Aug. 5, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging members of Congress and candidates for President to join with President Donald Trump in denouncing all political violence:
“While the nation grieves the senseless loss of life in El Paso and Dayton, President Donald Trump has rightly denounced the racist, white nationalist attack in El Paso and the attack in Dayton by a radical, pro-Antifa leftist who thought his political opponents were Nazis who deserved to die. There is nothing controversial about denouncing political violence, all of it, and we call upon Republicans and Democrats to do so, regardless of the political motives of the killers.
“The Dayton attacker was an Elizabeth Warren supporter, yet none of the Democratic candidates for President have denounced the Dayton shooter’s violent revolutionary leftist ideology that legitimizes Antifa, and they should do so immediately. Ignoring Antifa will not make them go away, it will only empower them and encourage further acts of violence. When a Bernie Sanders supporter shot up the Republican congressional baseball practice in 2017, he immediately denounced it. That is what leaders must do when violence is perpetrated in their names.
“We need to come together as one nation to denounce political violence of every stripe and all violent ideologies that contribute to it. Nobody should get a pass. The El Paso shooter was a racist ideologue who embraced the Christchurch mosque manifesto and wanted to kill immigrants and Hispanics. The Dayton shooter was a leftist who called the ICE firebomber in Tacoma targeting federal law enforcement a ‘martyr,’ embraced misguided comparisons of immigration enforcement to the Holocaust, the Gestapo and concentration camps, and promoted targeted violence against his perceived political opponents. Individuals can be radicalized on the left and on the right. Only denouncing political violence and terrorism on one side is no denouncement at all, it is empty partisan blindness that contributes to the problem. We call upon every member of Congress and candidate for President to join with President Trump in denouncing all of the violence and to join with him in confronting radicalism and extremism in our midst.”
Attachments:
“Massacres in El Paso, Dayton underscore that political violence right or left is never the answer,” By Robert Romano, Aug. 4, 2019 at http://dailytorch.com/2019/08/massacres-in-el-paso-dayton-underscore-that-political-violence-right-or-left-is-never-the-answer/#comment-4566783811
Interview Availability: Please contact Americans for Limited Government at 703-383-0880 ext. 1 or at media@limitgov.org.
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