Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 01:59 pm
“What’s wrong with these people, Mika? What’s wrong with these people?” Joe asks Mika on MSNBC’s Morning Joe after showing the NRA’s new ad aimed at Obama’s kids. “You have children that had no say in the decision on whether their father is going to step forward to be President of the United States, to run for President, one of the most bone crushing, sacrificing things any husband or wife can do to their family, and the second they make that decision, their children, their family have targets on their backs and the NRA is putting something out like- what’s wrong with these people?”
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Mika: They are out of step, out of the mainstream, totally out of sync with what’s going on in our society. After seeing that, I think some of the people who run this thing are sick. I really do. I think they are sick in the head. I’m serious, I’m embarrassed right now. I’m embarrassed for our country. We have a section of our country, the NRA, who should have a voice… They just took it – they just brought it down to the lowest, most debase level.
Joe: … They are now a fringe organization. With millions of mainstream Americans, guns- guys and women who love to hunt —
Mika: They should be embarrassed to be a part of the NRA at this point.
Joe: They have a right to protect their families. What the NRA once was it no longer is. This extremism is so frightening. It’s over, over, over the line.
Joe Scarborough also pointed out that the NRA released a new game for kids on the anniversary of the Newtown massacre.
The NRA went too far when they brought the President’s kids into this. It should be pointed out that enough of the people making threats against the President and his family are extremist right wingers, so for the NRA to blame the President for needing protection from a result of their own fear-mongering about him is so distasteful as to ring of Sarah Palin’s Blood Libel moment.
The NRA has been telling fearful nut jobs that Obama was coming for their guns for four years. They’ve lied about this President and smeared him with unconscionable accusations. Those lies seeped into the minds of the unstable and as a result we’ve all had to deal with their insanity. Perhaps the NRA should pony up to cover half of the President’s Secret Service detail, since they are responsible for some of the rise in death threats against him and his family.
Now they put a target on his kids. I can’t imagine how horrified and furious President Obama was when he saw this ad, but I know if I were Michelle I’d have a thing or two to say to the NRA. As a parent, I would call this kind of ad emotional terrorism — a threat not to proceed with gun legislation. I would feel that my children had been overtly threatened.
White House spokesman Jay Carney responded to the ad saying, “Most Americans agree that a president’s children should not be used as pawns in a political fight. But to go so far as to make the safety of the president’s children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly.”
If the NRA does this over a discussion on reducing the gun violence in our country, what next?
This is the President who wept over Newtown, who relates first as a father to these horrible tragedies. The President and First Lady have been nothing but civilized in response to the awful things extremist Republicans have said about them, but that line was crossed when the NRA put their children as the main focus of a fear-mongering ad showing killing machines while discussing their daughters. It doesn’t take a genius to get the message.
It’s revealing that conservatives were absolutely hysterical when the media wrote about Bristol Palin’s unwed pregnancy, but they are silent when the President’s children are targeted like this. It’s indecent, repugnant, vile and all too telling about what the extremists on the right have become. The President said today in his presser on gun violence that protecting our children should not be divisive. Those words should shame the NRA, but it seems as if the folks leading the NRA are incapable of being shamed.
When Republican Joe Scarborough calls you out as out of touch with the mainstream, you are done. Great job, NRA. Americans finally know why they can’t get the sensible gun legislation they deserve for a civilized society.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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