IA GOP Kingmaker Mickelson Wants To Bring Back Jim Crow-Era Voting Laws

By SALVATORE COLLELUORI/Media Matters

Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson, the state's self-appointed vetter of GOP presidential candidates, recently told members of the League of Women Voters that it should be harder for people to vote, suggesting it be limited to state property owners or people who pass a civics test -- both of which were used to disenfranchise black voters and others in colonial America and the Jim Crow era.

On the June 4 broadcast of Mickelson in the Morning, Mickelson hosted two representatives of the League of Women Voters. During the discussion, Mickelson declared that unlike his guests, whose group works to register more Americans to vote, he is in "the voter repression business" and doesn't want people to vote "unless they agree" with him. He also suggested that in order to vote, Americans should have to pass a "civics test" to prove they're smart enough.

Later in the show, in response to a caller's comment about who should be eligible to vote on property tax ballot issues, Mickelson suggested that only people who pay property taxes -- i.e., property owners -- should be allowed to do so, which would effectively exclude local citizens who are students or renters.

Mickelson's suggestions are a stunning endorsement of disfavored economic restrictions on the right to vote that are now presumptively unconstitutional. Owning property was a prerequisite for white males to vote in colonial America, but eventually gave way to a law requiring voters to be taxpayers. However, by the 1850's, even the tax-paying requirement was phased out in most states. Despite passage of the 15th Amendment, which sought to eliminate that litmus test, some groups, including women and African-Americans, were still denied the vote.

The Jim Crow-era literacy test, which Mickelson has renamed a "civics test" requirement, was even more pernicious. As a PBS special on Jim Crow noted, literacy tests were often "used to keep people of color -- and, sometimes, poor whites -- from voting" and whether someone passed was up to "the discretion of the officials in charge of voter registration," meaning those whom officials wanted to pass did, while others were set up to fail.

Mickelson, who has a national reputation as a GOP kingmaker in Iowa, has a history of pushing presidential candidates to embrace his extreme views. Already this year, he has hosted every major GOP presidential candidate -- except Jeb Bush, who has yet to declare but is expected to, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina -- at least once, and Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee several times.

Full Segment:

Conservative Twitter Racists Mock McKinney Police Brutality: ‘Black People Can’t Swim’ (TWEETS)

VERA from Addicting Info

Last week, a disturbing video surfaced of a white police officer brutalizing black teens in McKinney, Texas while breaking up a neighborhood pool party.

As the video went viral and made headlines nationwide, Cpl. Eric Casebolt was suspended over the footage, which captured him chasing unarmed, nonthreatening teens with a gun and brutally slamming a petite bikini-clad girl to the ground before kneeling on her back with his full body weight.

Despite how clear-cut the footage was in capturing the McKinney police using racially-charged excessive force, conservative media did what it could to protect the white cops, and several racist Twitter users followed suit. And who better than Fox News to lead the way? The right-wing media channel reported the story, but implied that viewers should be skeptical of the video’s footage:

Yahoo! News was also an unexpected offender.

Many Twitter users defended the cops, stating that the teens deserved to be brutalized and criticized the lack of parental guidance for the teens’ behavior – very reminiscent of racist reactions seen in Ferguson when Michael Brown was fatally shot by police officer Darren Wilson.

Some users even had to audacity to mock the incident and perpetuate racial stereotypes to make light of the horrendous situation.

These comments are disgusting representations of the segregation and racism that still prevails in America. The sad thing is, if this incident hadn’t been recorded (by a white person, who the police ignored), those teens would have gotten records – which would have impacted the rest of their lives, damaging their college and job applications. Systemic racism is no joke.

Anyone who is still in doubt about police brutality’s connection with race needs to see this tweet, which compares the police reaction to the black teens in McKinney, Texas (who were unarmed and hadn’t killed anyone) and the police reaction to a mob of grown gun-toting white bikers in Waco, Texas – where 9 people were killed:

Being black in America shouldn’t be a death sentence, and it shouldn’t be a reason to be targeted, mistreated and brutalized like it was in McKinney. This incident was completely about race – and there continues to be a disturbing world of a difference in the way white people and black people are treated. Comparing the 14-year-old girl who was brutalized by Cpl. Eric Casebolt in McKinney to how serial child molester Josh Duggar has been treated by the media, this tweet says it all:

White McKinney resident: Cop ‘deserves a medal’ for pulling gun on black kids at pool party

DAVID EDWARDS/Raw Story

A Texas woman said on Monday that a McKinney police officer “deserves a medal” after he pulled his firearm on black teens who were having a pool party in her neighborhood.

