Fox News host suggests ‘Biden and his boys’ framed Sen. Menendez to, uh, sell jets

I've asked this before and I'll likely ask it again, but can anyone figure out what the hell Fox host Jesse Watters is going on about this time?

JESSE WATTERS (HOST): Primetime finally figured out why gold bar-Bob Menendez is being taken out. The president of Turkey, Erdogan, wanted to buy F-16s from us, but gold bar-Bob, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee put a hold on the jets. And now that the hold is lifted, Turkey's on an F-16 shopping spree.

Erdogan admitted it, saying this: "One of our most important problems regarding the F-16s were the activities of U.S. Senator Bob Menendez against our country." But it wasn't just a $20 billion sale that cleared, Turkey was holding up Sweden's application to NATO until they got their F-16s. And now that gold bar-Bob's gone, Turkey gets their jets, Sweden gets its NATO membership. Look how nicely things fall into place for Biden and his boys, when two gold bars are found in a Senator's house. Eh, it's probably a conspiracy theory.

That's the Media Matters transcription from Fox News' Oct. 2 broadcast of “Jesse Watters Primetime,” the program that replaced Tucker Carlson's show after Tucker got too big for his conspiracy britches and had to be sent to a farm upstate. And yes, there are elements of actual news stories rattling around in there. Now-indicted Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez did indeed use his chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee to block the sale of F-16 jets to ostensible NATO ally Turkey, a hold that Menendez based on Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's stonewalling of Sweden's NATO membership, "aggression against [Turkey's] neighbors," and dismal human rights record. It’s worth noting that the committee’s new chair, Sen. Ben Cardin, seems to be in no hurry to lift the block.

Erdogan was nearly giddy about Menendez's indictment, saying last week that his removal from the chairmanship "gives us an advantage."

From these facts, we get a Watters snowball of speculation that even he has to pass off as a conspiracy theory, though only after lodging it inside Fox News viewers' gullible heads. So President Joe Biden "and his boys" get things to fall into place by, uh, planting gold bars in a senator's house? Biden and his boys got Menendez "taken out," framing a Democratic senator for acts of corruption because, uh, Turkey really wanted those jets?

What the airborne monkey heck are you going on about, Jesse? Is it your genuine premise that an innocent and hapless Menendez was taken down by the Biden regime for offending Turkey's would-be strongman or for holding up a big defense contract?

Have you been guzzling any off-brand cough medicine lately, buddy?

Alas, this is par for the course for Fox News primetime hours and is one of the reasons why as far back as 20 years ago, studies concluded that watching the network somehow made viewers even less informed about the news than people who watched no news at all. The reason Watters was pushed into the primetime slot vacated by Carlson was because he best matched Carlson's own brand of flagrant racism and bizarre conspiracies, providing Fox with the best chance of keeping Carlson's viewers glued to their TVs.

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You would definitely be less informed after watching Watters’ latest rant. Turkey has not gotten its jets. Sweden is not yet a NATO member (though Turkey did relent on its opposition), and Turkey's "shopping spree" doesn't consist of anything more than wanting the jets they originally ordered. If this is a conspiracy by the so-called Biden crime family to dispose of a senator who was being too mean to Tayyip Erdogan, of all people, they may have to smuggle gold bars into a lot of other senators' houses.

The Menendez indictment has highlighted the conservative movement’s disbelief that anyone would want to prosecute felonies committed by "important" people. Watters and other conservative pundits appear to be totally flummoxed by the thought that prosecutors would indict someone not for political reasons but instead because doing crimes is illegal even if you're wearing a flag pin and proclaiming yourself above such laws. Instead, they speculate, Menendez must only have been indicted because he was getting in the way of international arms deals or because the Justice Department needed to frame an important Democrat for committing crimes so that their indictments of Donald Trump for committing other crimes would look more legitimate.

That's led to Republicans either clamming up or actively defending Menendez, even as a majority of Democratic senators have demanded his resignation.

