A Republican candidate’s own children just trashed him in brutal tell-all interview

One of the stranger, more enjoyable trends of this current election cycle is watching the families of Republican candidates come out in opposition to them, or in some cases actively support their opponents. We can now add another name to the growing list, as the children of Steve West, a Missouri House candidate, have come out forcefully against their father according to The Kansas City Star.

West’s son and daughter have strong reasons to oppose their father’s election given his anti-semitic, racist, homophobic, and Islamaphobic views, which he has taken to spreading on the radio.

Previously, West gained notoriety when he made the jaw-dropping statement that “Hitler was right” and theorized that Jews were using Planned Parenthood to “harvest baby parts.” He’s also complained about the relationship between the United States and Israel because he believes it encourages corrupting anti-Christian ideas in America in the form of gay marriage and abortion.

The Missouri Republican Party condemned West after he won the party’s primary in August, showing that even in a party lead by a racist sexual predator, West is seen as fringe. The state GOP released a statement that West’s“abhorrent rhetoric has absolutely no place in the Missouri Republican Party or anywhere,” adding that they “wholeheartedly condemn his comments.”

His children share that opinion.

“I can’t imagine him being in any level of government,” his daughter, Emily West, said to The Kansas City Star.

Her brother, Andy West, referred to their father as a “fanatic” whose ideology is “pure hatred” before stressing the importance of voters putting a stop to him at the ballot box.

“If he gets elected, it would legitimize him. Then he would become a state official, and he’s saying that Jews shouldn’t even have civil rights,” he explained.

Both of West’s children have had a falling out with their father over his views, and Emily has not spoken with her father after he won the Republican primary and refused to pull out of the race like she requested.

Andy West pointed out that his father shares the same goal as the murderer who killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue this past weekend, saying that both men share the ultimate goal of achieving “the removal of Jews from America.”

Their father, for his part, denies that he is an anti-Semite and has condemned the synagogue shooting.

“I would never condone any violence against any people because of a specific race or religion or anything else,” he claimed.

Absurdly, he says his ex-wife is to blame for his children’s opposition to him, rather than his atrocious views.

“I had a toxic divorce from my ex-wife and she’s poisoned my kids, and I have to live with that,” he said.

West’s opponent is the Democratic incumbent Jon Carpenter and he says that he is “deeply disturbed” by West’s candidacy and that voters should  “overwhelmingly reject that kind of bigotry on election day.” Carpenter is correct, but the fact that West has made it so far, and that voters actually supported him in the primary, is a terrifying sign of the hateful ascendant forces in America. If they are not stopped immediately at the ballot, there is no telling how far we might fall as a nation.

Click here to donate to Carpenter’s campaign.

Original reporting by Judy L. Thomas.

Natalie Dickinson

Natalie is a staff writer for the Washington Press. She graduated from Oberlin College in 2010 and has been freelance blogging and writing for progressive outlets ever since.