GOP official says it’s OK to attack gays because Trump does it too
Trump emboldens bigots to air their filthy views in public.
Ronald Beaty Jr., a county commissioner in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, says he was just doing “what President Donald Trump does” by making homophobic remarks on Twitter.
Beaty took to Twitter to reflect on gay politicians, and created a Twitter poll to ask whether they are “too self-absorbed and self-centered to adequately represent ALL of their constituents in a fair and equitable manner?”
Beaty is also a failed candidate for the Massachusetts House of Representatives who got absolutely shellacked when he ran in the Republican primary. Maybe that’s why he is so mad that two openly LGBTQ politicians were named to leadership roles in the legislature — likely the event that triggered his Twitter poll.
When called out on his behavior, Beaty defended himself by citing Trump.
“I pretty much only do what President Donald Trump does relative to his social media postings,” Beaty said. “If it is good enough for our president, whom I support 100 percent, then it is good enough for me as well.”
The Trump administration has been incredibly hostile to LGBTQ Americans, and Trump’s hateful Twitter habits have emboldened bigots of all kinds.
Sometimes that bigotry turns violent. The number of hate groups is now at a record high in the Trump era, and right-wing violence is on the rise.
Beaty is mostly a garden-variety Trump-worshipping “Proud Deplorable” who just happens to hold a minor elected office. He attacks other politicians by calling them things like “wimp” and “snowflake,” and goes after people like David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland school shootings. Beaty describes this behavior as part of his own “brand.”
But Beaty also isn’t just your average right-wing blowhard. He served 14 months in federal prison for threatening to kill then-President George H.W. Bush and then-Sen. Ted Kennedy back in 1991.
Many local politicians have either called for Beaty to step down, demanded he apologize, or apologized themselves for his behavior. The chair of the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners, Ronald Bergstrom, posted a note on the official county website apologizing for Beaty’s comments and saying his views don’t represent the views of the county. Even Republican members of the Massachusetts legislature called for him to step down.
Rather than address the issue or apologize, however, Beaty decided to whine on Twitter about how his First Amendment rights are under attack and call liberal Democrats “pinheads.”
In doing so, he shows he doesn’t understand the First Amendment. He’s not being silenced by the government; he’s just finding out that there may be consequences for what he says. And as far as the pinheads comment — well, that’s just Trump-esque.
However, protestations about the First Amendment aside, he did memory hole the offending tweet. Donald Trump would never be a wimp like that.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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