Republican lawmakers launched an impeachment inquiry into President Biden as an evidence-free act of retaliation against Democrats for impeaching Donald Trump over the Jan. 6 coup attempt and other corruption. It's already clear they don't consider the rule of law to be anything but a tool to be used against political enemies, one to be hidden away again whenever one of their own gets caught doing a crime (or 10).

All of that said, Watters will likely get into huge trouble on this one from the higher-ups, and not for the reasons you might think. Watters is mocking Menendez as a goldbug, calling him "Gold Bar Bob," but precious-metals companies prodding conservatives into hoarding overpriced gold and silver are some of Fox News' most reliable remaining advertisers. Jesse is making fun of the network's most-valued viewers here, and you know network bigwigs aren't going to let that one stand.

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House Democrats tell Republicans to pound sand

The party that controls the House of Representatives is the party charged with making it work—or governing, as some might put it. And House Democrats staunchly told Republicans Tuesday they must sink or swim on their own.

The Speaker of the House is chosen by the Majority Party. In this Congress, it is the responsibility of House Republicans to choose a nominee & elect the Speaker on the Floor. At this time there is no justification for a departure from this tradition. The House will be in order.

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) October 3, 2023

Specifically, as Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy faced a potential ouster by MAGA misfits in his own party, Democrats told him to pound sand. They wouldn’t bail him out—not even the moderate Democratic members of the so-called Problem Solvers Caucus.

NEW: Centrist Dems in bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, which just met, told Rs in the group they won't be saving McCarthy, per sources – McCarthy’s last potential line of defense and another sign that Democrats will be unified in their decision not to bail the speaker out.

— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) October 3, 2023

According to CNN's Melanie Zanona, centrist Democrats told Republicans in their bipartisan group early on Tuesday that they wouldn't rescue McCarthy.

McCarthy needed a total of 214 votes to save his job as speaker—meaning he couldn’t lose more than a handful of his own members, or else he would need Democrats to help make up the difference.

But instead of helping McCarthy out of the corner he negotiated himself into when he seized the gavel by putting himself one disgruntled misfit away from being vacated, Democrats called on moderate Republicans to reject the MAGA extremists who constantly threaten to sink the economy, the country, and democracy itself with stunts like allowing a catastrophic debt default and rooting for government shutdowns.

“We are ready, willing and able to work together with our Republican colleagues, but it is on them to join us,” Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Tuesday after an hours-long meeting with his caucus.

As former Republican Rep. David Jolly of Florida told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, McCarthy repeatedly proved to Democrats that he couldn’t be a trusted partner by breaking his promises, routinely demonizing Democrats, launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, and refusing to participate in the Jan. 6 investigation last Congress when he was the minority leader.

“He did everything to remind Democrats that Kevin McCarthy, though he walks around with a smile, is really no different than the leading hard-right Republicans like Jim Jordan,” Jolly said. 

The cohesive Democratic stand against rescuing Republicans from the MAGA hostage takers who run their caucus and terrorize the country is both good politics for Democrats and good governance for the country.

First and foremost, MAGA maniacs shouldn't be in charge of any legislative chamber when they have demonstrated zero interest in doing The People’s business of governing.

Second, and equally as important, Americans must be allowed to witness and experience the dysfunction of a Republican Party in thrall to MAGA maniacs. This is what voters get if they put the Republican Party in charge of anything—even if they cast their vote for a supposedly sane Republican.

Remember, former Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi governed the 117th Congress with a razor-thin House majority too. But Pelosi kept the lights on and passed a historic amount of legislation, directing tens of billions of dollars to bills addressing COVID relief, infrastructure improvements, American manufacturing, and battling climate change.

As former Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia, a onetime rising GOP star, told MSNBC of the spectacle on the House floor, "This is a very sad day for the institution. This is what MAGA has done, both to the country and to the institution."

Comstock said she was sad for the Republican Party, and added, "but I'm even more sad for the institution and for the country."

