After suffering a barrage of criticism, MTV News culture writer Ira Madison III deleted a racially charged tweet he posted Tuesday morning that cracked a joke about an Asian-American girl seated with Sen. Jeff Sessions at the Alabama Republican’s confirmation hearing in the Senate.

“Sessions, sir, kindly return this Asian baby to the Toys ‘R’ Us you stole her from,” Mr. Madison quipped. “Why is she a prop? Sessions argued for policy that in the 1880s was used to discriminate against Asian Americans,” he wrote in a followup tweet.

As Business Insider reported Tuesday, “The child is Sessions’ biological granddaughter. His family had accompanied him to his confirmation hearing.”

After deleting his tweet, Mr. Madison defended himself by tweeting, “I often tell jokes, but seeing as bringing up Sessions’ history of racial hatred of Asians is seen as an attack on his grandchild, I deleted[.]”

This is not the first time Mr. Madison has made a controversial racially charged tweet about a Republican close to President-elect Donald Trump. In March of last year, reacting to a tweet by Andrew Kirell of the Daily Beast about how former GOP presidential candidate “Ben Carson seems to suggest he’s been promised a role in a Trump administration,” Mr. Madison, who is black, replied, “House or field?”

In a subsequent tweet, as NewsBusters* reported, Mr. Madison seemed to make a homoerotic joke at Mr. Carson’s expense, suggesting the world-renowned neurosurgeon was sexually drawn to Mr. Trump.

(*Note: Ken Shepherd wrote for NewsBusters earlier in the year before working at The Washington Times.)

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