GOP Leaders Step up Their Dangerous Defense of Killers and Terrorists
As The RepubliCON War On Amerca Continues…
Why are Republican billionaires making heroes out of killers?
Thom Hartmann
Republicans are promoting death again, this time with DeSantis signing into law a bill that eliminates legal liability for doctors and other medical professionals (including EMTs) if they choose to let you die at the scene or on the operating table, or simply turn you away to let you die alone, because of their “moral, ethical, and religious convictions.”
The law says:
“[T]hat health care providers and health care payors have the right to opt out of participation in or payment for certain health care services on the basis of conscience-based objections” and “prohibits discrimination or adverse action against health care providers who decline to participate in a health care service on the basis of conscience-based objection…”
What started out as a slavery-, wife-beating-, and lynching-celebrating death cult fringe in the Southern Democratic Party — a group that called themselves Dixiecrats — has now fully taken over the GOP.
And the billionaires who support and fund the Republican Party are just fine with it.
Just a few weeks ago the Republican Party of Bonneville, Idaho hosted a “Trigger Time With Kyle” where donors could shoot with Rittenhouse himself — the guest of honor — with the same type of semiautomatic war weapon he used to end the lives of two BLM protestors and grievously wound a third.
Just this past week, as they did with Rittenhouse, Republican politicians helped raised over a million dollars for the white man who recently killed a homeless Black man in the New York subway.
As my SiriusXM colleague Dean Obeidallah noted yesterday in his excellent Dean’s Report Substack newsletter:
[We are seeing a very alarming pattern emerge where some of the GOP’s best known figures are increasingly defending killers and terrorists. And the reason why is simple: These Republican leaders believe it helps them politically. That is the dangerous message being sent recently by the GOP governors of Texas and Florida who have very publicly spoken out in support of defendants who have literally killed people and Donald Trump’s defense of the Jan 6 terrorists at last week’s CNN Town Hall.
The latest example comes from Florida GOP Gov Ron DeSantis who tweeted Friday evening his support for Daniel Penny, the man charged Thursday by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg with manslaughter in connection with the recent killing of Jordan Neely on a New York City subway. The facts of the case are straightforward. Neely, who was homeless, had been on the subway where witnesses say he launched into a loud, “aggressive” rant about being hungry and declaring, “I don’t care if I die. I don’t care if I go to jail. I don’t have any food … I’m done.”
While the witnesses note passengers became uncomfortable and some walked away, Neely was neither waving a weapon nor had he assaulted or even touched anyone. That is when Penny, a US Marine veteran, walked up behind Neely and placed him a chokehold that lasted per witnesses nearly 15 minutes. Per the New York City medical examiner, Neely died from compression to his neck as a result of Penny’s chokehold, ruling the death a homicide.
Why would the governor of Florida speak out on a case thousands of miles away in New York? Simple, DeSantis is expected to soon announce his run for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination and he has seen growing support for Penny from a score of right wing figures. For example, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene last week called Penny a “hero” while Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld declared Thursday on air that that the manslaughter charge against Penny were “pro-criminal” and “anti-hero.”
It was in that backdrop that DeSantis—who spent Saturday campaigning in Iowa in preparation for his 2024 run—jumped into the fray on Friday night. The second term, governor first tweeted an attack on the Manhattan DA—a favorite target of the GOP since his offices recently charged Donald Trump with 34 felonies—by writing: “We must defeat the Soros-Funded DAs, stop the Left's pro-criminal agenda, and take back the streets for law abiding citizens.” Then DeSantis added about Penny, “We stand with Good Samaritans like Daniel Penny. Let’s show this Marine... America’s got his back.”
This is politics at its most dangerous. The case should be decided by a jury—not used as a political prop to score points. Instead, DeSantis is sending a message that if you are supported by the GOP base, we will have your back even if you kill someone.
We saw this identical message sent last month by GOP Texas Governor Greg Abbott after the conviction of Daniel Perry by a Texas jury for murdering Black Lives Matter protester and Air Force veteran, Garrett Foster. During a BLM protest in 2020, Perry was driving his car when he reached an intersection blocked by BLM protesters. He initially paused for a few seconds to allow some demonstrators to cross the street, but after honking his horn at them, he ran a red light.