Hunter Biden pleads not guilty to three federal gun charges filed after his plea deal collapsed

 Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to three federal firearms charges filed after a plea deal imploded, putting the case on track toward a possible trial as the 2024 election looms.

His lawyer Abbe Lowell said in court he plans to file a motion to dismiss the case, challenging their constitutionality.

President Joe Biden’s son faces charges that he lied about his drug use in October 2018 on a form to buy a gun that he kept for about 11 days.

He’s acknowledged struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine during that period, but his lawyers have said he didn’t break the law. Gun charges like these are rare, and an appeals court has found the ban on drug users having guns violates the Second Amendment under new Supreme Court standards.

Hunter Biden’s attorneys are suggesting that prosecutors bowed to pressure by Republicans who have insisted the Democratic president’s son got a sweetheart deal, and that the charges were the result of political pressure.

He was indicted after the implosion this summer of his plea agreement with federal prosecutors on tax and gun charges. The deal devolved after the judge who was supposed to sign off on the agreement instead raised a series of questions about the deal. Federal prosecutors had been looking into his business dealings for five years, and the agreement would have dispensed with criminal proceedings before his father was actively campaigning for president in 2024.

Now, a special counsel has been appointed to handle the case, and there appears no easy end in sight. No new tax charges have yet been filed, but the special counsel has indicated they could come in Washington or in California, where Hunter Biden lives.

In Congress, House Republicans are seeking to link Hunter Biden’s dealings to his father’s through an impeachment inquiry. Republicans have been investigating Hunter Biden for years, since his father was Barack Obama’s vice president. While questions have arisen about the ethics surrounding the Biden family’s international business, no evidence has emerged so far to prove that Joe Biden, in his current or previous office, abused his role or accepted bribes.

The legal wrangling could spill into 2024, with Republicans eager to divert attention from the multiple criminal indictments faced by GOP primary front-runner Donald Trump, whose trials could be unfolding at the same time.

After remaining silent for years, Hunter Biden has taken a more aggressive legal stance in recent weeks, filing a series of lawsuits over the dissemination of personal information purportedly from his laptop and his tax data by whistleblower IRS agents who testified before Congress as part of the GOP probe.

The president’s son, who has not held public office, is charged with two counts of making false statements and one count of illegal gun possession, punishable by up to 25 years in prison upon conviction. Under the failed deal, he would have pleaded guilty and served probation rather than jail time on misdemeanor tax charges and avoided prosecution on a gun count if he stayed out of trouble for two years.

Defense attorneys have argued that he remains protected by an immunity provision that was part of the scuttled plea agreement, but prosecutors overseen by special counsel David Weiss disagree. Weiss also serves as U.S. attorney for Delaware and was originally appointed by Trump.

Hunter Biden had asked for Tuesday’s hearing to be conducted remotely over video feed, but U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher Burke sided with prosecutors, saying there would be no “special treatment.”

Republican men and women disagree on how many women should hold political office

By Mel Leonor Barclay 

 Originally published by The 19th

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Republican women are twice as likely as Republican men to say there are too few women in high-profile political offices, and they are less certain about the prospect of achieving equal representation than men of both parties, a new survey from the Pew Research Center found.

Republican women are still less likely to think there are too few women in these leadership roles than Americans overall. Forty percent of Republican women believe there are too few women in these leadership roles, compared with 82 percent of Democratic women, 53 percent of American adults overall and just 19 percent of Republican men.

While women make up half of the U.S. population, they hold less than a third of the seats in Congress and about a third of all state legislative seats. Democratic women are more likely than Republican women to hold political leadership positions: More than two-thirds of the women in Congress are Democrats, and of the 12 women U.S. governors, eight are Democrats.

The survey released Wednesday sheds light on Americans’ views on gender and political leadership and how they see the barriers that women face to achieving political power. The survey included a new focus on presidential politics as Vice President Kamala Harris gears up for a second campaign on the Democratic presidential ticket and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley competes for the GOP nomination.

