Even though a high-ranking Hawaii Republican Party official has resigned over controversial tweets supporting QAnon followers, it hasn’t stopped the controversy for the local GOP.
Edwin Boyette, vice chair for communications for the Hawaii Republican Party, said his tweets on party’s Twitter account were “errors in judgement.”
The party’s chair said the tweets don’t represent the views of the organization’s.“Those tweets were unauthorized,” said Shirlene Ostrov, chair of the Hawaii Republican Party.
“I think everyone can recognize that those tweets are isolated incidents and the person has since been removed.” Longtime Republican state Rep. Gene Ward issued this statement: “Fortunately, he resigned before he was to be censured, reprimanded and removed,” Ward wrote.
“Let me be clear, that statement was made by an overzealous party officer that was unauthorized, unfounded and was total nonsense not reflecting the views of our party leaders or any elected officials.” he added.
INSANITY - the @gophawaii is promoting a Holocaust denying bigot on their Twitter feed right now, calling his analysis as "generally high quality". pic.twitter.com/DE1LTzzBP5
— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) January 25, 2021
The tweet -- which has since been taken down by the party -- referred to Mainland blogger Tarl Warwick as someone whose “commentary and analysis is generally high quality.”
Years ago, Warwick questioned the actual death toll at Auschwitz. “Whatever the death toll was you cannot say every death was the result of execution,” Warwick said. “The actual chamber that would have been the gas chamber is a far smaller unit with some pumps in it. The famous Auschwitz shower was quite literally a showering station. They’ve got like swimming pools at these places.”
In deleting this tweet, Ostrov issued this statement: “To our friends in the Jewish community, we find the comments to be deeply disturbing and offensive and have no place in our party much less in our country,” she wrote.