‘I’m glad he got shot’: Nebraska Democrat caught on tape criticizing Rep. Steve Scalise

[Auburn85 432]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/06/23/im-glad-he-got-shot-nebraska-democrat-caught-on-tape-criticizing-rep-steve-scalise/?utm_term=.7c534a797eaa

 

Quote

 

Herman Wong

 

A Nebraska Democratic official has been removed from his chairman post after recordings emerged in which he said he was glad that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot and that he wished he had died.

In the recording, Phil Montag, who was the volunteer co-chairman of the Nebraska Democratic Party’s technology committee, criticized Scalise by saying “his whole job is to … convince Republicans to (expletive) kick people off (expletive) health care.”

“I’m glad he got shot. … I wish he was (expletive) dead.”

The recording was posted on YouTube and other sites.

The comments surfaced just more than a week after James T. Hodgkinson opened fire on a congressional baseball team in Virginia where Scalise and four others were wounded. The gunman was shot and killed by police.

Montag could not be immediately reached for comment, but he told the Omaha World-Herald that his statements were taken out of context from a 30-minute to hour-long conversation. 

“I do not and did not wish for his death,” Montag said by email to the World-Herald.

“I am hopeful that the entirety of the original, unedited recording will emerge so we can get to the truth of the matter.”

Scalise is now in fair condition, according to a post on his official Twitter account.

Scalise’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb told The Washington Post that she learned about the recording Thursday from the World-Herald, and that she immediately emailed Montag to tell him he was being removed from his position.

“I’ve been in politics and community organizations for the past 20 years,” Kleeb said. “I’ve seen political rhetoric get heated, especially during the George W. Bush times, but we have reached a completely different level in our country now, and it is terrifying, and it is scary, and it just has to end.”

The committee advised the party on new technologies such as new text-to vote tools, Kleeb said.

In the recording, Montag was speaking with Nebraska Democratic Party Black Caucus chair Chelsey Gentry-Tipton, who has been embroiled in her own controversial comments about Scalise.

She had written in a Facebook post about the shooting that “Watching the congressman crying on live tv abt the trauma they experienced. Y is this so funny tho?”

The Nebraska Republican Party called Montag and Gentry-Tipton’s comments “completely reprehensible and disappointing,” according to the Associated Press. It also posted a message to Facebook saying, “this is not a partisan matter and this type of toxic rhetoric must be condemned at every level."

 

.

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

^^^^^ this didn't get much media attention and no responses here.

[TitanTiger 20,469]

It might have gotten overlooked here, but it got plenty of media attention for some two-bit party official in Butthump, Nebraska.

Phil Montag nebraska Google Search

I see in just the first two pages of results the Washington Post (which was linked in the original post), NY Times, NY Post, NY Daily News, Fox News, USA Today, The Hill, International Business Times, Omaha World-Herald.  If you click on the News tab, there's CNN (in depth) and Slate magazine.

Looks like it got plenty of media attention.

[Auburn85 432]

Think Progress acknowledges the words of the Nebraska Democrat. However, their article starts with the Nebraska Democrat words as the main subject of the article, but the article veers away from the words only to give a heavy dose of explaining the proposed healthcare bill. In fact they use other words by Montag to describe the healthcare legislation.

 

ThinkProgress writes an article that gives you a few words saying his word choice was bad, but the same article gives you a lot more words explaining the severity of the proposed legislation.

In other words TP couldn't just write a small blurb about Montag's words and end the article there. They had to use the vast majority of their article about Montag to again describe the healthcare legislation. And go look at their site, it's not like they've already wrote numerous articles about the proposed healthcare legislation.

 

 

https://thinkprogress.org/health-care-phil-montag-steve-scalise-37ac7b974ea9

 

 

Quote

 

The Nebraska Democratic Party has removed a party official after he was recorded saying he was glad House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) was shot, according to a Fox News affiliate.

“His whole job is to get people, convince Republicans to ******* kick people off ****ing health care,” Phil Montag, a technology chairman with the state Democratic Party, said in the verified audio recording. “I hate this m**********r, I’m glad he got shot.”

“I’m glad he got shot, I’m not going to ****ing say that in public,” Montag added. An unidentified male later says he would release the recording publicly.

Scalise was among four people shot last week during baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, one day before the annual Congressional Baseball Game. James Hodgkinson, a man who supported far-left political stances on social media, shot the congressman before U.S. Capitol Police officers shot and killed him. Scalise, who was shot in the hip, has undergone several rounds of surgery and as of Friday, is out of the intensive care unit, sources told NBC News.

Montag’s words clearly violate basic standards of decency, something the Nebraska Democratic Party recognized when they immediately removed him from his post. But they also undermine the moral case for the cause he purportedly feels so passionate about — the preservation of Obamacare.

What’s lost in the outrage over Montag’s outrageous comments is that Republicans are in fact trying to “kick people off ****ing health care” by treating their health care plan — more commonly known as Trumpcare — as a win-or-lose scenario against Democrats. In fact, there is a lot of reason for Americans to be angry over the Republican health care plan.

Over the past few months, Republicans have said they would “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare. But Republican leaders have also failed to treat health care as more than just political posturing. House Republicans have failed to hold meetings on the bill. And Senate Republicans have kept Americans in the dark about the contents of a health care bill that was intentionally kept secret and publicly released Thursday. The Senate may vote on the bill as early as next week.

Republican congressional members do not show up for town halls. And Republican congressional candidates have gone so far as to ignore or even “bodyslam” journalists. Most recently, one congressional member said he wouldn’t hold town halls because of “people screaming.”

In its first version, the Trump administration’s budget proposal to make massive cuts to Medicaid could cut off a lifeline for 14 million low-income people, the Congressional Budget Office estimated. Subsequent versionshave big impacts on millions of people, with the CBO estimating anywhere between 24 million and 26 million people could lose health insurance over the next ten years. According to ThinkProgress estimates based on the House Republican health care bill released in March, roughly 17,000 people could die next year if Trumpcare goes into effect.

Beyond Montag’s very harsh and unnecessary comments about Scalise, this point stands: medically fragile lives are at risk without health insurance coverage. The Affordable Care Act includes provisions that could mean life or death for certain segments of the population at fatal risk if Republicans pull those features of Obamacare.

Just a brief survey of the internet finds that some Americans could die without health care. That has led regular Americans to become their own biggest advocates. Because Trumpcare could cap and cut Medicaid, it would seriously hurt Americans with disabilities, which is why activists in wheelchairs showed up to protest outside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office on Thursday.

Others who would be adversely impacted without crucial provisions under Obamacare include six-year-old Timmy Morrison, a cute toothy kid with a rare genetic disease who may have died without Obamacare’s ban on lifetime coverage limits. Prior to Obamacare, a lot of health insurance plans like Timmy’s had lifetime coverage limits of $1 million, the amount any one person can spend on medical care through their coverage. Timmy spent $2 million for his first hospital stay.

 

 

[alexava 6,973]

No excuse. Terrible thing to say. You know like locker room banter. 

[TitanTiger 20,469]

18 hours ago, Auburn85 said:

Think Progress acknowledges the words of the Nebraska Democrat. However, their article starts with the Nebraska Democrat words as the main subject of the article, but the article veers away from the words only to give a heavy dose of explaining the proposed healthcare bill. In fact they use other words by Montag to describe the healthcare legislation.

 

ThinkProgress writes an article that gives you a few words saying his word choice was bad, but the same article gives you a lot more words explaining the severity of the proposed legislation.

In other words TP couldn't just write a small blurb about Montag's words and end the article there. They had to use the vast majority of their article about Montag to again describe the healthcare legislation. And go look at their site, it's not like they've already wrote numerous articles about the proposed healthcare legislation.

 

 

https://thinkprogress.org/health-care-phil-montag-steve-scalise-37ac7b974ea9

Expecting unbiased reporting from ThinkProgress makes as much sense as expecting it from Breitbart, TownHall or the Daily Caller.  Color me unsurprised.

[AUFAN78 3,889]

13 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

Expecting unbiased reporting from ThinkProgress makes as much sense as expecting it from Breitbart, TownHall or the Daily Caller.  Color me unsurprised.

How you left off CNN I do not know, but willing to give you the proverbial oversight pass. 

[TitanTiger 20,469]

2 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

How you left off CNN I do not know, but willing to give you the proverbial oversight pass. 

Well, for one, it wasn't an exhaustive list.  ThinkProgess is a site that's biased toward left-wing politics.  So I gave examples of right-wing biased sites to make a point.

And second, CNN is no worse than any of the other mainstream news organizations (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News Channel) in terms of bias.  None of these are on the same level as the ones above.