Bachmann: No racial tensions in tea party protests
Thursday, April 01, 2010 at 8:20 am
- 5 Comments
In a wide-ranging interview with CNS News, a conservative outlet run by prominent Republican campaign staff, Rep. Michele Bachmann reiterated her belief that no tea party protesters were responsible for spitting or racial and homophobic slurs during the weekend of the health care reform vote in the U.S. House. She again said Democrats and the media have manufactured those reports. Earlier, she made similar claims on the Steve Hennen radio show and at a tea party event in Duluth.
“[T]he media tends to portray the people who are in the tea party movement as toothless hillbillies, as rubes from the backwater who don’t know what they’re talking about,” Bachmann said. “I didn’t see any indication of racial tensions. I didn’t see any indication of being personal, against personal members of Congress. What I saw were people that were fighting for their constitutional liberties and fighting for our country. And I think it’s a tremendous affront trying to castigate people who are fighting for our country as somehow being racially motivated. I didn’t see that at all.”
Here’s the full interview with Bachmann:
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Comment posted April 1, 2010 @ 1:13 pm
I wonder how Michele Bachmann knows that no Tea Party member was part of the spitting/flaming crowd?
Given her long and strong track record for offering inaccurate public statements, and given her earlier statements doubting the incidents even happened, perhaps these recent pronouncements really need fact-checking as well.
Comment posted April 1, 2010 @ 3:33 pm
She takes the offensive whenever the world does not work the way she thinks it does.
I really feel sorry for the DFLers in her district. They deserve rational representation, even from the GOP.
Comment posted April 1, 2010 @ 10:46 pm
She said that we were more divided now during this presidency than any other past presidency.
2 years ago there was this much division, the Republicans were just on the slight majority – now they get to play the victims.
…and then she blames the Democratic Congress for ALLOWING Bush to spend so much money.
Comment posted April 5, 2010 @ 10:50 am
I watched the entire episode play out live on CSpan. There was no spitting incident. There were no racial slurs used against black congressmen, who were surprisingly unavailable for interviews with the press afterwards to repeat those claims. There were plenty of cops around though to escort them through the crowd, and so far none of the cops have backed up any claims of such behavior. We know what this is all about. This is about trying to marginalize a movement. Gee, remember a few years ago when protesting was considered patriotic?
Comment posted April 5, 2010 @ 12:02 pm
It seems likely you’ll dismiss this evidence, Uncle Milt, but there is video of the spitting incident, and given that race has found its way into tea party protests, it doesn’t seem impossible that what the congressmen have said happened indeed did.
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