’t believe Black and Brown people are equal to White people,” Tuberville disagreed. 

“Well I don’t look at it like that,” he said. “I look at a white nationalist as a Trump Republican. That’s what we’re called all the time, a MAGA person.” 

Later arguing that “we should not be characterizing Trump supporters as white nationalists.”

Tuberville accused Democrats of “politicizing the military” through their efforts to root out white nationalists in the armed forces, and argued that they should focus on “building the military.”

“Look at our recruiting. We’re getting hammered, 15,000 down last year in Army … something’s going wrong in our military,” he said. 

A Pentagon report on extremist activity in the military released in December of 2021 found that about 100 active duty and reserve service members participated in prohibited extremist activity that year – up from the “low-double digits” of previous years.