Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why yo
Oliver Willis at Daily Kos:
When Republicans are facing a public backlash, they have a go-to lie they tell.
In an appearance on Fox News on Thursday, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer claimed that protesters opposing abusive behavior by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in his home state of Minnesota were being paid by nefarious unnamed sources.
“The people that you’re seeing in the videos, the vast majority of them, I’m going to tell you, I do not believe, are from Minnesota. These are organized chaos agents. They are agitators that are paid,” Emmer told the right-wing network.
Emmers argued “the vast majority” of Minnesota residents who have spoken to him about the incursion into the state, where an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old mother Renee Good, “appreciate” the agency’s presence there.
Over the past year, Republicans have hit a similar refrain as part of a campaign to minimize grassroots opposition to Trump and his policies.
After people protested the deployment of federal troops in Los Angeles last June, President Donald Trump falsely labeled them as “paid insurrectionists.” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem insisted last Sunday that protesters in Minneapolis were “organized, funded protesters.”
Asked about the federal government declining to investigate Good’s death, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma told CNN, “If they’re investigating anything, they need to be investigating the paid protesters.”
Billionaire Elon Musk, a GOP megadonor, even claimed last April that the grassroots protests at Tesla dealerships against his so-called Department of Government Efficiency were “very organized” and “paid for.”
None of these figures offered up evidence of their smears. But all of them were simply keeping a longstanding tradition on the right: falsely claiming protests are paid for, rather than organic.
During the Civil Rights Movement, racist leaders of towns, cities, and states in the South frequently alleged that Black-led protests for equal rights were not a reflection of the community but were being conducted by outside agitators. Often, the racists alleged that these supposed agitators were paid or were agents of the Soviet Union.
[...]
The tea party movement’s protests against the policies of former President Barack Obama were often organized and significantly funded by right-wing pressure groups like Freedomworks as well as the billionaire Koch family.
Groups opposing quarantine policies at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic were also put together by a network of conservative donors and activist groups, while they were portrayed as a grassroots uprising against an oppressive government.
Why do conservatives hold to the deranged reality-free belief that anti-Trump protesters are “paid”, while ignoring that their own protests (esp. Tea Party and anti-COVID mitigations) were paid by astroturf groups? Gross hypocrisy if there ever was one.
Republican Rep Claims Everyone at “No Kings” Protest Is a Terrorist
This is how the Republicans begin to dismantle the First Amendment.
GOP congressional leaders on Friday smeared an upcoming anti-Trump protest in Washington, D.C., in the most hysterical, demonizing terms.
After House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise referred to the peaceful “No Kings” protest planned for October 18 as a “Hate America rally,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer went one step further, calling it a “terrorist” event.
At a press conference, Emmer accused Democrats of causing the government shutdown in order to “score political points with the terrorist wing of their party, which is set to hold … a ‘Hate America’ rally in D.C. next week.”
Earlier, Johnson had also baselessly attributed the shutdown to the event. Calling the prospective protesters “pro-Hamas” and “antifa,” he told Fox News that Democrats will not “reopen the government until after that rally, ’cuz they can’t face their rabid base.”
“No Kings” events have taken place in towns and cities across the country since President Donald Trump was elected. On June 14, when Trump held a massive military parade in the streets of Washington, D.C., millions of people—of varying political stripes—peacefully protested against his antidemocratic second-term agenda.
This is how the Republicans begin to dismantle the First Amendment.
Conservatives continue to single out the transgender community in the wake of the shooting, but undoing the 2023 law is unlikely to advance in Minnesota’s narrowly divided Legislature
Following a mass shooting in Minnesota, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) insisted he couldn't remember why he opposed a bill to increase school safety.
Following a mass shooting in Minnesota, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) insisted he couldn't remember why he opposed a bill to increase school safety.
In a Sunday interview on ABC, Emmer attacked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) for not giving schools enough resources to prevent a shooting that killed two children in Minneapolis last week.
"It's going to be very important that the schools have the resources," he said.
"You talk about what can be done," host Martha Raddatz noted. "After mass shootings in Buffalo and in Uvalde, Texas, Congress passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. It provided hundreds of millions of dollars for schools to expand mental health services, enhance safety measures. You did not vote for that bill. Why?"
"I don't remember the reasons that I didn't vote for that bill," Emmer replied. "I got to tell you, we did a lot for Uvalde, but you can't replace those children, Martha, you can't. And you can't help that community. We're talking about getting on the front end, Martha. We're talking about we need to have the resources."
"This bill sounds like it might have done that," Raddatz pointed out.
