In almost any other era, the hostile exchange between EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and Democrat Rep. Rosa DeLauro would have been an instant embarrassment on Capitol Hill.
But at a time when political violence is becoming frighteningly common and widely accepted, DeLauro’s nasty suggestion that Zeldin drink a glass of weed killer marked just another day in the trenches.
Dripping with bitterness, the 83-year-old, blue-haired DeLauro is often an embarrassment to Connecticut and more sober-minded Democrats with her nutty bluster.
She outdid herself Monday, and certainly wasn’t interested in Zeldin’s factual and workmanlike testimony, saying it sounded “like a climate change denier’s manifesto.”
When he countered by citing court rulings in the EPA’s favor, she was ignorant of the cases, but in no mood to learn.
“I don’t have to listen to this BS!” she raged.
Writing later on X, Zeldin said she “apparently believes that when you don’t have anything good to say, you should instruct the person you are debating to kill themself.”
Party is a rager
The timing of her outburst was especially awful, given the attempted assassination of President Trump and members of his Cabinet at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
A minimum respect for atmospherics in the immediate aftermath should have led her to temper her tongue.
And yet, DeLaura’s push for Zeldin to drink a glass of weed killer illustrates how numb so many Dems are to political violence, especially when Trump and Republicans are the target, as they always are.
Either they don’t realize how crazy they sound, or don’t care.
At this stage, I believe it’s the latter.
There is no political downside on the left to sounding wacko and being full of hate as long as Trump and Republicans are the target.
The man charged with Saturday’s shooting certainly fits the bill.
No coherence, only rage.
In many quarters on the left, too much hate is not enough.
Instead, the more anger and contempt you express, the more you are viewed as having a serious commitment to the resistance.
Calling the president a Nazi, a dictator, a king — those and other buzzwords indicate that many people believe they have license to say almost anything that comes to mind.
Trump, of course, is no shrinking violet, but he has the unhappy distinction of having been the target of three would-be assassins —that we know of.
And death threats are constant.
Last January, as the rhetoric about Iran heated up, Iranian state television flashed an image from the assassin’s attempt to kill Trump in Pennsylvania during the 2024 campaign.
Noting Trump was wounded, the Iranian broadcast added, “This time it will not miss the target.”
Just last month, Ali Larijani, head of the mullahs’ national security council and a supposed moderate, warned the president that, “Iran doesn’t fear your empty threats. Even those bigger than you couldn’t eliminate Iran. Be careful not to get eliminated yourself,” Larijani posted on X.
If you expected the near-misses and threats would create a rally-round-the president movement among all Americans, you would be wrong.
Leadings Dem officials and most of their big donors have been silent since Saturday, which I find disgusting.
If, as an American, efforts to kill the president don’t make you furious, there’s something wrong with you.
Ditto if you feel the need to defend the loathsome Jimmy Kimmel.
He reached a new low with his so-called joke that First Lady Melania Trump had the face of an “expectant widow.”
Hate is now a feature
Politics ain’t bean bag, but it’s not supposed to be a matter of life or death, no matter how much you disagree with or dislike the other side.
I suspect that so many Dems are silent during what is a national emergency because they don’t want to be accused by their fellow travelers of being soft on Trump.
On the left, that would be the most damning sin of all.
The phrase Trump Derangement Syndrome started almost as a joke, but a decade after his first election to the White House, the crazy rage shows no signs of running out of steam.
In fact, deep-seated hate now seems to be a fixture of our contemporary politics.
So much so that loathing Trump and expressing it in words that smack of violence is the one thing that unites his opponents.
Much as Hanoi Jane Fonda turned her protest against the Vietnam War into treasonous conduct, too many Americans are crossing a line in how they oppose Trump.
It’s as if they believe they are in a TV game show where the winner is the contestant who can say the most awful and hateful things about him.
That is what Dems have done with their party, where loathing the president is a minimum requirement for membership.
The more you hate him, and the more you make that clear on television and social media, the more legitimate and serious you are seen in many quarters.
Not so long ago, the first “squad” members in the House, AOC of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, were setting new standards for unprofessional conduct toward the president, Cabinet members and all Republicans.
But hate is a cancer that spreads, and the longer Trump is around, and especially now in his momentous second term, older Dem leaders also are infected with a disease that goes far beyond policy differences.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who replaced Nancy Pelosi’s style of hate with his own, and senators like Chris Murphy and Chris Van Hollen have caught the derangement virus and proudly champion it.
Jeffries was out of line in defending a promise to use “maximum warfare” in the battle over redistricting, even after Saturday’s shooting.
Some conservatives blasted his words, which strike me as an approval of violence.
“The notion that any of us are concerned with so-called criticism from these phony Republicans as it relates to anything that has been said — certainly as it relates to the comment related to ‘maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time,’ . . . I stand by it,” Jeffries told reporters.
Public Enemy No. 1
As such, party leaders and the progressive wing aiming to replace them are uniting around their shared hatred of Trump more than anything else.
Of course, there remains policy differences, but the specifics of what Dems stand for is less important than their gut feelings about Trump, the GOP and his supporters.
That they have made him Public Enemy No. 1 is not coincidental to the rising tide of violence.
The idea that there is a connection between overheated rhetoric and political violence was a universal view for a long time.
But these days, any Dem who urges his party to tone it down risks being seen as too weak on Trump.
There’s no political gold in that, and so the hate and violence will go on and on and on.
The post Michael Goodwin: The Dems’ newest phrase into raging at the GOP is to go ‘Kill yourself’ appeared first on New York Post.