On Wednesday night, Haley will take the stage as the only woman in the second GOP presidential debate, and only the third Republican woman to ever participate in a presidential debate. Haley, whose campaign had so far languished in the polls, saw a boost in popularity after the first GOP debate last month. Two polls have shown her as the only GOP contender currently leading President Joe Biden in a head-to-head matchup.

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When it comes to presidential politics, a whopping 86 percent of Republicans don’t view electing a woman president in their lifetime as important, compared with 64 percent of Americans overall. Republican women are only slightly more likely than Republican men to view this historic milestone as very important to them: 6 percent of Republican women, compared with 3 percent of Republican men.

A majority of Democratic women — 57 percent — ranked the election of a woman president as very or somewhat important to them; majorities of Republican women and men of both parties saw it as not important or not too important or said that the president’s gender doesn’t matter.

Juliana Horowitz, an associate director of research at Pew, said that even as Republican women — and majorities of Americans overall — say gender doesn’t have an impact on key leadership qualities, Republican women are more likely than men to believe a woman would be better at things like working under pressure and standing up for what she believes in.

More Republican women than Republican men say a woman president would be better at being honest and ethical and maintaining a respectful tone in politics.

Republican women “are more likely than Republican men, to the extent that they see a difference, to say that a woman president would be better,” Horowitz said.

The survey found no consensus on whether Americans think the United States will elect a woman president in the near future, with about half of all U.S. adults saying they believe it is somewhat likely. As for representation in politics overall, 52 percent of Americans say it's only a matter of time before women reach parity in elected office, which men are much more likely to believe. Less than half of all Democratic and Republican women believe it is only a matter of time before there are as many women in office as men.

The Pew Research Center surveyed 5,057 adults in mid-July, and 11,201 more adults in July and August. The sample of nonbinary Americans in the survey was not large enough to analyze their views separately.

Brooks and Capehart on why a government shutdown could last a long time

New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including the country barreling toward a government shutdown and the first hearings in House Republicans' impeachment inquiry of President Biden.

Ukraine Update: The Ukraine War is a core American domestic political issue

It might not be obvious, but the war in Ukraine has always been an issue of utmost domestic importance to the United States.

Ukraine was at the center of Donald Trump’s first impeachment, and featured heavily in internal Republican machinations. Remember, the one change that the Trump camp made to the 2016 Republican Party platform was watering down support for Ukraine.

And then there are the strategic considerations. Russia is a big part of the reason that the United States’ defense budget is north of $800 billion … and fast approaching $900 billion. Not only does Russia’s battlefield defeat have budgetary implications, but it will inform whether we have to fight a hot war against either China or North Korea that would cost trillions of dollars, claim untold lives, and  destroy the world economy.

This is all quite clear to Democrats and old-guard Republicans. But Trump’s MAGA cult has lined up behind their authoritarian pro-Putin leader, rupturing the Republican Party and leading to a seemingly inevitable government shutdown at midnight on Sept. 30.

Even Fox News can’t spin House Republicans’ evidence-free ‘impeachment’ hearing

Fox News tries very, very hard to parrot Republican talking points, but there are a few things that even they can’t make themselves say. Host Neil Cavuto drew the short straw of having to tell his viewers that the House impeachment inquiry hearings—the "breaking news" that viewers were seeing on their screen—turned out to be a Grade-A nothingburger.

"I don't know what was achieved over these last six-plus hours," he confessed.

Hat tip to Acyn for the catch:

NEIL CAVUTO: All right. For the better part of six hours, I have been following these hearings, save an hour off to do my Fox Business show earlier today. I don't know what was achieved over these last six-plus hours. Welcome, everybody, I'm Neil Cavuto. I want to put in perspective here, though, and we are going to legally go through all the details, but James Comer, the Oversight Committee chairman, had said that there would be presented a mountain of evidence against Mr. Biden, he was referring to President Biden, but none of the expert witnesses today presented—yet—any proof for impeachment.

You think that's bad? He was just getting started.

Now to be clear, this was not about impeachment; this is about launching an impeachment inquiry. But it is worth pointing out that none of the witnesses today were fact witnesses. That means that none were involved in the investigation into the alleged activities in the first place. What's more, none of the witnesses testified today of direct knowledge of what Republicans have been claiming about Joe Biden.

In other words, that this—the way this was built up, where there's smoke, there would be fire. Again, I'm not a lawyer and I'm going to be talking to some darn smart ones in a moment, but where there's smoke today, we just got a lot more smoke.

We also say that the best they could say now, after this six-plus hours of testimony back and forth, is that they're going to try to get more bank records from Joe Biden and his son, says that they're needed to determine if a crime was committed. Understood. But none of that was presented today, just that they would need those records to further this investigation today, even though this occurs after months of Republican probes that failed to provide anything resembling concrete evidence.

That's Fox News’ initial reaction to Rep. James Comer's absurd and evidence-free "impeachment inquiry," as delivered by Cavuto after the hearing's close. Will Cavuto now get calls from network executives excoriating him? Will ex-host Tucker Carlson try to call in a few remaining network favors to get him fired for inappropriate truth-telling?

Honestly, it's not likely. Sean Hannity and a few of the network’s other most rabidly shameless hosts might give it a go, but there's no polishing this turd. Republicans still seem to be forgetting that at some point, in this tit-for-tat attempt at impeaching Joe Biden in retaliation for the two impeachments of Donald Trump, you do have to come up with some actual evidence for your frothing claims. Even Fox News might cut these turkeys loose at this rate.

Sign the petition: Denounce MAGA GOP's baseless impeachment inquiry against Biden

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House Republicans vow shutdown won’t stop impeachment inquiry

House Republicans are on the brink of shutting down the government. The Senate is moving forward with a bipartisan continuing resolution to keep the government open into November, but House Republicans are busy with a "pissing match" between Speaker Kevin McCarthy and obstructionist Rep. Matt Gaetz. That doesn’t mean the House isn’t doing anything, though. No, Republicans are getting their bogus impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden moving, saying they see no reason it couldn’t continue through a government shutdown.

“We’re going to keep going,” House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer told CNN on Tuesday, saying that a shutdown wouldn’t affect the members or staff involved in the impeachment inquiry. That would be a great look for Republicans—showing voters that they weren’t focused on keeping the government open, and offering a constant reminder that members of Congress were still being paid while government workers weren’t.

Comer has a hearing scheduled for Thursday, which his office told Fox News “will examine the value of an impeachment inquiry.” Apparently, even Comer isn’t confident that he and his fellow Republicans have made that case to the public. The hearing will rehash the findings of Comer’s months of investigations—investigations that notably haven’t turned up any real evidence that Biden has engaged in corruption or profited from his son’s business dealings.

Like Comer, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan told CNN a government shutdown wouldn’t stop him. “Every week there’s a whole roster of folks” scheduled for committee interviews, he said.

The committee staff conducting the interviews wouldn’t be paid in the event of a shutdown, but could be deemed “essential” by Congress members and forced to work. A source told CNN, though, that there was still question about whether a court reporter, necessary for transcribing interviews, would be considered essential, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene noted that a shutdown could affect the ability of government agencies to respond to subpoenas. (Take note: Greene seems to be more clearheaded about the outcomes of a shutdown than Comer or Jordan.)

Going ahead with a baseless impeachment inquiry while shutting down the government out of sheer spite would be an impressive one-two punch, even by Republican standards. What could they possibly do that would more clearly display how far their priorities are from what voters want Congress to deliver?

Sign and send the petition: NO to MAGA impeachment. Focus on what matters.

A flamethrower and comments about book burning ignite a political firestorm in Missouri

A longshot candidate for Missouri governor and his supporters describe his use of a flamethrower at a recent “Freedom Fest” event outside St. Louis as no big deal. They said it was a fun moment for fellow Republicans who attended, and that no one talked about burning books as he torched a pile of cardboard boxes.

