On the January 23, 2019 episode of his eponymous online talk show, right-wing stand-up comic Nick Di Paolo donned a MAGA cap and gave a spirited defense of Mark Bartlett — a Florida man accused of a hate crime. Bartlett, a 51-year-old white man, threatened a group of black children with a gun during a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day protest for fair housing.

Bartlett was recorded yelling, “Get the fuck out of here. You fucking losers. You fucking stupid niggers. You’re all fucking dumb-ass fucking niggers.”

During a post-arrest interview with a Local 10 News reporter, Bartlett defended his repeated use the slur. “The reason why we use that word, the reason why Chinese people use the word, why Japanese people, European people, the reason why everybody uses that word is because black people use that word,” he said.

After playing a clip of the incident, Di Paolo defended Bartlett’s racist, violent reaction against what he called “little black punks.” “But once again, who’s causing problems?” Di Paolo asked. “Who’s precipitating the fucking confrontation?” Di Paolo then put up Bartlett’s mugshot; Bartlett wore a smirk on his face, which Di Paolo found endlessly amusing.

Di Paolo chuckled and said that Bartlett “looks really upset” because “he knows he’s in the right.” He also defended Bartlett’s use of the N-word during the confrontation, calling it “foul language” but adding that he “believe[s] in free speech.” He further said that the N-word “doesn’t really bother young black kids ’cause they’ve kept the word alive” through hip-hop, and admitted to using the word in private conversations.

He then played an audio track of applause for Bartlett (followed by the theme song from the Spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) and joked that there’s a “new sheriff in town named Mark Bartlett.” “He has had enough,” Di Paolo told viewers. “He’s only giving you previews of what’s coming, folks, if the Left keeps up their fucking nonsense.”

This was not the first instance of Di Paolo defending or promoting racism on his show.

On the January 21, 2019 episode — which saw bigoted comedian Owen Benjamin as a guest — Di Paolo said presidential candidate Kamala Harris “hates men and white people.” He also proclaimed that “the white man’s the best thing that happened to this planet.”

Last year Di Paolo was fired by SiriusXM over a tweet in which he encourage school shooters to “confine yourself to coll. campuses, specifically faculty lounges at Berkeley, Fresno State etc.”