Furor in Texas GOP after leaders post racist memes that suggest Floyd’s death is a hoax

One Facebook post falsely claimed that the killing of George Floyd in police custody last month was a “staged event,” meant to rile up opposition to President Trump. Another showed a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. next to a banana — an established racist trope.

And a third claimed that George Soros, the liberal billionaire, paid “white cops to murder black people” and “black people to riot because race wars keep the sheep in line.”

All of these posts were shared in recent days by Republican county leaders in Texas, some of whom are now facing calls to resign from top officials within their own party, including Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and Gov. Greg Abbott, who called the posts “disgusting,” the Texas Tribune reported…

“I have said it before and I will say it again now: the GOP must not tolerate racism. Of any kind. At any time,” George P. Bush, the state’s land commissioner and a rising star in the party, wrote on Twitter late Thursday. “I urge them to do the honorable thing and step aside now.”