IN AD, SENATE CANDIDATE URGES ‘RINO HUNTING’
Former Mo. governor shown toting gun, storming a home
Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri, released a violent new political advertisement Monday showing himself racking a shotgun and accompanying a team of men armed with assault rifles as they stormed — SWAT team-style — into a home in search of “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only.
“Join the MAGA crew,” Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, declares in the ad. “Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country.”
The ad by Greitens was just the latest but perhaps most menacing in a long line of Republican campaign ads featuring firearms and seeking to equate hard-core conservatism with the use of deadly weapons.
It was posted online less than a week after the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol showed how threats by former President Donald Trump against his own vice president, Mike Pence, had helped to instigate the mob attack on the building.
During a hearing by the committee Thursday, J.
Michael Luttig, a former federal judge widely respected by conservatives, suggested that Trump and his allies posed a “clear and present danger to American democracy.”
The use of violent rhetoric has steadily increased in Republican circles in recent months as threats and aggressive imagery have become more commonplace in community meeting rooms and congressional offices as well as on the campaign trail.
While much of the violent speech and image-making by Republicans has been aimed at Democrats, some of it, as in Greitens’ ad, has been focused on fellow party members thought to be insufficiently conservative.
On Sunday, Rep. Adam
Kinzinger, R-Ill., a member of the Jan. 6 committee, published a letter addressed to his wife from someone who had threatened to execute the couple.
By midafternoon Monday, Twitter had hidden Greitens’ new ad behind a warning saying that it violated rules about “abusive behavior.” Facebook removed the ad altogether.
Greitens’ campaign made no apologies for it, however. “If anyone doesn’t get the metaphor, they are either lying or dumb,” said Dylan Johnson, the campaign manager.
The ad by Greitens, a former Missouri governor, comes as his campaign for Senate has stumbled after lurid allegations of blackmail, sexual misconduct and child abuse. In March, Greitens’ former wife, Sheena Greitens, accused him of abusive behavior, including an incident she recounted that loosened one of their son’s teeth. A number of Republicans, including Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, called on Eric Greitens then to quit the race.
Greitens has sought an endorsement from Trump, so far without success. His campaign chair is Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancee of Donald Trump Jr.
Experts have warned that violent rhetoric can often result in actual physical violence.
“When individuals feel more confident and legitimate in voicing violent sentiments, it can encourage others to feel more confident in making actual violence easier,” said Robert Pape, who studies political violence at the University of Chicago. “Unfortunately, this is a selfreinforcing spiral.”
Some Republicans criticized Greitens for posting the ad.
“Every Republican should denounce this sick and dangerous ad from Eric Greitens,” Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congressmember from Virginia, said Monday. “This is just a taste of the ‘clear and present danger’ that Judge Luttig talked about last week.”