Senator blasts alt-right leader on Twitter: 'Get a real job, clown'

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Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Ben Sasse isn’t a pro at the mechanics of using Twitter, but he sure tapped into the site’s zeitgeist by unloading a string of 11 tweets at “clown” Richard Spencer on Thursday evening.

The Republican from Nebraska responded aggressively to a tweet from Spencer, who took issue with Sasse saying Russian President Vladimir Putin loved American infighting.

Spencer called Sasse a “goober conservative.”

The remark set off Sasse, a frequent target of far-right conservatives, who said everyone could agree “racists like you” are to blame for racism.

Sasse, who admitted later he didn’t know how to “thread” tweets, quoted each of his tweets separately in response, but the whole tweet string continued from there as follows:

“You don’t get America. You said: ‘You do not have some human right, some abstract thing given to you by God or something like that.’ Actually, that’s exactly what America declares we do have: People are the image-bearers of God, created with dignity and inalienable rights. Sadly, you don’t understand human dignity. A person’s skin, ancestry and bank balance have nothing to do with their intrinsic value. This declaration of universal dignity is what America is about. Madison called our Constitution ‘the greatest reflection on human nature.’ You talk about culture but don’t know squat about Western heritage — which sees people not as tribes but as individuals of limitless worth. The celebration of universal dignity is our culture, and it rejects your ‘white culture’ crybaby politics. It rejects all identity politics. Sometime after moving back into your parents’ basement, you knock-off Nazis fell in love with reheated 20th-century will-to-power garbage. Your ‘ideas’ aren’t just hateful, un-American poison — they’re also just so dang boring. The future doesn’t belong to your stupid memes.”

Sasse finished, “Get a real job, clown. Find an actual neighbor to serve. You’ll be happier. Have a nice day.”

Spencer, who has 74,000 followers on Twitter, is president of the National Policy Institute and is labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Watch site as “one of the most successful young white nationalist leaders.” The National Policy Institute is labeled a white supremacist group.

Spencer ripped Sasse in a single tweet, but didn’t respond further.


The 39-year-old was one of those responsible for organizing the “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville in August, which set off violent confrontations between protesters and resulted in the death of a 32-year-old woman, who was hit by a car driven into counterprotesters.

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