It was then that Foster, who was in the street protesting, and Perry came into contact. There are conflicting accounts as to whether Foster pointed his weapon at Perry or Perry made the first move. What’s undisputed, however, is that Perry fired five shots from his .357 revolver through his car window, killing Foster.
During the trial, the key question for the Texas jury was whether Perry’s shooting was justified under the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which allows deadly force to be used by those who feel their life is in danger. Prosecutors argued Perry had instigated the incident and introduced into evidence messages that suggested the shooting was not a spur-of-the-moment act but a premeditated one. One of the most damning was Perry’s Facebook message to a friend before the shooting that he might “kill a few people on my way to work.” After deliberating for 17 hours, the jury rendered a unanimous verdict finding Perry guilty of murder.
It was then that many on the right demanded Abbott pardon Perry from then Fox News host Tucker Carlson to GOP Texas US Rep. Ronny Jackson who tweeted to Abbott: “PARDON Daniel Perry IMMEDIATELY!”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton even released a statement to Fox News Digital that includes language almost identical to DeSantis’s Friday tweet where he, too. attacked the so-called “Soros-backed DA” who prosecuted Perry. (As we know, BLM is despised by the right so the fact the man killed—although white—was a BLM protester, it despicably plays into why the right is fine with him being murdered.)
In response to this goading, Abbott announced just a day after the jury convicted Perry that he would ask the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles – whose members he appoints – to expedite the pardon paperwork for Perry, which he vowed to sign as soon as it “hits my desk.”
Keep in mind in all of 2022, Abbott only pardoned two people. But to make the GOP voices happy, he was all too eager to nullify a unanimous verdict of a Texas jury that found Perry was not acting in self-defense.
Since Abbott’s announcement of his intention to pardon Perry, unsealed court records reveal that Perry had often engaged in racist and violent talk that included fantasizing about killing people such as “hunting” Muslims. Despite that, Abbott has still not backed off his vow to pardon Perry.
That takes us to Donald Trump--the leading candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination—who during Wednesday’s CNN Town Hall repeated his pledge to pardon a “large portion” of the Jan 6 attackers who attacked the Capitol that day on his behalf. Keep in mind, hundreds of these defendants have been convicted of committing acts of violence—including brutally beating police officers. Trump’s un-American pledge to pardon these MAGA terrorists was made even more vile by the pro-Trump audience applauding it.
These GOP leaders are broadcasting a very dangerous message that if you commit a crime—be it murder to storming the Capitol to overturn an election – they will have your back if it’s in their political interest to take such a position. Will this embolden more people to engage in the same conduct these Republican leaders are defending? Common sense says, yes. And worse, these GOP leaders know that. In fact, some of them like Trump obviously want more violence.]
I was a member of MSU’s SDS in the 1960s and remember well when a few of our members split off to join the Weather Underground. Both SDS and Democrats condemned their violence; both instead embraced the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts that had been passed in 1964 and 1965 and advocated nonviolent change.
That decade was the turning point, when Democrats abandoned hate and violence as a political tool and embraced an inclusive, pluralistic American society. But the racists and haters didn’t just vanish: they instead simply changed party affiliation.
In the election year of 1968, with Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” the Republican Party officially opened its welcoming arms to the racist, violent former Dixiecrats. Quickly, it was Republican politicians who were spouting hateful and violent memes.
Four days before the Kent State Massacre of May 5, 1970, California Governor Ronald Reagan called students protesting the Vietnam war across America “brats,” “freaks” and “cowardly fascists,” adding, as The New York Times noted at the time:
“If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement!”
By 2009, hate and violence were solidly a part of the Republican political landscape. When the late actor Andy Griffith made a TV advertisement promoting Obamacare that year, for example, he received so many credible death threats that he had to ask the Obama administration to pull the ads to protect his family.
