Setting the Record Straight on Politically Extremist Language

This is a response to a letter in last week’s Examiner (“Democrats Have Done Plenty to Add to Our Nation’s Incivility”) about my column on politically extremist language.

To accord the writer the respect he is due, as a citizen exercising his First Amendment rights, I searched online to learn what he wrote about various Democratic politicians’ awful statements in the past. I don’t have the space to catalog all their comments, so I’ll cite just a few examples.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California) said, during the trial of Derek Chauvin, the officer who put his knee on George Floyd’s neck, that if Chauvin wasn’t convicted of all charges, “We’ve got to get more confrontational.” That could incite someone to violence.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said in 2017 that migrant detention centers are concentration camps. I don’t know a lot about migrant detention centers. I have read that they can be rough, but the migrants are fed and clothed. To compare them to concentration camps the Nazis ran in World War II is offensive. The Nazi camps were set up to murder millions of people. The ones who survived the initial extermination were worked, starved and tortured to death.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) has compared the U.S. and Israel to the terrorist organizations Hamas and the Taliban. I vehemently disagree.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Massachusetts) called President Trump an expletive that cannot be printed in this newspaper. She has accused a nameless “they” of exploiting minorities for profit, while “hiding behind a curtain.”

For the record, I don’t condone any of these or other incendiary statements. I was alarmed when AOC, Omar and Tlaib were elected, and I don’t support them.

However, none of them have ever accused the other political party of murdering people in their party, as Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Georgia) has done.

Also, concerning President Trump, I have done some research and found no evidence of any other former president ever degrading his office by calling another government official “an animal.”

Other Republican representatives have posted violent images online. Paul Gosar, Republican congressman from Arizona, put up a video of Gosar killing Ocasio-Cortez. Republican Eric Greitens, in Missouri, posted a video of himself using an assault rifle. Donald Trump Jr. then said on Greitens’ video, “Striking fear into the hearts of liberals everywhere.” That’s incitement to violence.

As far as President Biden, I believe he has tried to unify this fractious country, but that works both ways. I didn’t see many Republicans raise their hands to help him out. I simply don’t agree that Biden is the most divisive and polarizing President we’ve ever had. That honor rightly belongs to his predecessor, who called for crowds to lock up Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Presidency in 2016. I could write a book on President Trump’s many incendiary statements, including spurring on a riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but I don’t need to. Many others have.

Concerning the vote in Arizona, let’s also mention Georgia. Brian Kemp was the secretary of state when he ran for governor in 2018. As secretary of state, Kemp purged more than 500,000 voters from the rolls (source: American Public Media).

In Arizona, the vote was certified by the state’s election authorities. Republican Gov. Doug Ducey congratulated Ms. Hobbs on her victory. Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney campaigned against Republican candidate Kari Lake, specifically because she denied that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

I don’t live in Arizona, but what I have read about the machine breakdowns is that these occurred due to technical problems that were fixed. No one has produced any credible evidence that the vote was fraudulent.

Michael Gold
Pleasantville

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