by CHQ Staff
A number of conservative women have faced harassment because of their support of President Trump and because of what the Leftist media would like America to believe is a grassroots backlash toward the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy at the border.
Over the course of the past week White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, due to her work on President Trump’s behalf and then followed across the street by the restaurant’s owner who harassed her all the way to the door of her next stop.
That incident followed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen being forced to leave a Mexican restaurant in Washington by a crowd of harassers, including Department of Justice employee Allison Hrabar, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
A similar group later gathered outside Nielsen’s home waving signs reading “child snatcher” and chanting “how do you sleep at night.” The demonstrators blasted Nielsen’s home with audio distributed by ProPublica in which alleged child illegal border crossers can be heard sobbing for their parents allegedly while in federal custody.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was also harassed at a movie theater this weekend by Leftist bullies who were apparently looking for a fight.
Bondi said that while waiting in the ticket line to see “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” – a documentary about Mr. Rogers – a woman approached her and claimed Bondi was responsible “for ripping babies out of the arms of mothers.”
“They were trying to create a fight,” Bondi said on “Fox & Friends,” explaining that the hecklers were right in her face and trying to goad her boyfriend into responding physically.
Bondi told Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” that one protester spit on her head.
“Now I can’t say that was intentional because he was yelling so loud – I don’t know if it was just him spewing out of his mouth,” she said.
But there’s nothing grassroots or spontaneous about this harassment – its inspiration and organization comes straight from the top of the Democratic Party and progressive Left.
“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere. We’ve got to get the children connected to their parents,” senior Democrat Maxine Waters told a rally in California.
Waters’ comments were just the latest and most high-level calls for violence against Trump supporters and conservatives from Democrats and their radical Leftist allies – including some in the media.
Washington Post senior reporter Aaron Blake posted a sly endorsement of violence against Trump supporters in June 25 column for The Fix, and Blake’s warning is something conservatives and Trump supporters should take seriously.
Here are a few key points from Blake’s column:
… the Sanders-Red Hen situation has unearthed (or perhaps vivified) a growing sentiment in our society. It is seen in liberals and opponents of President Trump who are done with playing nice. It is apparent as the Democratic Party gradually sheds Michelle Obama’s declaration that “When they go low, we go high” and trading it for “We fight fire with fire.” It is borne of frustration and a lack of results after abiding by the norms of political discourse while Trump and his allies run roughshod over all the old rules.
Interesting, we haven’t heard of any Democrats or former Obama officials being kicked out of a restaurant or harassed while going about their daily lives, but it appears Blake thinks what has happened so far isn’t enough:
…Democrats and Trump opponents as a whole need to decide where their line is for civil disobedience (or, in Waters’s case, possibly going beyond civil disobedience). Refusing to serve the White House press secretary for no other reason than her politics and the White House’s often dishonest defenses of its policies is a unique occurrence in our society and one that reflects a political discourse being stretched in new directions. But it’s also a crystallizing moment for a much broader set of developments.
Events like the Sanders ejection lead to reactions like the Waters one. And the Waters reaction could logically lead to a complete rewriting of the rules of political engagement — if not to political violence.
And he also urges the Left to look to the actions of cultural “leaders,” such as Hollywood celebrities, for guidance in how to advance the struggle:
…this is a debate that the Democratic Party needs to have right now. It’s a debate that has been repeatedly sparked by key cultural moments forcing people to decide whether the new territory that has been breached is okay to enter. It’s Meryl Streep giving a political speech at the Golden Globes. It’s Michelle Wolf’s comments about Sanders’s eye makeup at the White House correspondents’ dinner. It’s Samantha Bee using extremely vulgar language to denounce Ivanka Trump. It’s Robert De Niro using similarly salty language against Trump at the Tony Awards two weeks ago.
Democratic congressional leaders have at least made ritual “sorry if you were offended” type denunciations of Rep. Maxine Waters’ calls for mob violence against Trump administration officials, but not Aaron Blake.
Mr. Blake’s view is not that mob violence by Democrats and the Far Left against Trump officials would be wrong, but that it would distract the media from covering the family separation issue, saying the calls of Rep. Waters and others for mob violence “is a story worth covering, while making sure you don’t take your eye off the other very important story of the day,” the family separation issue.
Unless Democrats and the cultural and political leadership of the Left come out firmly against mob violence this dangerous situation is only going to escalate. A good start would be a congressional censure of Rep. Waters, but there also needs to be clear and unambiguous statements from Left-leaning cultural and media leaders, like Mr. Blake’s bosses at The Washington Post, that political violence and incitement to political violence is not to be tolerated and should be met with the strongest measures the law provides.
The toll-free Capitol Switchboard is (1-866-220-0044) we urge CHQ readers and friends to call their Representative today to demand that Rep. Maxine Waters be censured by the House for her comments inciting violence against members of President Trump’s cabinet.
You can also contact the Washington Post through this link to urge the editors of the paper to firmly oppose political violence directed against members of the Trump cabinet and to correct the impression left by reporter Aaron Blake that the Post does not oppose such violence.
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George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie’s ConservativeHQ.com and is a veteran of over 300 political campaigns. A member of American MENSA, he served on the staff of Vice President Dan Quayle, as Director of Policy and Communication for Congressman Adam Putnam (FL-12) then Vice Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, and as spokesman for Rep. Mac Thornberry now-Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