But after the video gained attention on social media, State Sen. Bill Eigel said he would burn books he found objectionable, and that he'd do it on the lawn outside the governor's mansion. He later said it was all a metaphor for how he would attack the “woke liberal agenda.”

“From a dramatic sense, if the only thing in between the children in the state of Missouri and vulgar pornographic material like that getting in their hands is me burning, bulldozing or launching (books) into outer space, I’m going to do that,” Eigel said in an interview with The Associated Press. “However, I would I make the point that I don’t believe it’s going to come to that.”

Experts say Eigel's use of the flamethrower is a sign that rhetoric and imagery previously considered extreme are now being treated as normal in American politics. While Eigel didn't actually destroy books, his later statement about burning ones he deemed offensive ratcheted up fears that the video's circulation and his words on social media could help take the U.S. to a darker place.

“The slippery slope is that everything is a joke — everything can be kind of waved away,” said Kurt Braddock, an assistant professor of public communications at American University in Washington. “Everything can be seen as just rhetoric until it can’t anymore and people start using it as an excuse to actually hurt people.”

The 30-second video that put Eigel at the center of a social media storm is from a Sept. 15 event for Republicans at a winery near tiny Defiance, Missouri, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of St. Louis. He and another state senator shot long streams of flame onto a pile of cardboard in front of an appreciative crowd.

The video posted on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, caught the attention of Jonathan Riley, a liberal activist in Durham, North Carolina, who posted Sunday that it showed “Missouri Republicans at a literal book burning," though he'd later walk that statement back to a “metaphorical” book burning.

“It fit a narrative that they wanted to put out there,” Freedom Fest organizer Debbie McFarland said about claims that Eigel burned books. “It just didn’t happen to be the truth.”

Some of Republicans' skepticism over the online outrage stems from Eigel's status as a dark horse candidate to replace term-limited GOP Gov. Mike Parson. The best known candidates for the August 2024 GOP primary are Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe.

The Ashcroft campaign declined to respond to the video, the uproar it caused or Eigel's follow-up statement. Kehoe's campaign had no official comment, but Gregg Keller, a GOP consultant working on Kehoe’s campaign, said Eigel’s promise to burn objectionable books is “typical electioneering hyperbole.”

He added, “I would challenge you to find me any non-psychotic Republican who has actually burned” a book deemed objectionable by conservatives.

Eigel posted on the X platform that his flamethrower stunt was meant to show what he would do to the “swamp” in the state capital of Jefferson City, but “let’s be clear, you bring those woke pornographic books to Missouri schools to try to brainwash our kids, and I’ll burn those too -- on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion.”

Republicans across the U.S. are backing conservative efforts to purge schools and libraries of materials with LGBTQ+ themes or books with LGBTQ+ characters. The issue resonates with Republicans in Missouri. An AP VoteCast survey of Missouri voters in the 2022 midterm elections showed that more than 75% of those voting for GOP candidates thought the K-8 schools in their community were teaching too much about gender identity or sexual orientation.

The outcry also comes after Missouri's GOP-supermajority Legislature banned gender-affirming health care for transgender minors and required K-12 and college students to play on sports teams that match their sex assigned at birth. Eigel has sponsored measures to ban schools from teaching about gender identity or gender-affirming care and to make it a crime to perform in drag in public.

Aggressive and even violent imagery have long been a part of American politics. It can sometimes backfire.

Large guns have been a popular prop for some Republicans. Last year, a Black candidate seeking the GOP nomination in an Arizona congressional district aired an ad in which he held an AR-15 rifle as people wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods tried to storm a home. He finished last.

In Missouri in 2016, GOP candidate and ex-Navy Seal Eric Greitens ran an ad featuring him firing 100 rounds from a machine gun on his way to winning the governor’s race. After a sex and invasion-of-privacy scandal in 2018 forced him to resign, he attempted a political comeback in the state’s 2022 U.S. Senate race, running an ad featuring him with a shotgun declaring he was going hunting for RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. He finished third in the primary.