In video that was recorded on Friday, Cpl. Eric Casebolt could be seen manhandling a young teen girl in a bathing suit and pulling his gun on other teens who approach him. Casebolt was placed on administrative leave over the weekend after the video went viral.

While many said that the the officer went overboard in responding to complaints about the pool party, at least one white resident of the neighborhood, who refused to be named because of alleged death threats, told CNN that the officer was a hero.

“I want everyone to know that that police officer, along with everyone else, they were completely in the right and protecting everyone,” the woman opined to CNN’s Nick Valencia. “He was not out of line. I completely support him drawing his weapon or a Taser or whatever it was that he did pull because he was being attacked from behind.”

“I believe that if your life is threatened, you have every right to pull a gun. He probably didn’t intend on using it. I feel horrible for McKinney PD and and the backlash they’re getting for this.”

The woman added that the officer “deserves a medal for what he did.”

“I don’t believe he was out of line one bit,” she insisted. “Those kids were taunting them and cursing them out, have no respect for authority and as soon as their parents got here, they didn’t even care one bit about how they were treating the officers and why they got into that situation.”

Watch the video below from CNN, broadcast June 8, 2015.

Ex-McKinney cop: Police force has a race problem and they need to ‘get it under control’

TOM BOGGIONI/Raw Story

Appearing on Fox4, a former McKinney police officer blasted the conduct of Officer Eric Casebolt, who threw an unarmed teenage girl to the ground, before saying local police authorities need to nip their race problem in the bud before it grows.

According to former officer Pete Schulte, Casebolt was over the line when he roughly pulled 15-year-old Dajerria Becton to the ground, saying, “I don’t care what she was yelling at that officer. Anything would not have justified throwing her to the ground and pushing her down and throwing her face into the concrete like he did.”

Commenting on Casebolt drawing his service weapon as spectators came to help the screaming girl, Schulte called it “crazy,” before noting that one of the fellow officers who came to Casebolt’s aid grabbed his arm as if pulling the weapon down.

Schulte, who is now an attorney, had advice to the McKinney Police Department, saying they needed to get the fallout from the viral video “under control,” due to the racial implications.

“There is an indication based on watching the video that the white people who were around the officers weren’t talked to, they weren’t pushed away, they weren’t told to get on the ground, they weren’t put in handcuffs. The only individuals McKinney police were doing that to were those that were African-American,” he said.

“McKinney police have got to get this under control before tomorrow,” he stated “At this point in America, in policing, There’s too much out there right now with Ferguson. They got to get out there in front of this and make sure that citizens, even outside of the city of McKinney, understand that they’re going to do the right thing and take corrective action and that this was not racially motivated.”

Watch the video below from Fox4:

Fox4News.com | Dallas-Fort Worth News, Weather, Sports

Grand Jury Indicts South Carolina Ex-Cop After His Defense Of A Fatal Shooting Was Debunked By Video

BY NICOLE FLATOW/Think Progress

A man holds a sign during a protest for the shooting death of Walter Scott at city hall in North Charleston, S.C.

CREDIT: AP PHOTO/CHUCK BURTON

Video captured former Officer Michael Slager firing deadly shots at into Walter Scott’s back as he ran away in North Charleston, South Carolina. And now, Slager will likely face a murder trial for his actions.

A grand jury took the rare step of opting to indict Slager for murder, officialsannounced Monday. While grand juries indict the vast majority of defendants brought before them, it is incredibly rare that they indict officers in police brutality cases.

But Slager’s case was distinct from so many others in that a narrative initially painted in his favor flipped against him, after video revealed that he had misrepresented what happened that day and aimed to skew the case in his favor. The initial statement from police said Scott was attempting to grab a Taser from the officers, and that the shooting occurred in the struggle for a weapon. Media outlets initially reported this version of events. But video released later revealed that Scott was actually shot in the back as he was running away, unarmed, about 15 feet from Slager. The video appears to show Slager planting an object next to Scott. Many believe Scott was running because he owed child support money.

