“I’ve been worried for some time, even before the events surrounding these health care town halls,” Rich told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Wednesday. “It began during the campaign, where people were shouting ‘treason’ and worse about Obama at Palin rallies — and, essentially, no one in the Republican Party would condemn it. … It’s just been stepping up ever since then.”
Calls for violent revolution at some town halls have recently been made even more threatening by the open display of guns outside these events. A gun-toting online radio host who interviewed a friend carrying an assault rifle at an Obama event in Arizona a few days ago has been revealed as a vocal supporter of members of a militia group who were convicted in 1996 of plotting to blow up federal buildings.
“I think we have a problem,” Rich stated. “This has been going on for too many months. It always seems to happen when there’s a new liberal group taking over. It’s not coincidence that the militias started up again in the 1990s when Clinton came in — or, when Kennedy came in, the right-wing stuff in the early 60s.”
Rich suggested that although President Obama is hopefully well-protected, he sees a potential for something like the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995. “I think we have to worry about right-wing political violence … that doesn’t necessarily manifest itself in a presidential assassination,” he told Maddow.
“It’s shocking to me that very few Republican leaders have really condemned this kind of activity,” Rich stated sharply. “In fact, they’ve sort of encouraged it.”
This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Aug. 19, 2009.
