MSNBC All In host and esteemed beta male Chris Hayes smeared Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (CO) on Tuesday night because she dared to display her guns as decorations during a virtual congressional hearing. Comparing her to the likes of Osama Bin Laden and communist revolutionaries in Cuba, he claimed her display was an “implicit threat” of politically motived violence. He also suggested all in the GOP were “now signaling they retain the right to use violence to overthrow the government at any time.”
In teasing the pathetic segment, Hayes flashed an image of Boebert and her background, which featured two ARs, a shotgun, and her famous Glock. “Do you notice something different with the bookshelves? Not just a stockpile of weapons sitting behind her, there is a deeper meaning to this image. An implicit threat, too,” he declared.
Besides the laughable idea that four weapons constituted a “stockpile,” Hayes whined about how Boebert had “built her political identity around guns” and allowed people to carry them in the restaurant she owned back home. “Boebert vowed to carry a Glock around D.C. and on Capitol Hill. She released a video to make sure that we all knew it,” he huffed.
The ignorant MSNBC host then went on to scoff at the idea that she would want the guns to defend her family and her four boys, something millions of Americans own guns for:
Last Thursday, she zoomed into a virtual congressional hearing with just a mess of guns piled on the bookshelf behind her. AR-15-style rifles, a handgun just laying across a bunch of books. Boebert, who’s raising four young boys later tweeted the guns are not in storage, but are, quote, “ready for use.”
Apparently, she just leaves them out because she fears she may need to fire multiple rounds of ammo for someone who comes into her -- den?
“You know, lots of people immediately noted that the use of guns in that way as props and the implicit threat that comes with them has a, you know, long, not necessarily great history among various movements around the globe,” he opined.
According to Hayes, Boebert was just like former Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden because he had posed with a gun in front of books. “Osama bin Laden, for one liked to pose in front of a bookshelf with a gun prominently displayed. The Irish Republican Army would display guns in its propaganda posters and its murals. Cuban revolutionaries, they posed with guns all the time, too,” he said.
After noting “no single side of the spectrum has a monopoly on this aesthetic,” he accused the Congresswoman of undermining “democratic” norms.
“A movement or faction that puts images of guns, the celebration of guns front and center in its political aesthetic, is a movement who’s engaging in something other than what we might call the normal rhetoric of elected democratic politics,” he sneered.
He added: “You can't escape the meaning of it. It communicates that they're committed to, or at the very least open to the possibility of violent overthrow of the government or the existing order. And now, in the Republican Party, it seems like it's becoming common and unremarkable.”
If that wasn’t enough, Hayes went on to prove his ignorance of the Second Amendment and its origins (click “expand”):
Over decades, the right has built up this entire ideology around the Second Amendment rooted in, frankly, the fact the ridiculous idea that the U.S. government itself denied itself a monopoly on the legitimate use of force; because the founders had gone through revolution themselves.
And the history just doesn’t bear that out, it’s not true. Not now and not during, for instance, the Whiskey Rebellion way back in 1794 when President George Washington got into his old uniform and got on a horse and sent in troops to violently suppress a violent tax protest.
Hayes was obviously trying to gaslight his viewers with revisionist history. We know the intent of the Founding Fathers because we have their personal writings.
Only when he moved on to his panel discussion did Hayes admit that Democrats like John Kerry and Senator Joe Manchin (WV) had posed with guns. But this time was different.
The smears against Congresswoman Boebert and the Republican Party were made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from Ancestry and Febreze. Their contact information is linked so you can tell them about the terrible content they fund.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
MSNBC’s All In
February 23, 2021
8:14:53 p.m. EasternCHRIS HAYES: All right. Did you happen to see this the other day? This image. This is what it looked like when freshman Republican congressman Lauren Boebert just Zoomed into a committee hearing the other day. That is not a standard Zoom background behind her. That's custom made, that's actually her background. Do you notice something different with the bookshelves? Not just a stockpile of weapons sitting behind her, there is a deeper meaning to this image. An implicit threat, too. I'll explain right after this. Stick around.
(…)
8:18:57 p.m. Eastern
HAYES: It's been unclear for some time what exactly it is that Donald Trump Jr. does, but like his father, he does love to make content. This week he posted a video of himself ranting about teachers unions while pointedly standing in front of a wall full of guns. The whole thing had a “here are my thoughts from my bunker” vibe. But as weird as this image is, it's kind of becoming a trend on the right.
Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, owner of Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado where guns are welcome and seemingly encouraged on the premises, has built her political identity around guns. Boebert vowed to carry a Glock around D.C. and on Capitol Hill. She released a video to make sure that we all knew it.
Last Thursday, she Zoomed into a virtual congressional hearing with just a mess of guns piled on the bookshelf behind her. AR-15-style rifles, a handgun just laying across a bunch of books. Boebert, who’s raising four young boys later tweeted the guns are not in storage, but are, quote, “ready for use.”
Apparently, she just leaves them out because she fears she may need to fire multiple rounds of ammo for someone who comes into her -- den?
You know, lots of people immediately noted that the use of guns in that way as props and the implicit threat that comes with them has a, you know, long, not necessarily great history among various movements around the globe.
Osama bin Laden, for one liked to pose in front of a bookshelf with a gun prominently displayed. The Irish Republican Army would display guns in its propaganda posters and its murals. Cuban revolutionaries, they posed with guns all the time, too. And no single side of the spectrum has a monopoly on this aesthetic. I mean, you can see it all over the world. It is unquestionably the aesthetic of armed struggle, of revolution, or insurrection.
A movement or faction that puts images of guns, the celebration of guns front and center in its political aesthetic, is a movement who’s engaging in something other than what we might call the normal rhetoric of elected democratic politics.
You can't escape the meaning of it. It communicates that they're committed to, or at the very least open to the possibility of violent overthrow of the government or the existing order. And now, in the Republican Party, it seems like it's becoming common and unremarkable.
(…)
Over decades, the right has built up this entire ideology around the Second Amendment rooted in, frankly, the fact the ridiculous idea that the U.S. government itself denied itself a monopoly on the legitimate use of force; because the founders had gone through revolution themselves.
And the history just doesn’t bear that out, it’s not true. Not now and not during, for instance, the Whiskey Rebellion way back in 1794 when President George Washington got into his old uniform and got on a horse and sent in troops to violently suppress a violent tax protest.
Many Republicans are now signaling they retain the right to use violence to over throw the government at any time, and that’s actually the core of part of their political principles in the Second Amendment and they're willing to brandish that claim as a threat in pursuit of their political aims.
And it's not some academic thing, right? I mean, right now the threat of violence and menace hangs over our collective political life.
(…)
