In a desperate attempt to con people into voting for Republicans, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took hypocrisy to a new level.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Friday released a statement that was so shockingly idiotic and phony that we just had to provide you with a corrected version of it.
Here we go (our additions in italics):
This summer, after a registered Republican who had easy access to weapons of war (thanks to our party’s best efforts to torpedo any type of gun control) attempted to assassinate our presidential candidate the first attempted assassination of a presidential candidate in more than a century, President Biden whom we have maligned at every turn insisted that “we cannot allow this violence to be normalized.” In September, after former President Trump, who has called Kamala Harris a fascist, communist, Marxist, threat to democracy, retarded, stupid, and a shit vice president (among other things), escaped yet another close call, Vice President Harris acknowledged that “we all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence.”
These words have proven hollow In order to distract the public from a highly respected public servant and Trump’s former White House chief of staff (and now others) calling his former boss a “fascist,” we decided to put out this sanctimonious and phony statement. We hope it will benefit our party if we pretend that Harris is the problem when it comes to incendiary rhetoric, and not our own nominee, who has been stoking violence at every turn, and whose attempted coup resulted in a deadly attack on our own place of work. In the weeks since that second sobering reminder, the Democratic nominee for President of the United States has only fanned the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus called out our guy for using hateful rhetoric that led to problems ranging from bomb threats in Ohio to FEMA workers having to stop providing aid to hurricane victims because they had to fear for their own safety. Her most recent and most reckless invocations of the darkest evil of the 20th century seem to dare it to boil over factually accurate description of a guy who talks about immigrants “infecting” our communities (which admittedly is Nazi language), refers to Democrats as “the enemy within,” and who fantasizes about having unchecked power (including the use of the military against Americans), does not sit well with us. Therefore, in a desperate attempt to distract voters from Trump’s rhetoric, we drafted this statement, which might be one of the most disingenuous and hypocritical in US political history. The Vice President’s words more closely resemble those of former President Trump’s second would-be assassin than her own earlier appeal to civility. on his best-behaved, least-incendiary day.
The man who was caught waiting in ambush in Florida left others with a chilling call to arms: “It is up to you now to finish the job.” Labeling a political opponent as a “fascist,” risks inviting yet another would-be assassin to try robbing voters of their choice before Election Day even if that candidate talks and acts like a fascist (or has stated his admiration for authoritarians and fascists in the past), could cost us precious votes.
Vice President Harris may want the American people to entrust her with the sacred duty of executive authority. But first, she must abandon the base and irresponsible rhetoric that endangers both American lives and institutions the kind of rhetoric we have been using against Democrats for a long time. We have both been briefed on the ongoing and persistent threats to former President Donald Trump by adversaries to the United States, which means threats completely unrelated to any campaign rhetoric, and we call on the Vice President to take these threats seriously, stop escalating the threat environment speaking the truth about our nominee, and help ensure former President Trump has the necessary resources to be protected from those threats.
Obviously, by putting out this statement and pretending, without any evidence, that the rhetoric of Harris or any Democrat has anything to do with the assassination attempts on the former president, we realize that we are doing the exact same thing (especially because we belong to the party far more willing to engage in political violence). But we don’t care because we need to win Congress to ram through Trump’s fascist agenda.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
