A few days ago, GOP Rep. Paul Gosar pretended not to know the difference between a joke and a threat. On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives taught him the difference.
Politics
In a vote of 223 to 207 (mostly along party lines), Gosar was censured and removed from all committee assignments after he posted an anime video that depicted him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and attacking President Joe Biden. A censure is the most severe punishment the House can take against a colleague short of expelling them.
According to Gosar, the anime video was a harmless joke that merely got out of hand.
“I do not espouse violence against anyone. I never have,” he said. “There is no threat in the cartoon other than the threat that immigration poses to our country.”
However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the US Secret Service failed to find the video a laughing matter.
The House voted to censure Gosar “because he made threats, suggestions about harming a member of Congress. That is an insult – not only endangerment of that member of Congress, but an insult to the institution of the House of Representatives,” Speaker Pelosi said.
“We cannot have a member joking about murdering each other or threatening the president of the United States,” Pelosi continued, while underlining that calls for violence against lawmakers are “a danger to everyone” because “the example set in this House is one viewed across the country.”
“When a member uses his or her national platform to encourage violence, tragically, people listen,” Pelosi concluded, adding that “depictions of violence can foment actual violence, as witnessed by this chamber on January 6, 2021.”
As expected, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy cried foul when the vote was read.
“There’s an old definition of abuse of power: rules for thee but not for me,” he said flippantly while calling the censure vote an “abuse of power” by Democrats and claiming there are double standards for different sides of the aisle.
“House Democrats have broken nearly every rule and standard in order to silence dissidents and pass their radical agenda,” McCarthy said while citing comments from Democratic Reps. Maxine Waters of California, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
Regrettably, what McCarthy failed to consider is that the aforementioned Democrats never threatened to kill a member of Congress or the sitting President of the United States. And, therein lies the difference.
After the vote was read, Gosar apologized to his congressional colleagues — but not to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez or President Biden. Instead, the Republican lawmaker with ties to white supremacy blamed the video on his staff and claimed that “nothing hateful” came out of it.
Classy, Gosar. Just classy!
Pelosi and the Dems did the right thing. But the secret service should have arrested him. Nobody else in America can make threats like that against the president and get away with it. On a side note, I did not get to see family last Thanksgiving because of pandemic. I am leaving this afternoon to start the holiday. Hope everybody has a nice Thanksgiving.