Flamethowers also have popped up previously. In 2020, a GOP congressional candidate in Alabama showed her support for then-President Donald Trump by torching a mockup of the first articles of impeachment against him. She finished third in the primary. And in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem’s staff gave her a flamethrower last year as a Christmas gift.

Experts who study political extremism said images involving fire or bonfires have long been associated with extremist groups. Eigel’s critics quickly posted online images involving the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi book burnings before World War II.

Evan Perkoski, an associate political science professor at the University of Connecticut, said it's been “traditional” for extremist groups to use images of fire to “simultaneously intimidate people and signal their intentions to destroy what exists and to rebuild or start over.”

“We’ve seen this time and time again from groups across countries where groups will burn effigies, crosses and other items, or even just film themselves around large conflagrations,” he said in a email to AP. “A large part of their motivation is the symbolic, frightening nature of fire.”

Experts continue to worry about how social media can spread extreme or violent images or words to potentially millions of people, increasing the chances of a single person seeing the material as a call to violence.

Javed Ali, a former senior FBI counterterrorism official who's now an associate professor at the University of Michigan, said law enforcement agencies struggle with thwarting homegrown political violence. He said the sheer volume of social media postings means, “Sometimes, you almost have to get lucky in order to stop it."

Braddock, the American University professor, said that after portraying a flamethrower as a weapon against “the woke agenda,” Eigel's supporters don't need “that big a leap of logic” to see it as a tool for settling actual political grievances. Talking about book burning enough can plant the idea in people's minds so that ”people think it’s actually a righteous thing to do."

Ali added: “That’s a pretty dangerous game to play.”

Eigel said he’s not worried the video will inspire violence in “reasonable, everyday Missourians,” which he said is the majority of people. But he said he’s concerned about the number of threats he, his family and his staff have received as a result.

A flamethrower and comments about book burning ignite a political firestorm in Missouri

A longshot candidate for Missouri governor and his supporters describe his use of a flamethrower at a recent “Freedom Fest” event outside St. Louis as no big deal. They said it was a fun moment for fellow Republicans who attended, and that no one talked about burning books as he torched a pile of cardboard boxes.

But after the video gained attention on social media, State Sen. Bill Eigel said he would burn books he found objectionable, and that he'd do it on the lawn outside the governor's mansion. He later said it was all a metaphor for how he would attack the “woke liberal agenda.”

“From a dramatic sense, if the only thing in between the children in the state of Missouri and vulgar pornographic material like that getting in their hands is me burning, bulldozing or launching (books) into outer space, I’m going to do that,” Eigel said in an interview with The Associated Press. “However, I would I make the point that I don’t believe it’s going to come to that.”

Experts say Eigel's use of the flamethrower is a sign that rhetoric and imagery previously considered extreme are now being treated as normal in American politics. While Eigel didn't actually destroy books, his later statement about burning ones he deemed offensive ratcheted up fears that the video's circulation and his words on social media could help take the U.S. to a darker place.

“The slippery slope is that everything is a joke — everything can be kind of waved away,” said Kurt Braddock, an assistant professor of public communications at American University in Washington. “Everything can be seen as just rhetoric until it can’t anymore and people start using it as an excuse to actually hurt people.”

The 30-second video that put Eigel at the center of a social media storm is from a Sept. 15 event for Republicans at a winery near tiny Defiance, Missouri, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of St. Louis. He and another state senator shot long streams of flame onto a pile of cardboard in front of an appreciative crowd.

The video posted on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, caught the attention of Jonathan Riley, a liberal activist in Durham, North Carolina, who posted Sunday that it showed “Missouri Republicans at a literal book burning," though he'd later walk that statement back to a “metaphorical” book burning.

“It fit a narrative that they wanted to put out there,” Freedom Fest organizer Debbie McFarland said about claims that Eigel burned books. “It just didn’t happen to be the truth.”

