Donald Trump’s pal Steve Scalise goes off the deep end
Republican Congressman Steve Scalise, the House Minority Whip, was on Jeanine Pirro on Saturday night. He was defending Donald Trump and his party, and doing what all of the right appears to do without having anything else to talk about: attack “The Squad” and lie about what it is the Congresswomen believe in.
Scalise stated in part: “The Squad is the face of the Democrat Party now. They stand for socialism, open borders, the anti-Semitic BDS movement, free healthcare for illegal immigrants, & the job-killing Green New Deal. Republicans & Donald Trump won’t stop battling this radical, anti-American agenda.”
It is hard to take seriously anyone who says “Democrat Party” instead of “Democratic Party.” But that aside, Scalise is the face of the Republican Party. He attended a conference of white supremacists in the early 2000s where David Duke headlined. Scalise later claimed he was not aware that the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (or “EURO”), which was founded by Duke, had a “racist nature.” Nothing about the name of the group would suggest a group of whites banding together, and Duke being the headliner would not have been any clue to anyone in 2002. Sure.
In 2019, Scalise voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, something he was against in its original iteration in 2013. Scalise appears to be the water boy for Trump, saying this last week when Speaker Nancy Pelosi had the audacity to address the racist comments from Trump on the House Floor: “What Nancy Pelosi just did on the House floor was disgraceful. We should be spending our time on the floor of the People’s House solving actual problems- like the crisis at our southern border- not harassing Donald Trump. I’ll be addressing the chamber shortly. Tune in!”
Scalise has been a “nay” on any of a variety of actual problems that affect women or minorities in his time in Congress. In addition to the VAWA, he has opposed equal pay for gender, he voted against repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and takes a position that veterans should not be permitted to have access to medical marijuana even if in a state that permits and their doctors to prescribe it. This is a truly idiotic and “radical, anti-American agenda.”
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.