“If they don’t change the statute… they should be shot.” Based on the liberal mainstream media’s usual narrative you might guess those words were said by some mean conservative; however, you would be wrong. Those violence-inciting words were proclaimed with apparent pleasure by a leftist pundit on a taxpayer-funded PBS channel—and to make it worse, the PBS host, Ted Simons, not only failed to rebuke the comment, he can be heard chuckling at it. Watch the exchange here.
Leftist activist and political commentator, Chris Herstam, was speaking about Republican lawmakers when he decided to threaten them. Many of our state legislators and our governor are people I know. I know many of their spouses and children as well. I am currently a Republican candidate for the Arizona House of Representatives. This is personal for me.
At a time when tensions are running high, society is quarantined in a near lockdown, and Republicans are focused on solving real issues to help the American people, there is absolutely zero room for such disgusting, dangerous rhetoric.
It would be natural to expect that calling for violence like this would bring about widespread condemnation from the likes of PBS, station management, advertisers, and both sides of the political aisle, yet holding those expectations would once again leave you wrong. In fact, when Herstam made his despicable statement, the show’s host, Ted Simon, first chuckled audibly and then moved on as if nothing had occurred.
The PBS station in Arizona and this particular news broadcast has been on the air for decades. This was no rookie reporter. Moreover, PBS is subsidized by nearly half a billion dollars of taxpayer money each year. Still no one blinked an eye when shooting Republican lawmakers was uttered on air.
And lest you think it was a momentary slip of the tongue or maybe a misstatement on the part of the pundit, he tweeted out the same phrase later that day. He has since deleted the vile tweet.
It is long past time for the media to be held accountable for their vivid double standard when it comes to inciting violence toward Republicans. Media pundits and Democrat activists routinely attempt to portray Republicans and conservatives as hateful, violent people just waiting to do harm to others, despite the evidence pointing squarely to the contrary.
After all, let’s not forget that it was Republican members of Congress that were targeted and literally shot by a crazed leftist in June of 2017. The left-wing activist responsible for the shooting was shot in return by Capitol Police officers who were there as part of Scalise’s detail. It was only their quick action that kept more Republican elected officials from being shot.
Step back and consider for a moment that on a publicly funded broadcast there was zero push back from the host when an invited pundit on the show said that Republicans deserve to be shot. The PBS host offered zero resistance; zero request for the pundit to clarify his disgusting remark, and, in fact, seemed to enjoy the comment with a slight on-air laugh. This episode serves as yet another stunning example of the liberal media’s double standards and hypocrisy.
Laughably, The Arizona Mirror, Herstam’s employer, has indicated that his only “punishment” will be a one-month hiatus on being allowed to publish columns on their website. Adding further insult to an already bad situation, Ted Simon, the show’s host who chuckled at the insidious remark, has received no punishment at all from PBS.
Every year PBS demands millions from us—the American taxpayers—yet when the lives of our elected officials are threatened on their programming they refuse to do anything about it. It’s time for their taxpayer-funded joyride to end. It is time for serious accountability. It’s time to defund PBS once and for all.
Jake Hoffman is a contributing columnist at Townhall and the founder, president and CEO of Rally Forge, one of the nation’s top conservative digital communications and media strategy firms. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
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