Tipsheet

Here's What One of the 'Tennessee Three' Was Doing During 2020 BLM Riots

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  April 14, 2023 1:01 PM

I'll give you one guess which one we're talking about.  Want some clues?  Let's narrow it down. It's not the mugging-for-the camera fool who spouted the spectacularly ignorant claim that Tennessee has less democracy than North Korea.  Nor is it the faux radical who's adopted a brand new look and sound and ideology in pursuit of power and notoriety.  Before we move on from him, do yourself a favor and watch this clip if you haven't already seen it.  It's dark comedy meets surreality, and it's pure gold:

And here he is celebrating his reinstatement, replete with his new affect, hilariously accentuated by the bongo drums in the background:

Look, some people change, and plenty can become strikingly different than they were in their early 20's.  But 2016 wasn't that long ago, and this is a complete transformation.  You might call him a total fraud, and that might be right.  But might he simply be a power-hungry political operator?  At his lily-white private college in a lily-white state, he desired political power, so he pursued it by looking and talking a certain way, and espousing the virtues of tolerant, open debate, and the 'radical center,' or whatever.  When his continued pursuit of power in a different context required a radical makeover of a different sort, he clearly did what he thought he needed to.  It's working for him.  Like other power-craving, calculating political class denizens, he read the room, assessed the incentives of his tribe, and acted accordingly. And now he's on his way to Harvard alongside a fellow performative opportunist.  This is what is rewarded in our elite circles:

The right-wing equivalent of this pairing might be Matt Walsh interviewing Riley Gaines (which is probably an unfair comparison to Ms. Gaines).  That would feature a provocateur with a large following who makes deliberately offensive statements on a regular basis sharing a forum with a young activist who's been under fire for her beliefs -- and who was even physically assaulted for speaking her mind about fairness and science.  Is there any chance on earth that duo would be featured at Harvard this way?  I was a fellow at the school's Institute of Politics and enjoyed my time there, but the culture and the milieu is heavily geared in a leftward direction.  No one is batting an eye at Hogg/Pearson; I'm not sure anyone connected to the program would dare to even breathe a mere suggestion of Walsh/Gaines -- which is, frankly, an example of how and why our societal and cultural polarization is only deepening.  

In any case, let's move on to the third and final member of our New National Hero trio, Rep. Justin Jones.  We already told you about his 2019 episode at the state capitol during which he threw hot coffee into an elevator of lawmakers, striking the House Speaker and another Republican member, earning Jones a ban from the building.  Tennessee Democrats decided this performance was an impressive look for the promising young man, and made him a state legislator, leading to his predictable agitation and rule-breaking, circumventing and drowning out the legislative process.  It was so very predictable, it turns out, because Jones has quite a history of ignoring rules and laws that interfere with his "activism."  There's this, for instance:

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And then there's also this:

Tennessee house Democrat Justin Jones, who was just reinstated to the chamber after being expelled for leading a disruptive gun-control protest on the floor, assaulted a driver and faced serious charges for other misconduct committed while attending racial-justice protests in the summer of 2020. Footage of rioting outside the state Capitol in 2020 first shared by Scoop Nashville appears to show Jones repeatedly hitting the driver of a car with a traffic cone. The video, which was resurfaced by the Post Millenial, shows Jones and other activists stopping and surrounding the vehicle before the driver escaped.Jones was charged with assault, assault on an officer, and reckless endangerment, for which he was indicted on two counts after the video was presented to the grand jury in his case. Despite his violent behavior, Jones claimed in June 2021 that he was being “peaceful” and claims to the contrary were a “false narrative.”

Quite the hero.  I'll leave you with this little factoid, which has weirdly not been widely reported by the besotted news media:

Despite the melee caused by our National Heroes, legislation was actually debated at length and passed in Tennessee, with strong bipartisan support, to improve school safety after the horrific slaughter at a Christian school by a trans perpetrator. (Remember that, by the way? It happened just a few weeks ago, but our moral betters in the press very quickly moved on to rallying around more the appealing True Victims in all of this: The trans community and a few Democratic representatives who were removed from office for a handful of days).  The vote to protect schools was nearly unanimous, with our Heroes representing three of the four dissenting votes in the entire chamber.  By their appalling and demagogic standards, they obviously want more dead children.  Of course, they'll never get that shabby treatment.  That sort of thing is reserved for one tribe, and one tribe only (the one journalists oppose).  The Good People get this treatment:


I'll leave you with my radio monologue about this crew from earlier in the week: