Brookfield first selectman denies Biden threat
BROOKFIELD — Republican First Selectwoman Tara Carr on Tuesday defended her tweets mentioning gunfire and President Joe Biden, saying she was calling on the president to shoot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon.
In a statement, Carr said she was “shocked and critical of President Biden's failure to act while a Chinese Communist Party balloon sailed over the USA,” and her reply to another user's tweet about it was taken out of context.
Carr's two-week-old tweets were condemned by local Democrats over the weekend as “disgraceful,” and as of Monday, her Twitter account was suspended for violating the social network's rules.
“Unfortunately, some on the fringe of the political spectrum, who are more interested in engaging in vitriolic statements and fabricating their own truths rather than intelligent discourse, took these comments out of context and made ridiculous and false assertions that somehow, I was promoting violence against our nation's
President,” she said in a statement Tuesday morning. “This is a complete lie.”
Carr, a retired U.S. Army officer, said she was urging prompt action to take down the balloon with “one shot, one kill” because she “understood that this was a direct invasion of our nation by a foreign power.” She declined to comment further Tuesday to Hearst Connecticut Media.
On Feb. 4, Carr responded to a tweet from an RNC Research account that shared a Fox News photo of Biden about the suspected spy balloon that authorities believe came from China.
Her response to the original tweet stated, “He's aiding & abetting the enemy. Ready. Aim. Fire. One shot, one kill. That simple …”
She tweeted the same message in response to a video the RNC Research account shared of Vice President Kamala Harris saying “we have a lot to be thankful for in” Biden, according to a screenshot shared by Brookfield's Democratic Town Committee. The tweets were removed from Carr's Twitter feed as of Sunday.
In two other tweets, she wrote a similar message in response to other Twitter threads about the spy balloon, according to screenshots shared by Connecticut Daily Runctions columnist Kevin Rennie.
Spokespeople for the Secret Service did not return a request for comment about whether the agency is investigating the tweets.
Tweets face backlash
Brookfield Democratic Town Committee Chair Aaron Zimmer on Sunday said he didn't know what Carr meant by the tweets, but called them “disgraceful” and “unbecoming” for “the top official in our town.”
In her statement, Carr said people are twisting her words “to foment hatred and discord against their political opponents during an election year.”
“My focus is on the business of Brookfield, that is far more important than engaging with small-minded individuals who would prefer to see us fail, simply to try and win an election,” she said in her statement.
Brookfield Republican Town Committee Chair George Blass defended Carr on Monday, saying the controversy over her tweet “blown out of proportion.”
Blass said she was suggesting how the U.S. should deal with the balloon, which was eventually shot down the next day after drifting over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina, and her comment was “taken out of context.”
Newtown's Democratic Town Committee called Carr's tweet “incendiary” and her lack of clarification at the time “highly irresponsible.”
“Words matter, especially when they come from highly placed elected officials,” the Newtown DTC said in a Facebook post on Monday.
Carr says tweets are ‘common’ military vernacular
In a Tuesday morning interview with Melissa Sheketoff on WICC 600AM, Carr told the host of the Melissa in the Morning radio show that she was out of the country with her family when the controversy started, calling it a “thinly veiled attempt to smear (her).”
“They (the tweets) are from over two weeks ago — around the time the spy balloon first made the news — and Democrats and Republicans alike all wanted the balloon down, myself included,” Carr told Sheketoff.
“I was a China specialist for most of my career in the military, so I recognize the gravity of a spy balloon over our country and what the Chinese Communist Party is capable of. I wanted that balloon down. That's where I was coming from with my tweet.”
Carr said the uproar over the tweets “started as a Democratic Town Committee smear campaign (that) has since snowballed.”
“It's such a ludicrous assertion (that) I would make any threat to our president or anyone for that matter, and they've totally taken what I stated on Twitter out of context,” she said.
Carr — who served 25 years active duty in the U.S. Army — said “Ready. Aim. Fire. One shot, one kill” is “common vernacular” in the military.
“Anyone who's ever spent one day in uniform knows what that means,” she said, reiterating that she did not use it in reference to any threat to the president of the United States.
Carr told Sheketoff she doesn't regret tweeting what she did — “I was saying what I meant: take the balloon down,” she said — and does not plan to fight Twitter about the suspension of her account.
“I'm not much of a tweeter. It's just something I browse once in a while to see what's going on out there,” she said. “I don't love Twitter (but) I did reach out to say this is ludicrous that they suspended my account — there are other accounts that should be suspended.”
Carr claims that people have created “bogus Twitter accounts” to impersonate her and have been posting “horrible, disgusting things.”
Carr had been silent over the weekend in the wake of the criticism, but posted a message about the end of Random Acts of Kindness week on her Facebook page Sunday night. It was unclear whether the message was related to the backlash over her tweets.
“Although the week is done, there is no excuse for hatred, vitriol, or meanness,” she wrote. “Every day we should strive to be our best, treating one another by the ‘Golden Rule.' Be it a smile, a fist bump or kind words, treat all you encounter with dignity & respect. Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. What have you done to be kind to someone lately?”