Rep. Mike Lawler outed for blackface Michael Jackson costume

Source: Bill Clark / Getty

Halloween is fast approaching and that means it’s that time for the unyielding yearly trend of politicians being outed for wearing racist costumes like Blackface.

Today’s contestant is Republican Rep. Mike Lawler who, according to POLITICO, was put on blast by the New York Times for rocking a Blackface Michael Jackson costume some 20 years ago when he was a student at Manhattan College. In response, Lawler told NYT that the costume was the “furthest thing” from his mind and apologized for any offense. He also spoke about the issue during an appearance on The Source with Kaitlan Collins to “explain” that the costume was not racist as it was an “homage” to the King of Pop.

This outing comes at a very precarious time for Lawler as he is currently embroiled in a very tightly contested race to keep his congressional seat against a Black Democrat Rep. Mondaire Jones. Can’t imagine that his conservative constituents care one bit about their representative performing racist cosplay so perhaps the damage will be surface-level at best.

However, Lawler is facing other attacks for his refusal to speak out against racist rhetoric according to the POLITICO report.

Lawler was part of the Sept. 13 roundtable in Chappaqua where a participant sought to make the case that antisemitism goes unchecked on college campuses. The man said, “if a bunch of white boys wanted to start a Klan membership at Columbia University, set up chants and started chanting, ‘Lynch the n—–s’” that such activity would not be allowed for longer than 30 seconds.

Another panelist agreed with the slur-laden sentiment but Lawler changed the subject instead of rebuking the racist comment.