As the Atlantic reported, after the video was released, Slager retained little of the same support other officers had received even in the cases deemed most clearly egregious. Slager was fired. Police Chief Eddie Driggers said he was “sickened by what he saw.” And even the popular crowdfunding site GoFundMe that rejected a campaign to support the officer.

And Solicitor Scarlett Wilson moved quickly to file murder charges against Slager. Black leaders were wary, and called for Wilson to recuse himself from the case in favor of an independent prosecutor, because of a perceived unwillingness for her to prosecute similar cases in the past. Local prosecutors are typically perceived as carrying a bias in favor of their own police. But Monday’s grand jury indictment suggests this case has already had more success than most.

While the video provided more objective evidence to the Charleston County grand jury, similar evidence in Eric Garner’s case was not enough to secure a grand jury indictment for a fatal chokehold by New York Police Department officers.

In fact, over the past year, South Carolina has shown particular willingness to hold police officers accountable when they shoot suspects under dubious circumstances. Just after grand juries elsewhere failed to indict the officers implicated in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, a South Carolina grand jury indicted a white cop for shooting a black man. That indictment in December was at least the third of a police officer in the state last year.

The announcement comes just a few weeks after a grand jury also decided to indict six Baltimore officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray over a spinal cord injury. The prosecutor in that case, Marilyn Mosby, distinguished herselfas a strong proponent of police accountability.

Thus far, however, these cases appear to remain anomalies. One Bowling Green University study found that just 41 officers were charged in all with murder or manslaughter in a seven-year period ending in 2011, while 2,600 justifiable homicides were reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation during that same period.

Senator Unveils New Obamacare Attack, Immediately Becomes A Laughingstock

BY IAN MILLHISER/Think Progress

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) probably wishes that he’d thought twice before debuting a new attack on the Affordable Care Act on Twitter.

This month, the Supreme Court is expected to decide King v. Burwell, a case which asks the justices to read one sentence of the law out-of-context in order to render millions of people’s health insurance unaffordable. The lawsuit isfunded by a conservative organization, promoted by conservative think tanks and conservative law professors, and backed by many top Republicans including several of Thune’s Republican colleagues. Though only a minority of lower court judges have sided with the plaintiffs in this lawsuit, all of them are Republicans. Only Republican-appointed justices are expected to vote for the plaintiffs when the decision is handed down, though it is far from clear that all of the Court’s Republican appointees will do so. The lead attorney for the plaintiffs boasted that he does not plan to “lose any Republican-appointed judges’ votes” when his argument was being considered by a lower court.

Nevertheless, Thune offered this assessment of who would be to blame if the Republican-controlled Supreme Court sides with the plaintiffs in King:

Almost immediately, Thune became an object of ridicule for this tweet. Huffington Post’s Sam Stein quoted the tweet and responded “this makes no sense.” The Week’s Ryan Cooper mocked it with an historic quote — “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!” The New York Daily News’s Josh Greenman wrote just one word: “Um.” The National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke described Thune’s tweet in twice as many words: “So dishonest.”

My own contribution to this genre quoted the tweet with the preface “In which a United States Senator reminds you that he thinks you are stupid.” Bloomberg’s David Weigel quipped that “Congress should pass a simple, one-page bill allowing @SenJohnThune to amend that tweet.”

Should the King plaintiffs prevail, it should be noted, the consequences will go far beyond the mockery Thune experienced. An estimated 9,800 Americans will die every year who otherwise would have lived if the Republican-appointed justices do what so many of Thune’s fellow Republicans have asked them to do

White Woman Used Racial Slurs, Slapped Her, Texas Pool Party Host Says

BY CARIMAH TOWNES/Think Progress

After a viral video of police brutalizing black teenagers in swimsuits in Texas sparked national outrage, a second video has surfaced of a party host detailing a violent encounter before the cops arrived at the scene.

According to 19-year-old community member Tatiana, who put together the event to celebrate the end of the school year, several white people at the pool hurled racial slurs at her friends, calling one a “black f-er” and talking about Section 8 public housing. When 14-year-old friend Grace Stone stood up for the group, saying the comments were racist, the man and woman started berating her. Tatiana alleges she stepped in to tell the white couple that they shouldn’t verbally attack a young girl, at which point they told her to “go back to [her] Section 8 home.” One woman, identified as Kate, allegedly slapped Tatiana in the face, before attacking the teenager with the help of another woman.

