Saturday, June 04, 2022

Gosar strikes again after the Texas shooting, proving (again) that he's unfit for office

Laurie Roberts, Arizona Republic
Tue, May 31, 2022

Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar

Arizona’s reigning king of disinformation, Rep. Paul Gosar, has struck again.

While the civilized world was mourning the massacre of school children and their teachers on Tuesday evening, Rep. Paul Gosar was already up on his high horse, using the shooter to advance on two fronts in the far right’s culture wars.

Gosar announced to the world that the alleged shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was “a transsexual leftist illegal alien.”

Hey, Rep. Gosar, you missed a spot. Why not throw in that he was a Soros-backed socialist?

Of course, the pride of Arizona had no evidence to back up his claim that the shooter is transsexual. Or a leftist. Or in the country illegally.

But when did that ever stop him? (See: his stolen election tweets and his Jan 6 tweets.)
Gosar had no evidence to say those things

Gosar is a gossip of the worst kind – one who delights in distorting the facts to fit his own warped view of the world. (See: His proclamation that Jan. 6 assaulter Ashli Babbitt was “executed”.)

On Tuesday evening, he saw photos circulating in right-wing circles, taken from a Reddit account belonging to a transgender person who isn’t Ramos, and decided it was his congressional duty to immediately spread them far and wide on Twitter.

Another view: Rep. Gallego must wear his crass tweets about Texas shooting

I’d say it was shocking but it’s no more so than his speech on Jan 6, 2021, when he stood on the floor of the U.S. House and pronounced Arizona’s election stolen.

“Over 400,000 mail-in ballots were altered, switched from President Trump to Vice President Biden or completely erased from President Trump's total,” Gosar flatly said, without so much as a shred of evidence that it was so.

Just as there is not so much as a shred of evidence that Ramos was a transexual, or a leftist, or an “illegal alien.”

What Ramos was, according to the Washington Post, was an extremely troubled young man who’d been bullied all his life and become increasingly violent – one who was able to walk into a gun store just days before the shooting and buy himself a present for his 18th birthday: a pair of assault-style rifles.
5 sad truths about Gosar, shootings

Two things are true, today.

One, is that America’s next massacre is just around the corner. It took only 10 days after Buffalo for Uvalde to happen.

And two: Gosar won’t be interested in any discussion about what Congress might do to at least try to cut down on the coming body count.

Actually, five things are true.

Three: The congressman – already censured for his sick anime video in which he shows himself killing a congresswoman and threatening the president – has shown himself, yet again, to be completely unfit for office.

Four: Not a single Republican leader in this state will denounce him.

And the fifth thing that is true? He'll be re-elected in a landslide.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Rep. Paul Gosar's Texas shooting tweet proves he's unfit to serve

Texas Congressman Blames Rap Music and Video Games, Not Guns For Texas Shooting


Murjani Rawls
Mon, May 30, 2022, 

US Representative Ronny Jackson, Republican of Texas, stands alongside newly-sworn in first-term Republican members of Congress on the steps of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, January 4, 2021.

Senate Republicans will blame anything else if it means getting away from passing common-sense gun control legislation. Despite the evidence that lowering the gun purchase age to 18 in his own state allowed the gunman to buy the weapon used in the Uvalde, Texas elementary school shooting, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) cited rap music and video games as reasons shootings keep happening.

If this reasoning sounds familiar to you, it should. This is the same explanation politicians gave after the Columbine shooting – pointing to trenchcoats, rock and rap music, and video games as culprits instead of the broad access to guns.


Rep. Jackson offered his thoughts and prayers during an interview with Fox News and said there would be discussions “in the media regarding Second Amendment rights.” From there, Jackson shifted the blame towards rap music and video games.

“When I grew up, things were different,” he continued. “And I just think that kids are exposed to all kinds of horrible stuff nowadays too. I look back, and I think about the horrible stuff they hear when they listen to rap music, the video games that they watch from a really early age with all of this horrible violence and stuff, and I just think that they have this access to the internet on a regular basis, which is just, you know, it’s not good for kids.”

I find it funny how it’s always rap music that gets blamed for horrible tragedies and not the representatives unwilling to act to protect the citizens they represent. Reportedly, the Senate GOP is willing to work on gun control legislation (I’ll believe it when I see it). There may be bipartisan interest in expanding background checks and “red flag” laws, but that’s the extent things could go.

It would take ten Republican Senators to vote yes, and if they didn’t do it after Columbine or Newtown, I have a hard time believing they will after Buffalo and Texas.



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