Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) proves Republicans and INTELLIGENCE is an OXYMORON

01 February 18 PM

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Representative Matt Gaetz and Trump pose for a selfie. (photo: Tom Williams/Roll Call)

Republican Congressman Invited a Holocaust Denier to Be His Guest at the State of the Union Address

By Lachlan Markay and Gideon Resnick, The Daily Beast

01 February 18

Representative Matt Gaetz is doing all kinds of wild things this week.

ep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a conservative Republican firebrand, was the lawmaker responsible for inviting the controversial internet troll Chuck Johnson to Tuesday night’s State of the Union address.

Johnson’s presence in the gallery during the speech by Donald Trump raised eyebrows and immediately sparked questions over how a right-wing activist and blogger best known for attempting to dox the subject of the UVA campus rape story managed to get a ticket to the high-profile affair.

Reached by phone on Wednesday, Gaetz confirmed that he was the one who provided Johnson with the ticket.

Gaetz told The Daily Beast that he and Johnson had no pre-existing relationship and that he provided him with a ticket to the speech after Johnson “showed up at my office” the day of the speech. The congressman said he had an extra ticket after his father came down with bronchitis and couldn’t make it. Johnson just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Gaetz’s public profile has grown in recent weeks as he has helped lead the charge for the releasing of the highly-controversial memo House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) has put together on government surveillance. His advocacy for the memo’s release has led him to odd places, including an appearance on Alex Jones’s conspiratorial Infowars program.

Gaetz said that he and Johnson did not discuss the Nunes memo and didn’t interact much at the event at all. Asked if he planned to stay in touch, Gaetz replied: “He has my number.”

Johnson offered a different explanation of how the evening came together. Initially, he said he and Gaetz were introduced by another member of Congress, whom he declined to name. In a separate conversation with The Daily Beast, however, Johnson said that he was invited by several members of Congress but “took Gaetz’s invitation” as “he’s into stuff on the issues that I care about.”

Asked about Gaetz’s differing account, Johnson said, “I’ll go with whatever version Gaetz says because I’m not a gangster rapper.”

The issues that drew him to the congressman, Johnson said, included “weed and bitcoin and Trump and animal welfare.” He said he also likes Gaetz because he has “that fuck you mindset.”

Johnson also said that he ran into Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) during the State of the Union address and that he was a big fan of the California Republican. Johnson helped arrange a meeting between Rohrabacher and Julian Assange in addition to donating to the congressman’s campaign.

“It was a wild time. I certainly did a bunch of jumping out of my chair,” Johnson said of the State of the Union speech itself. “Trump was straight up gangster.”

Johnson, the founder of the right-wing website GotNews, is a notorious figure in online political circles. He routinely stakes out intentionally inflammatory positions on divisive political issues, and has on a number of occasions bungled facts in attacks on prominent public figures, including journalists and politicians.

In 2015, Johnson was permanently banned from Twitter after soliciting donations to help “take out” prominent Black Lives Matter activist Deray McKesson.

Nevertheless, Johnson remains a marginally influential figure in the political orbits of President Donald Trump and other Republicans. In April, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke carved out time for a phone call with Johnson. The two discussed plans for a wall on the southern border.

Johnson’s writings have also directly informed White House personnel decisions after articles published at GotNews found their way to the president’s desk.

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/48229-republican-congressman-invited-a-holocaust-denier-to-be-his-guest-at-the-state-of-the-union-address

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Republicans hiding from constituents

God Bless the United States

“Though the protesters think of themselves as idealists, they engaged in political thuggery, pure and simple. These people do not want, as they’ve claimed, to hold a town hall meeting with me. These are unruly activists on whom the lessons of civility and democratic participation have been lost,” he continues. “These holier-than-thou obstructionists will be held responsible for this outrageous assault. They are exposing themselves for what they are — enemies of American self-government and democracy.”

The GOP-ers are the true thugs (crooks) and enemies of democracy. And their leader is a lunatic. Dangerous combo.

Lori Leppala We should ask @DanaRohrabacher what HE was doing in Russia?

Congressman says constituents asking for a 

town hall are ‘enemies’ of democracy

He also accused them of “political thuggery.”

THINKPROGRESS.ORG

Congressman says constituents asking for a town hall are ‘enemies’ of democracy

He also accused them of “political thuggery.”

A group of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s (R-CA) constituents went to his office on Tuesday to deliver Valentine’s cards. They go every Tuesday now, asking Rohrabacher to hold a town hall meeting in his district.

But now, after a confused tussle in the hallway involving a 2-year old and a 71-year-old-woman, Rohrabacher is now accusing them of engaging in “political thuggery, pure and simple.”

The delegation is one of many grassroots groups around the country organizing around the Indivisible guide, which is a how-to manual for people looking to have a more effective voice in government. It was put together by former congressional staffers after Trump’s victory.

Like many of the other Indivisible groups, the Orange County Indivisible group has been met with scorn and accusations of not being ‘real’ constituents. For the past three weeks, at Rohrabacher’s office the door has been closed and locked, and they have slid their documentation underneath.

