GOP politicians disgrace America with their violence and insults
Someone, or some reporter, someday soon, will get hurt real bad-or worse.
Sunday, May 28th, 2017
GOP politicians disgrace America with their violence and insults
By Ginger McKnight-Chavers | May 27, 2017
This Memorial Day weekend, as we honor Americans who represented our country with bravery and dignity, and who paid the ultimate price to protect our people and our ideals, elected Republicans are validating the "ugly American" stereotype with rude, disrespectful, and even violent behavior.
(AP Photo/Stephen Spillman, File)
“No home training.”
That’s what my no-nonsense, but always well-mannered, Texan grandmother would say if she were still alive to witness the current crop of Republican officeholders and candidates.
From the commander in chief, all the way down the line to local representatives, ridiculously offensive words and behavior has become so prevalent among the GOP, that it is now their “new normal.”
On Friday, Gov. Greg Abbott, of my home state of Texas, joked about shooting reporters while waving a target sheet riddled with bullet holes at a driving range. It was a crude photo op for his signing of a bill to lower the cost of handgun licenses in Texas.
Now, he didn’t make this “joke” as part of a good-natured banter with reporters or in an act of self-deprecation regarding the GOP’s resistance to the free press’s attempts to report facts in this age of “alternative facts.”
He just made a bad joke in bad taste. A joke that likely won’t be appreciated by the families of murdered journalists like the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl and The Atlantic’s Michael Kelly. Countless brave journalists who, like the soldiers we will commemorate on Monday, gave their lives for America.
On Wednesday, the Republican candidate for sole House seat in Montana, Greg Gianforte, physically attacked reporter Ben Jacobs for asking him a substantive question about his views on the congressional Republicans’ unpopular health care repeal plan. Questions that were inconvenient for Gianforte to answer on the eve of the election.
His office initially lied about the incident, releasing a statement blaming Jacobs for the attack that landed that him in the emergency room and resulted in criminal assault charges being filed against Gianforte.
Even after the release of a damning audio recording of the encounter, and corroboration of the Jacobs’ account by reporters from Fox News, Gianforte waited until after he won the election the following day to offer a very thin apology.
Reporters were hard pressed to find a Republican politician willing to condemn Gianforte’s intentional, violent act against a member of the press. Criminal, aggravated assault is evidently excusable when a congressional seat is on the line.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency has represented the nadir of the GOP’s willingness to not only tolerate, but to encourage rank ugliness, bad manners, offensive behavior and even violence — not to mention incompetence, kleptocracy, mendacity, and possibly treason — as long as there is an “R” following the name of an elected official..............................
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Yes, trump has given them a license to say whatever they want.
But Republicans ne!ed to be condemning this behavior
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.........When GOP House candidate Greg Gianforte assaulted a reporter who had attempted to ask him a question Wednesday night in Montana, many saw not an isolated outburst by an individual, but the obvious, violent result of Trump’s charge that journalists are “the enemy of the people.” Nonetheless, Gianforte won Thursday’s special election to fill a safe Republican seat.
“Respectfully, I’d submit that the president has unearthed some demons,” Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) said. “I’ve talked to a number of people about it back home. They say, ‘Well, look, if the president can say whatever, why can’t I say whatever?’ He’s given them license.”
Trump — and specifically, his character and his conduct — now thoroughly dominate the national political conversation...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-gop-inherits-what-trump-has-wrought/2017/05/26/4e1943ea-4177-11e7-adba-394ee67a7582_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_montana-debrief-715a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.7c79e34846e1
