This is how we live now – an adviser to the next president saying grossly racist and malevolent things in public.

Carl Paladino, a former Republican nominee for governor of New York and an adviser to president-elect Trump, included the death of President Obama and “return” of first lady Michelle Obama to Africa on his list of things he wanted for 2017.

Paladino was responding to a survey by an alternative weekly magazine, Artvoice.

Asked what he would like to happen in 2017, he said he hopes that “Obama catches mad cow disease” and dies after having relations with a Hereford, a type of cow. Asked what he would most like to see go, Paladino responded that Michelle Obama would “return to being male” and be “let loose” in Zimbabwe.

Full exchange:

Artvoice: What would you most like to happen in 2017?

Carl Paladino: Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford. He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to Valerie Jarret, who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a Jihady cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her.

Artvoice: What would you most like to see go in 2017?

Carl Paladino: Michelle Obama. I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.

What a nice nice nice man he must be.

Paladino assured the Washington Post that what he said was in no way racist.

“It has nothing to do with race,” Paladino said. “That’s the typical stance of the press when they can’t otherwise defend the acts of the person being attacked.”

“It’s about 2 progressive elitist ingrates who have hated their country so badly and destroyed its fabric in so many respects in 8 years,” he added.

Elitist. Right. One the child of working class parents, the other the child of middle class parents; neither of them the child of rich parents.

You know…they did what Republicans profess to value: they studied, they did well in school, they went to excellent universities and law schools. They climbed the ladder. That’s what people are supposed to do in Republican world. The possibility (for a few) of doing that is what makes our grotesque levels of income inequality and wealth inequality tolerable, according to Republicans. So why do people like Paladino call them elitists when they get the educations but don’t abandon their roots?

Who knows. Expecting coherence from a Republican of this type is expecting a unicorn driving a bus.

Paladino has repeatedly over the years attacked Obama privately and publicly — including pushing the falsehood that Obama is Muslim. During his gubernatorial race, Paladino was accused of sending graphically racist and sexist emails — some of them concerning Obama — to his circle of friends. Paladino never denied sending the emails but called them a “smear.”

This is Trump world. Get used to it.

In a statement, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat,  slammed Paladino for a “long history of racist and incendiary comments.”

“Carl Paladino, a Republican Party official from Western New York, made racist, ugly and reprehensible remarks about President Obama and the First Lady Michelle Obama,” Cuomo said. “While most New Yorkers know Mr. Paladino is not to be taken seriously, as his erratic behavior defies any rational analysis and he has no credibility, his words are still jarring.”

He has no credibility but he’s an adviser to the next president.