BY: JEROD MACDONALD-EVOY |Arizona Mirror
Flagstaff Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers refused to meet with the attorney for the Senate Ethics Committee, but her lawyer said in a letter to the panel that her tweet dismissing the racially motivated Buffalo grocery store mass shooting was a reference to a 2019 hip hop song and not a nod to white supremacist online culture.
The Arizona Senate launched an ethics investigation into Rogers for alluding on social media that the shooting in Buffalo was the work of federal law enforcement instead of the white supremacist accused of carrying out the attack.
Only minutes after a white teenager armed with an assault rifle and outfitted with body armor shot and killed 10 people — most of them Black — in a Buffalo grocery store on May 14, Rogers posted on several social media platforms that “fed boy summer has started in Buffalo.” She has previously used the term “feds” to describe white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, seeking to blame federal law enforcement for the actions of racists.
Rogers’ use of the phrase “fed boy summer” is similar to “white boy summer,” a viral meme used by neo-Nazis and white nationalists in 2021. White nationalist leader Nick Fuentes adopted the phrase for his summer road trip last year, including an alleged event with Prescott Republican Congressman Paul Gosar, who later denied it.
Rogers’ is a staunch supporter of Fuentes and attended Fuentes’ America First Political Action Conference earlier this year via video. She gave a speech in which she fantasized about hanging political enemies and called those in attendance “patriots,” speaking shortly after others who shared nakedly white nationalist views on stage.
However, in a report to the Senate Ethics Committee on June 17 prepared by panel’s lawyer, Chris Kleminich, Rogers’ attorney claims that the term is a reference to Megan Thee Stallion’s 2019 profanity-laced song “Hot Girl Summer” which became an internet meme.