Tatiana’s mother, who was also featured in the YouTube video, responded, “I’m just upset that we couldn’t have a peaceful event. [If] it was any issue that they truly had, they should’ve came to me, the adult that was here at the event…and not go to that extreme.”

Watch the video of Tatiana:

Brandon Brooks, a white teenager who filmed first video of the police encounter, explained to Buzzfeed News that many of the black kids had special passes to swim in the community pool, although some did jump the fence. “I think a bunch of white parents were angry that a bunch of black kids who don’t live in the neighborhood were in the pool,” he said. However, he maintains, many of the kids who were handcuffed and told to get on the ground were ‘innocent bystanders.’

Having seen the original video on YouTube, Tom Fuentes, a former assistant director for the FBI told CNN that the officer’s actions were unjustified, and that the main officer was “running around and escalating” the situation. “He’s out of control. He clearly has no self-discipline. He lost control of his temper. Nothing good can happen at that point. Thankfully he didn’t shoot somebody,” he concluded.

But local homeowners defended the officers’ actions, arguing the officers’ safety was threatened. “I feel absolutely horrible for the police and what’s going on… they were completely outnumbered and they were just doing the right thing when these kids were fleeing and using profanity and threatening security guards,” an anonymous woman told Fox4. Notes thanking the officers were also hung on the pool fence.

Senator Berates DREAMers, Says They Don’t Have Anything To Teach Him

BY ESTHER YU-HSI LEE/Think Progress

The viral video of an eight-minute confrontation between two undocumented immigrants and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) Monday was an uncomfortable reminder of how extreme elements within the Republican party are alienating minority voters. But the person who could see the most political fallout from the incident is a senator caught on film awkwardly excising himself early on from the table with his staff.

Potential 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has touted himself as an outspoken champion for GOP outreach, maintained to Fox News that he left because he had another interview, but many are accusing him of distancing himself from the immigration reform debate entirely.

Explaining his departure Wednesday during a radio interview in Iowa, Paul said, “I’ll be honest with you, I’m not interested in being filmed and berated by people who broke the law and are here illegally to try and convince me about policy. But I’ll tell you I have sympathy for the DREAM Act kids. I’m actually a moderate on immigration.”

Peculiarly, the two undocumented immigrants, Erika Andiola and Cesar Vargas, are exactly the so-called “DREAM Act kids” for whom Paul should express sympathy, as they were illegally brought to the United States as minors. Paul previously said that legalization should “start with DREAM Act kids,” alluding to a federal immigration bill that would have granted an earned pathway to citizenship for some qualified undocumented immigrants. Andiola and Vargas are also among the more than 550,000 recipients of an executive order known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that grants work authorization and deportation relief for two years. But they were in Iowa to confront King who has continuously pushed for legislation that would gut the DACA program. Each time, the House has voted to kill the program.

The cognitive dissonance between the two statements said moments apart by Paul was not lost on the Democratic National Committee Director of Hispanic Media Pili Tobar who said, “Rand Paul attacks young people brought to America through no fault of their own and in the next sentence says he’s a new type of Republican and that he’s a moderate on immigration. Rand Paul is proving that he’s no better – and no different – than far-right Republicans like Steve King.”

Similarly, Andiola told MSNBC host Jose Diaz-Balart Wednesday morning, “the reality is that if you have someone who is actually affected by it try to talk to you, you don’t run away. You actually sit there and actually try to talk.” She added that Paul’s insincerity on the issue could hurt him in the 2016 presidential race, “I don’t know if Rand Paul actually learned a lesson from Mitt Romney, but Mitt Romney lost his election with the Latino vote because he didn’t support the DREAM Act and because he believed in self-deportation.”

Just 17 months ago, Paul said in a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce that some of his values stemmed from his formative years getting to know undocumented immigrants. “At a young age, I came to understand that it makes a difference whether you are a documented immigrant or an undocumented immigrant,” Paul remarked in March 2013. “That the existence was not easy for the undocumented but that opportunity in America somehow trumped even the poor living conditions and low pay… Somewhere along the line Republicans have failed to understand and articulate that immigrants are an asset to America, not a liability.” But he has gradually moved faster and further away from that position, stating that he would not support the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill and accusing the President Obama of “poisoning the well” by using an executive order to create the DACA program. And as MSNBC pointed out, Paul endorsed legislation in 2011 to end the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship.

