GOP official fired for racially offensive remarks on 'Daily Show' can't stop using racial slurs

A North Carolina Republican who as a county elections official after making repeated racist remarks on “The Daily Show” not only stands by his comments, but he’s expanding on them.

Don Yelton told The Wrap that GOP officials in Buncombe County were out to get him and used a racial slur to defend his comment that “lazy blacks” should decide elections.

He added that lazy college students and lazy white people shouldn’t, either.

Yelton was asked to resign from his position as precinct chairman after telling the Comedy Central news program that a new voter identification law in the state would “kick the Democrats in the butt.”

He dismissed concerns raised by "Daily Show" correspondent Aasif Mandvi that the law would unfairly target black voters.

“If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it,” Yelton said.

He defended his comments on the show during an interview with the Ashville Citizen-Times in which he used a notorious racial slur at least twice, and Yelton repeated the same comments in his interview with The Wrap.

“When a n—– can use the word ‘n—–‘ and it not be considered racist, that’s the utmost racism in the world, and it’s hypocrisy,” Yelton told the reporter, who pointed out in his article that he’d called the former party official “to see if he’d been unfairly branded a racist.”

The 66-year-old Yelton told The Wrap that Republicans had missed an opportunity to use his statements as proof that they’re open to all views.

“They can turn it into a positive if they want to,” Yelton said. “The party does not try to control the speech of individuals. That’s the point they could have made. You have to let people have an opinion.”

In a local radio interview, Yelton accused "The Daily Show" of editing his remarks, which he later defended and repeated, out of context, and complained that county GOP officials had come down on him like “an iron fist.”

“There’s no political party that’s going to tell me what to say as long as I have breath in my body,” Yelton said.

He said he’d previously been removed as precinct chair in 2012 for supporting an independent candidate but was re-elected at a three-person meeting by two votes – his own and his wife’s.

Yelton also said Republicans had failed to appreciate the media attention he’d attracted to the party.