Mayor defends calling Democratic voters 'retarded' on Facebook: 'I have no regrets'
A Republican mayor says he has “no regrets” about calling supporters of Democrats “retarded” on Facebook.
Denis Langlois, an upstate New York mayor, wrote in an October Facebook post about the midterm elections: “If anyone that I know vote for a Democrat on Tuesday you should sign yourself into the Mental Health unit at your local Hospital because you are retarded and need help, Vote Republican and ‘Keep America Great’!”
The post has been deleted from Langlois’s private Facebook page, according to WNYT, however, on Tuesday, someone sent a screenshot to the Post-Star, a newspaper in Glens Falls, N.Y., which was also shared on social media.
When speaking to the Post-Star, the mayor was fuzzy on the details, “I might have,” he said. “I post things all the time. I really don’t remember what I do half the time.”
However, he then said, “I’m not doing it as an official; I’m doing it as a person. You can’t quote me as the mayor, you can only quote me as a person. As a mayor I wouldn’t say that, but as a person who believes in Republican values… Most people don’t even know I’m the mayor. Nobody cares anymore. That’s the problem with America today. Everybody just goes on with their life, and if it doesn’t affect them, they don’t care. It’s a terrible thing.”
Langlois also complained about people who don’t vote, sharing a recent experience he had at a business establishment where a handful of people said they refused to vote.
“If you write something and it gets me out of the mayor, I don’t care,” he told the paper. “I live for myself and what I believe in. … I have no regrets on what I say. I never have regrets on what I say. I believe what I believe. Whether it’s politically correct or not, it’s what I believe, and it doesn’t matter. I talk from my heart and my soul, and that’s all there is to it.”
On social media, some called the mayor a “disgusting excuse for a human being” who “should be ashamed,” and someone posted his phone number on Facebook, asking that people complain to the town.
Margaret Nygren, the executive director and CEO of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities previously told Yahoo Lifestyle that what we call “intellectual disability” evolved from the medical term “mental retardation.”
“The word ‘retard’ is a slur and used to describe people without dignity,” she said, adding, “Mocking them doesn’t contribute to the ideals of society.”
Langlois did not return Yahoo Lifestyle’s request for comment.
Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:
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