Arizona lawmaker calls Muslims ‘f***ing savages’ ‘terrorists’ from ‘sh*t hole’ countries

Jarod MacDonald-Evoy

(Arizona Mirror) A Republican state lawmaker called Muslims “f***ing savages” in an interview on Monday, resolutely standing by Islamophobic comments he’d made on social media this month that included calling members of the faith “terrorists.”

Since the beginning of September, Rep. John Gillette has made a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter, aimed at the Muslim faith. Many have been laced with profanity, and the Kingman Republican has insisted that Muslim immigrants are “savages” because they are pushing “Sharia law” onto Americans.

In several posts, Gillette blamed Democrats for supporting Muslims in America and said that Islamophobia isn’t real.

“Islamophobia is a construct of the Marxist left I reject,” he wrote in a Sept. 2 post. “I have years of direct experience with these savages. Thier (sic) own religion preached convert or die. F**K EM. If they want here to become the sh*t hole they left… they can go home. The democrats support them. DEMOCRATS HATE AMERICA.”

In one post responding to a video publicized by the far-right account Libs of TikTok showing a Muslim man in Texas demanding that stores stop selling alcohol and pork, Gillette deemed the man an “anti-American terrorist” who should be sent “back to (the) sh*t hole he came from.”

Gillette initially told the Mirror that he didn’t think all Muslims should be judged by extremist members of the religion, but he quickly linked Islam with the 2012 terrorist attack at the American embassy in the Libyan city of Benghazi, and doubled down on the use of the term “savages.”

“I had friends killed in Benghazi by these savages,” said Gillette, an Army veteran and former sheriff’s deputy in Illinois who resigned after amassing 42 complaints in his 13-year career. “Now, I’m getting pissed off. They’re f***ing savages.”