More recently, Oklahoma GOP Chair John Bennett — who (like Reps Boebert, Massey, Ogles, and others) campaigned using pictures of himself, his wife, and his three children holding semiautomatic war weapons — called for Anthony Fauci’s execution to cheers from a Republican audience.
Like Duterte in The Philippines, Donald Trump just called for the death penalty for young people convicted of drug crimes, while DeSantis changed the law in Florida so a prisoner can be executed without a unanimous jury verdict.
Terrifying and angering Republican voters while explicitly calling for violence in response to their perceived victimhood is now the go-to strategy for GOP politicians and their media allies.
Although violent crime in America is at a 30-year low, Republican media and advertisements portray America — particularly cities with large Black populations — as savage hellscapes. Those portrayals frighten white Republican voters and that fear then fuels gun purchases, which lead to more deaths of American children.
Researcher Stephen Piggott notes that such misleading advertising and rhetoric are fueling violence instead of combating it.
“In recent years, there’s been a real mainstreaming of both violent and dehumanizing rhetoric, and it’s espoused by elected officials and media personalities,” Piggott told The Guardian.
“And it’s really served to kind of normalize this political violence. When you have individuals with large platforms, like elected officials and media personalities, and they’re talking about things like an impending civil war, it could lead to folks kind of taking that to heart and then acting on it.”
As reporter Aimee Green wrote for the statewide paper, The Oregonian, this past weekend, it’s become almost routine:
“It was supposed to be a carefree Fourth of July 2020. Two families had settled in for what they thought would be a relaxing Oregon summer evening on the beach of Lincoln City – an 80-mile, weekend getaway from their homes in Forest Grove and Hillsboro – when a group of seven men approached.
“According to witnesses, the white men walked up to the Black families, raised their hands into the air and exclaimed ‘Heil, Hitler!’ They told the families to ‘F—- off,’ then called them a highly offensive racist slur directed at African Americans. They waved Donald Trump flags in the air, blared music extolling the virtues of Trump and exclaimed, ‘You think you’re privileged because you’re Black!’
“One man lit a firework and threw it near one mom – warning, ‘That’s just a warm-up.’ Someone in the group mimicked a handgun with his fingers and pretended to shoot. One man also alluded to having a real gun….”
The small-town police in Lincoln City, Oregon showed up when one of the families called 911, but instead of arresting the racists they surrounded the Black families while the Black parents and their children packed up their things and left the Fourth of July celebration before the fireworks had even started.
As The Oregonian’s headline noted, “Hundreds of Oregon hate crimes go unprosecuted every year.”
America is today experiencing a national epidemic of hate and implied or actual political violence which has spread from racial- and religious-based hate all the way to threats of violence against scientists.
Just last week, we learned they’re now coming for meteorologists who mention global warming in their forecasts and reports, threatening them and their families with death.
My friend Michael Mann, one of the nation’s most prominent climate scientists and the inventor of the “hockey stick” graph Al Gore popularized, has been dealing with death threats and harassment for years.
The billionaire funders of Republican politicians could end this all in a single day — or at least marginalize it, as it was sixty years ago — by simply refusing to further fund any politician who continues to embrace guns, dystopian rhetoric, insurrection, and hate.
Sadly, though, those billionaires who fund or help the GOP — particularly the petrobillionaires and media moguls — won’t take that step.
For a few, it’s probably because they share the same white supremacist worldview espoused by people like Trump, DeSantis, Greene, and Abbott.
But for most, it’s because they know the difference between a Republican or Democratic victory in many states — enough to flip national elections — is held by that racist, misogynist, bigoted fringe. If Republicans lost their votes, Democrats would take the balance of the nation’s political power.
And, more than anything else, those billionaires want to continue paying only 3 percent (or less) in income taxes and know that if Democrats take power, they’ll hold corporations accountable for their pollution and make the morbidly rich pay something close to their fair share of the nation’s expenses.
After all, the morbidly rich appear to think, what’s so bad about terror campaigns targeting minorities and the gun-fueled slaughter of our children when billions in tax cuts and trillions that can be made hustling fossil fuels are at stake?