Some of Republicans' skepticism over the online outrage stems from Eigel's status as a dark horse candidate to replace term-limited GOP Gov. Mike Parson. The best known candidates for the August 2024 GOP primary are Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe.

The Ashcroft campaign declined to respond to the video, the uproar it caused or Eigel's follow-up statement. Kehoe's campaign had no official comment, but Gregg Keller, a GOP consultant working on Kehoe’s campaign, said Eigel’s promise to burn objectionable books is “typical electioneering hyperbole.”

He added, “I would challenge you to find me any non-psychotic Republican who has actually burned” a book deemed objectionable by conservatives.

Eigel posted on the X platform that his flamethrower stunt was meant to show what he would do to the “swamp” in the state capital of Jefferson City, but “let’s be clear, you bring those woke pornographic books to Missouri schools to try to brainwash our kids, and I’ll burn those too -- on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion.”

Republicans across the U.S. are backing conservative efforts to purge schools and libraries of materials with LGBTQ+ themes or books with LGBTQ+ characters. The issue resonates with Republicans in Missouri. An AP VoteCast survey of Missouri voters in the 2022 midterm elections showed that more than 75% of those voting for GOP candidates thought the K-8 schools in their community were teaching too much about gender identity or sexual orientation.

The outcry also comes after Missouri's GOP-supermajority Legislature banned gender-affirming health care for transgender minors and required K-12 and college students to play on sports teams that match their sex assigned at birth. Eigel has sponsored measures to ban schools from teaching about gender identity or gender-affirming care and to make it a crime to perform in drag in public.

Aggressive and even violent imagery have long been a part of American politics. It can sometimes backfire.

Large guns have been a popular prop for some Republicans. Last year, a Black candidate seeking the GOP nomination in an Arizona congressional district aired an ad in which he held an AR-15 rifle as people wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods tried to storm a home. He finished last.

In Missouri in 2016, GOP candidate and ex-Navy Seal Eric Greitens ran an ad featuring him firing 100 rounds from a machine gun on his way to winning the governor’s race. After a sex and invasion-of-privacy scandal in 2018 forced him to resign, he attempted a political comeback in the state’s 2022 U.S. Senate race, running an ad featuring him with a shotgun declaring he was going hunting for RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. He finished third in the primary.

Flamethowers also have popped up previously. In 2020, a GOP congressional candidate in Alabama showed her support for then-President Donald Trump by torching a mockup of the first articles of impeachment against him. She finished third in the primary. And in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem’s staff gave her a flamethrower last year as a Christmas gift.

Experts who study political extremism said images involving fire or bonfires have long been associated with extremist groups. Eigel’s critics quickly posted online images involving the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi book burnings before World War II.

Evan Perkoski, an associate political science professor at the University of Connecticut, said it's been “traditional” for extremist groups to use images of fire to “simultaneously intimidate people and signal their intentions to destroy what exists and to rebuild or start over.”

“We’ve seen this time and time again from groups across countries where groups will burn effigies, crosses and other items, or even just film themselves around large conflagrations,” he said in a email to AP. “A large part of their motivation is the symbolic, frightening nature of fire.”

Experts continue to worry about how social media can spread extreme or violent images or words to potentially millions of people, increasing the chances of a single person seeing the material as a call to violence.

Javed Ali, a former senior FBI counterterrorism official who's now an associate professor at the University of Michigan, said law enforcement agencies struggle with thwarting homegrown political violence. He said the sheer volume of social media postings means, “Sometimes, you almost have to get lucky in order to stop it."

Braddock, the American University professor, said that after portraying a flamethrower as a weapon against “the woke agenda,” Eigel's supporters don't need “that big a leap of logic” to see it as a tool for settling actual political grievances. Talking about book burning enough can plant the idea in people's minds so that ”people think it’s actually a righteous thing to do."

Ali added: “That’s a pretty dangerous game to play.”

Eigel said he’s not worried the video will inspire violence in “reasonable, everyday Missourians,” which he said is the majority of people. But he said he’s concerned about the number of threats he, his family and his staff have received as a result.