Two weeks ago, they were met with the police. And this Tuesday, as a 2-year-old girl slid a valentine under the door on Tuesday, one of Rohrabacher’s staffers opened it, hitting her in the head and knocking her to the ground.

According to local reporting, one of the constituents then grabbed the door and tugged on it, causing 71-year old district director Kathleen Staunton, who was on the other side of the door, to lose her footing and fall. A spokesman for Rohrabacher’s office told media that she later fell unconscious and had to go to the hospital.

In a video of the immediate aftermath, the little girl can be heard crying, as visiting constituents apologize, and one of them helps Rohrabacher’s staffer up. The door is then closed, and the group leaves.

“I don’t think anybody from either side was trying to hurt anybody,” the mother of the young girl told a local reporter.

According to Mike Lisenbery, one of the organizers of the Indivisible group, the group visiting Rohrabacher’s office was predominantly composed of older retired women. This account is borne out in photographs of the group. The video shows that there were about 10 people in the hallway.

In his press release, however, Rohrabacher paints the incident as malicious and characterizes the activists as an unruly mob of thugs.

“I am outraged beyond words that protesters who mobbed my Huntington Beach office violently knocked down my faithful district director, Kathleen Staunton, causing her to be hospitalized,” Rohrabacher is quoted by saying.

“Though the protesters think of themselves as idealists, they engaged in political thuggery, pure and simple. These people do not want, as they’ve claimed, to hold a town hall meeting with me. These are unruly activists on whom the lessons of civility and democratic participation have been lost,” he continues. “These holier-than-thou obstructionists will be held responsible for this outrageous assault. They are exposing themselves for what they are — enemies of American self-government and democracy.”

Rohrabacher’s fiery response has flabbergasted his visitors, as did his one-sided depiction of the events. The only mention of the two-year-old is a passively-framed aside: “In the tumult, a two-year-old girl apparently brought along with the crowd was also hit by a swinging door.”

“Everybody is taken a little be aback by his staff, really not — not trying to assume any culpability for knocking the little girl to the ground and really blaming it on us,” Lisenbery told ThinkProgress. “His staff should have known what was going on outside the door because they have security cameras outside the door, and they’ve told us before they can see us on the cameras.”

“They are exposing themselves for what they are — enemies of American self-government and democracy.”

Rohrabacher posted his press release to his Facebook page. According to Lisenbery, any comments pushing back against his depiction of the events have been swiftly deleted, along with links to the video of the actual proceedings (embedded above).

“This is a very hamfisted attempt by him to spin the events in his favor,” said Lisenbery. “Calling people political thugs, calling people activists, when it’s a lot of adults, mostly retirees with a lot of time on their hands, who are engaged in political action for the first time in their lives — it’s offensive to the people he claims to represent.”

Americans are taking an active role in their democracy, and their representatives can’t handle it
“I’m not feeling heard. And I can tell you that a lot of people are not feeling heard.”thinkprogress.org

This isn’t the first time that Rohrabacher’s account has differed wildly from that of his constituents. In local media two weeks ago, his staff characterized the visitors as purposefully disruptive and from out-of-district — which the activists said was untrue on both counts.

While Rohrabacher’s response may seem hamfisted to those involved, his narrative is part of a long-running tactic of elevating small instances of violence in order to discredit larger movements. Right-wing commentators and lawmakers have long used isolated acts of violence to discredit the largely peaceful Black Lives Matter movement, for instance. And when protests in one city after Trump’s election victory turned violent, the massive outpouring of peaceful protests were then lumped in as of-a-kind.

In dismissing the activists, Rohrabacher is also echoing a common refrain among Republican congresspeople who are struggling to respond to newly politically active constituents in the aftermath of the presidential election.

In Tennessee, Rep. John Duncan (R) said he wouldn’t hold town halls for fear of “extremists, kooks, and radicals.” In Utah, Rep. Jason Chaffetz dismissed a particularly raucous town hall as “more of a paid attempt to bully and intimidate.” In Illinois, Rep. Peter Roskam snuck out the back door to avoid protesters, and a spokesman characterized them as “national groups” as opposed to local constituents.

Chaffetz says paid protesters are hounding him. Reporters can’t find a single one.
The Republican from Utah won’t accept that his constituents are fed up.thinkprogress.org

And on the radio on Tuesday, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), even extended the logic to a justification for ignoring Democratic politicians.

“These are people who have brought in anarchists to destroy this town. Of whom 240-some where arrested, with the support of George Soros and the Democrat left. This is not a cooperative environment,” he told Boston Herald Radio.

There’s no evidence that George Soros is paying protesters. Anarchists did smash some windows in downtown D.C. during Trump’s inauguration, but they were not connected to political groups, nor to the hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters who marched the next day at the Women’s March. Issa’s statistics are also misleading. The number Issa cites — which, in reality, is 229 — includes both the protesters and legal observers, journalists, and bystanders who were rounded up dragnet-style by the police.

This post has been edited.

https://thinkprogress.org/congressman-says-constituents-asking-for-a-town-hall-are-enemies-of-democracy-a492ea1e3fa0#.fvmlzqgwo