Sorry about no blog updates.

My work schedule had me working a lot lately and been too tired to look and read for stories to post. Thanks for the understanding and let's take back the house from the forces of stupidity and racism.

How Conservative Media Helped To Kill Boehner's Border Bill

From Media Matters:

House Republicans pulled a bill which would increase funding for security at the southern border after conservative media and their allies voiced opposition to it.

The bill, pushed by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was tabled after he and House Republican leadership faced "a rebellion among their most conservative ranks," according to the New York Times, who also reported that the failure to pass the bill "ensures that no legislation to address what both Democrats and Republicans call an urgent humanitarian crisis will reach President Obama's desk before the August break." After the measure failed, Republicans met to discuss whether they would bring up another bill before Congress goes into recess or to scrap the legislation entirely. Roll Call reported that "chaos reigned" as it became unclear what Republican leaders would decide to do.

Conservative media darling Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was reportedly whipping votes in order to stop the bill the night before its introduction, according to a Washington Post report. Cruz appeared on Fox's On the Record with Greta Van Susteren that same night and attacked what he described as "President Obama's amnesty."

Weekly Standard founder and ABC News contributor Bill Kristol wrote a July 31 blog post demanding that the House "kill the bill." He described the bill as "dubious legislation" and argued that passing it would "take the focus off what President Obama has done about immigration."

Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt agreed with Kristol, writing that the House should "kill the fake border security bill and go home until the House leadership gets serious about passing a real border security bill."

The Drudge Report highlighted opposition to the bill at the top of the site with the headline "Hill Phones Melt As Boehner Pushes Border."

The Drudge headline linked to Breitbart.com, which has repeatedly opposed immigration reform efforts. The story by Matthew Boyle noted that "The American people have overloaded the Congressional phone lines yet again on Thursday, pressuring their members of Congress to vote against the House and Senate immigration bills."

Fox News contributor Erick Erickson argued at his site, RedState, that the bill was flawed because it failed to repeal the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which conservatives incorrectly blame for generating the surge in child migrants from Central America.

Erickson added, "The House GOP should be starting with closing DACA, not telling conservatives they first have to fund the President and then they'll get table scraps" and directed his readers to RedState's "action center" where they could call Congress and demand that "the House GOP must close DACA." 

Daily Caller columnist Mickey Kaus promoted a campaign from the anti-immigration group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) which urged readers to call the U.S. Capitol switchboard in order to speak to their member of Congress and demand "No New Laws" on immigration. Kaus also linked to a list of members and their direct office phone numbers.

Laura Ingraham, a talk radio host and Fox News/ABC News contributor, who has been an anti-immigration reform crusader for years, wrote on Twitter that Boehner had made a "supreme accomplishment" by pushing a bill that "manages to enrage both the political left and conservatives." She later celebrated its defeat.

The GOP’s impeachment whiplash

Trolls quickly drown ReaganBook social media site in sea of profanity, pornography

By Travis Gettys/Raw Story

A half-cooked attempt to set up a conservative social network quickly collapsed into a heap of phony accounts, crude swearing, and pornographic GIFs.

Ohio Republican Janet Porter pre-launched ReaganBook – “Facebook for Patriots” – in April, after employees from the more well-known social media site took part in a LGBT rights demonstration in San Francisco.

After several left-leaning sites, including Raw Story, publicized the launch the fledgling social network, its several dozen presumably conservative users were quickly drowned out by a flood of phony accounts (Vladimir Putin, Sarah Palin, and Manuel Noriega) and less-obviously phony accounts.

“I think they’d attract more people and less trolls if they didn’t put that brand on it of Reagan — if they called it something else,” conservative blogger Amy Jo Clark told The Daily Beast.

Many users posted profane criticisms of former President Ronald Reagan, while others posted pornographic images and GIFs.

The only discernibly sincere comments found on the site were the persistent complaints about slow load times and overall poor user experience.

