“The President of the United States,” said Tom Eisenhower, who claimed to be a World War II veteran. “That’s who you should be concerned about today … Because he’s acting like a little Hitler.”
He added that he would “take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me,” according to a report in the Pocahontas, Iowa newspaper The Messenger.
By his words, he seemed to be advocating something much stronger than a protest. Some in the audience applauded. One man booed.
The video below distorts the audio in portions of the man’s statement, but he apparently made reference to the “death panel” myth, suggesting he would be told to die after he “hit 80.”
Sen. Grassley, a member of the Senate Finance Committee and one of the most important Republicans in the health insurance reform debate — who recently told AIG executives to “resign, or go commit suicide” — did not call out the man’s brazenly false analogy or object to his threat.
Instead, his response trailed and lacked any specificity. Although Grassley noted that former President George W. Bush initiated the massive bailouts and “started us on down that road,” he overtly sympathized with the elderly man’s angry sentiments toward President Obama.
“Well, you didn’t ask for a comment, but I think I want to make it clear that President Obama, I agree with him on a lot of things,” Grassley said. “I think he’s doing what he thinks he was elected to do and I did disagree with a good part of it … Uh, but I don’t, uh … Ascribe any ulterior motives to him in the process.”
He continued: “But I do think that you’re right from the standpoint that there is a lot of holes that he has put in place, like General Motors, the nationalization of banks — although, I gotta be … Bush, uh, Bush started us on down that road in October before he left office. And, uh, also, uh, this deficit spending that we have. It’s … It’s, uh, something we’ve got to worry about. And we want a country like we inherited for our grandchildren.
“And, I think most of you came to talk about health care, but I think health care is a, in other words, why people are coming to town meetings … But I think health care is the straw that broke the camel’s back, in the sense that they were looking at General Motors, looking at the stimulus package not working, looking at the Federal Reserve shoveling money out of an airplane, looking at [inaudible] percent increases in the budget and a $4 trillion budget that was about to, uh, adopted in March, and they don’t see anything good comin’ from it and they’re fearful of the government taking everything over.”
The Senator has in the past endorsed the “death panel” myth and told his constituents, “you have every right to fear” it.
However, when pressed by Bob Schieffer on a recent episode of Face the Nation, Grassley recanted his implication that such a thing exists in the health insurance reform legislation.
“I think most of us believe we have the best health care system in the world, but I think we all know there’s some things we need to change,” Grassley said at the town hall meeting, according to The Messenger. “We need to fix what’s broken and leave alone what’s working well.”
This video is from YouTube, uploaded Aug. 24, 2009.
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