As Republicans tend to do, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory is blaming the media for the backlash to his signing of HB2, the anti-transgender bathroom bill that also prohibits cities from enacting their own non-discrimination ordinances, among other things.
As we've pointed out several times over the past week, HB2 does far more than codify anti-transgender discrimination into law but Governor McCrory doesn't even seem to understand that he has done exactly that.
Or he's just straight-up lying.
“We have not taken away any rights that have currently existed in any city in North Carolina, from Raleigh to Durham to Chapel Hill to Charlotte,” he said. “Every city and every corporation have the exact same nondiscrimination policy this week as they had two weeks ago.”
To be crystal clear, Governor McCrory has absolutely taken away rights that currently existed. He signed a bill (HB2) that explicitly makes it illegal for a transgender person to use a bathroom that corresponds with the gender they identify as. That was not policy two weeks ago. That's not policy anywhere else in the entire country. North Carolina is the first to try it.
Furthermore, the bill Governor McCrory signed explicitly deprives cities of certain rights and he personally stated as much on the night he signed HB2 into law.
Ordinance defied common sense, allowing men to use women’s bathroom/locker room for instance. That’s why I signed bipartisan bill to stop it
— Pat McCrory (@PatMcCroryNC) March 24, 2016
Beyond the most obvious fallacies of Governor McCrory's recent statements, he also apparently isn't aware that HB2 goes far beyond the scope of criminalizing transgender people.
When a reporter told McCrory that the law appears to revoke a fair housing ordinance in Greensboro and a policy governing municipal contracts in Raleigh, he said he didn’t know whether the policies would be eliminated.
“You’re blindsiding me with a question,” McCrory said. “I’ve been traveling all day, so you’re telling me something I’m not aware of.”
In short, Governor McCrory doesn't understand how anything works. It's not clear to me if he even grasps the scope of the legal and economic shitstorm that is about to descend on the state from every direction. I'm not convinced he understands any of this.
I wonder to what degree McCrory's dumbassery may put the state in play for Democrats in November who are free to run on a platform of restoring civil rights.