Porter, who is president of the anti-abortion group Faith2Action, announced Wednesday morning that administrators had been tasked with removing offensive posts and culling troll accounts from the site.

“Glad I did the pre-launch because that gives us an opportunity to tighten our security for the real launch,” Porter posted just hours earlier on her ReaganBook page. “Also, the fact that so many leftists have invested so much time in the site, It provides confirmation that we’re on the right track.”

But weeding out the trolls must have proven too difficult, because the site was taken offline by Wednesday afternoon, about 24 hours after the site launched.

“Please be patient while we make the necessary changes to keep the site free from obscenity, pornography, and those intent on the destruction of life, liberty, and the family,” site management said in a statement. “We will be opening the doors again soon with additional protections in place. As Reagan taught us, trust, but verify.”

No timetable was given for when ReaganBook might go back online.

Russell Brand rips Fox blowhard Sean Hannity over inflammatory Israel-Gaza coverage

By Scott Kaufman/Raw Story

In Russell Brand’s latest episode of The Trews, the British comedian attacks Sean Hannity for his hypocrisy when it comes to the subject of Israel.

Brand begins, however, on a lighter note, playing a clip from Hannity’s show and saying that the Fox News and syndicated radio host “looks like the Ken Doll from the Toy Story 3 film.” Moreover, “he has his name on a police badge in the corner of the screen, screaming ‘HANNITY!’”

He then continued his running commentary on the clip, in which Hannity asks why “is America’s largest Muslim so-called civil rights group [the Council on American–Islamic Relations or CAIR] showing sympathy to terrorists? Let’s have a debate.”

Brand then noted that Hannity was “already being unreasonable” in how he framed the debate. While most people “want peace,” Hannity “wants conflict — wants to know what things I should say to exacerbate the conflict.”

One of Hannity’s guests, Yousef Munayyer of the Jerusalem Fund & Palestine Center, then suggested to Hannity that peace might be achieved if Israel addressed the occupation of Palestinian territory, at which point the Fox News host insisted the debate be brought back to the 1948 petition plan and the 1973 war.

“Yes, let’s do that Sean,” Brand responded. “Because that’s the broader context. But he’s not going to actually talk about any of those things, because Sean’s not interested in truth — Hannity is only interested pushing a particular perspective.”

He then cuts back to the Hannity clip, in which Hannity does not, in fact, address the broader context, but repeatedly asks what Munayyer would do if people were firing missiles into his neighborhood. Munayyer responds that he’s going to try to answer Hannity’s question if Hannity would stop “asking it at him,” to which Hannity replies, “Good luck.”

Brand laughs at Hannity’s answer, then repeats it, “‘Good luck’! That’s right, good luck, mate answering Sean’s question, because Sean doesn’t want an answer. Sean wants to say more stuff while jabbing his finger aggressively!”

After playing another clip of Hannity shouting his guest down, Brand notes that “another thing Sean does is just use incendiary words. ‘Rockets!’ ‘Kidnapper!’ ‘Murder!’ ‘A little baby ducklingkicked in the face!’ These are just things that are bad.”

As the conversation on Hannity’s program continues to deteriorate, Brand remarks that Hannity’s not interested in learning about what would constitute progress in the Middle East, because he took a job at Fox News. Imitating Hannity, Brand yells, “I’m interested in shouting, and pointing, and simplifying things!”

When Hannity tires of yelling the same question his guest has already answered, he switches to his other guest, who like himself is pro-Israel. The guest immediately begins discussing the Palestinians using children as human shields, a fact whose veracity Brand disputes.

“Reports from Gaza say that they’re not using children as human shields,” he say, “those children are dying because there are missiles going off all over the place and Gaza’s only a little tiny area.”

“But even if they were,” Brand continued, “even if everyone was carrying around children literally strapped to wooden boards, using them as shields — they still wouldn’t die if it weren’t for the missiles. The key ingredient in the death of those children is the missile.”

He then returns to the clip at a point in which Munayyer attempts to get a word in. Hannity summarily dismisses him with an angry “Goodbye!” to which Brand responds, “one definition of terrorism is using intimidation to achieve your goals. Who in that situation was behaving like a terrorist?” he asks.

“Sean Hannity — that’s where the terrorism’s coming from.”

Watch the entire episode of Russell Brand’s The Trews below.