A Donald Trump ally has ignited widespread outrage after wishing for US President Barack Obama’s death and making racially charged comments about the first lady.
Carl Paladino – a businessman who served as a co-chairman of the president-elect’s New York State election campaign – made the incendiary jabs in a year-end feature published on Friday in Artvoice, a weekly newspaper in upstate New York.
Asked what he would “most like to see happen” in 2017, the former Republican candidate for governor of New York state said that he hoped Obama “catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations” with a type of beef cattle and “dies before his trial”.
“He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to [senior Obama adviser] Valerie Jarret[t], who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a Jihady [sic] cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her.”
When questioned what he would “most like to see go” next year, Paladino replied: “Michelle Obama”.
He said: “I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.”
His remarks spurred angry reaction on social media and drew the ire of elected officials.
Andrew Cuomo – current New York governor who beat Paladino in 2010 – slammed his ex-rival’s comments as “racist, ugly and reprehensible”.
“Paladino has a long history of racist and incendiary comments,” the governor said in a statement. “His remarks do not reflect the sentiments or opinions of any real New Yorker. He has embarrassed the good people of the state with his latest hate-filled rage.”
Trump did not personally defend or call out his political ally, though a spokeswoman for the president-elect said the comments “are absolutely reprehensible, and they serve no place in our public discourse”, according to the New York Times.
Facing broad condemnation, Paladino published an open letter that his remarks had “nothing to do with race”.
“That’s the typical stance of the press when they can’t otherwise defend the acts of the person being attacked,” he wrote, accusing the first lady of having hated America before her husband won office in 2008.
Paladino confirmed to The Buffalo News that he made the original comments.
“Of course I did,” he said on Friday morning.
During the presidential campaign, Paladino described Trump supporters as people frustrated with government who “want the raccoons out of the basement”.
He later spoke of ridding the US of “the Washington elite monsters”.
At a political rally in 2015, he spoke about “damn Asians” and other “foreigners” attending university in Buffalo.
This week, Paladino was criticised for introducing a resolution to mandate all Buffalo public schools display a picture of Trump.
In the statement he went on to call Obama “a yellow-bellied coward” and said the first lady should “leave and go someplace she will be happy”.
Paladino – a developer in the city of Buffalo, New York – visited Trump Tower this month, a meeting he described to The Buffalo News as “very warm”.
Among key figures he met were the Vice-President-elect Mike Pence, chief of staff nominee Reince Priebus, senior counsel nominee Stephen Bannon, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and nominated national security adviser Michael Flynn.
“It was a wide-ranging conversation about all the people across the state who were on my team,” the newspaper reported Paladino as saying. “We talked about New Yorkers who might have a role, how we might structure appointments and who would get input. I think I will have an ongoing ability to make recommendations.”