NC GOP Precinct Chairman Resigns After 'Lazy Blacks' Comment on 'Daily Show' [Video]

A local North Carolina Republican precinct chairman was forced to resign after making racial slurs during an interview on “The Daily Show” earlier this week.

Don Yelton, the GOP Buncombe County precinct chairman, repeatedly used the the N-word and referred to “lazy blacks” during the segment focused on the state’s voter ID laws. The segment, which aired on Wednesday, shows Yelton admitting to being called a bigot, but trying to justify his beliefs by saying that one of his best friends is black.

Yelton, who said there are usually one to two cases of voter fraud in his county per election, admitted that the law helped thwart voters who identified as Democrats.

“The law is going to kick the Democrats in the butt,” Yelton told "The Daily Show" correspondent Aasif Mandvi. “If it hurts a bunch of college kids that are too lazy to get up off theirbutts and get a photo ID, so be it. If it hurts the whites, so be it. If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that wants the government to give them everything, so be it,” he continued.

According to WRAL-TV, the local GOP asked Yelton to resign following his comments on the popular satirical news show. Buncombie GOP Chairman Henry Mitchell confirmed that Yelton had stepped down on Thursday and lambasted his remarks, calling them “offensive, uniformed and unacceptable of any member within the Republican Party.”

Mitchell released a statement in which he added, “Let me make it very clear, Mr. Yelton’s comments do not reflect the belief or feelings of Buncombe Republicans, nor do they mirror any core principle that our party is founded upon.” He continued, “This mentality will not be supported or propagated within our party.”

Yelton responded to both his comments on “The Daily Show” and his ousting during an interview with The Wrap, Mediaite reported. He called his party “gutless” for forcing him out and said they should’ve used his comments to show how open minded the party is to people’s views.

“The can turn it into a positive if they want to,” he told The Wrap. “The party does not try to control the speech of individuals. That’s the point they could have made. You have to let people have an opinion.”

Yelton also used the interview to support his usage of the N-word, claiming that outcry for using the term was reverse racism. He ended by saying, “There’s no political party that’s going to tell me what to say as long as I have breath in my body.”