Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Wasserman Schultz wants censure for congressman
Rep. Gohmert advocated for election violence
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz wants a formal congressional censure of U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, who suggested “violence in the streets” might end up being the way to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office.
Wasserman Schultz, a Broward/ Miami-Dade County Democrat, said Tuesday that Gohmert was “pouring rhetorical gasoline onto this smoldering powder keg” and has contributed to a “spiral of destructive behavior with his unconscionable calls and encouragement to political violence.” Censure is appropriate, she said, when “one of its members incites or prods violence ... while cynically exploiting and inflaming our nation’s political and societal divisions for their own political gain.”
Gohmert, a Texas Republican with a penchant for bizarre pronouncements, was reacting to a federal judge’s rejecting a court case in which he sought a ruling that would have put Vice Presi
dent Mike Pence into position to overturn the election. Appearing Friday on Newsmax, the conservative news channel based in Boca Raton, Gohmert said he had gone to court “so that you didn’t have to have riots and violence in the street.”
“Bottom line is, the court is saying, ‘We’re not going to touch this, you have no remedy,’ ” he said. “Basically, in effect, the
ruling would be that you’ve got to go to the streets and be as violent as Antifa and BLM.” Antifa is a movement that opposes fascism, some elements of which have been violent, and BLM is the Black Lives Matter movement, which advocates non-violent protest against police brutality and racism.
On Saturday, Gohmert insisted he wasn’t advocating violence. “I have not encouraged and unequivocally do not advocate for violence,” he said, proclaiming himself a follower of the teaching and examples of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “That does not keep me from recognizing what lies ahead when the institutions created by a self-governing people to peacefully resolve their disputes hide from their responsibility.”
The Dallas Morning News reported that at a November rally in Washington, Gohmert urged Trump supporters to consider revolution.
“This is not a game,” Wasserman Schultz said in a video news conference Tuesday. “You don’t get a do-over or another turn to explain what you meant when people’s lives are at stake. You can’t unsay suggesting violence as the only remedy, and people can’t unhear it. Words have power. We live in a time where words can cause hurt and harm to people’s livelihoods and their very lives.”
As evidence of the troubled political climate, Wasserman Schultz pointed to the 2018 case in which a domestic terrorist mailed 16 pipe bombs to the offices of Democratic elected officials, civic leaders and media organizations — using her South Florida district office as the return address. One was returned by mail to her office, handled by her staff — and was detonated by authorities in a stairwell just outside the office.
Gohmert’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Gohmert isn’t a stranger to controversy and publicity.
The Texas Tribune has assembled some of Gohmert’s controversial statements, reporting that he “has compared homosexuality to bestiality, endorsed a column likening Barack Obama’s presidency to Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship and warned anyone who will listen that evil-doers are making ‘terror babies’ who — like human time bombs — will be trained abroad only to return some day to wreak havoc in America.”
He’s argued that under Democratic health care policies, frail seniors would be sentenced to death and supported efforts that questioned Obama’s citizenship, the Texas Tribune reported.