Over the weekend, GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw defended his rightful criticism of Ilhan Omar’s disgusting 9/11 terrorist remarks — and called out Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and their her allies for their shameful (and shameless) attempts to paint him as the bad guy:
This week was a new low in partisanship & dishonesty.
I watched in disbelief as some covered for Omar by coming after me with lies & absurd claims that I don’t support 9/11 victims.
What a disgusting, dishonest tactic.
Why turn this into a political football?
Full NBC int: pic.twitter.com/sVXvzHDPnP
— Rep. Dan Crenshaw (@RepDanCrenshaw) April 12, 2019
And that really stuck in disgraced New Yorker fact checker Talia Lavin’s craw:
oh i see the right-wing pearl clutchers are here. sorry, it’s my right to criticize a political hack who was also once a troop
— Talia Lavin (@chick_in_kiev) April 13, 2019
She’s lovely, isn’t she?
I see Talia Lavin is continuing her time-honored tradition of attacking combat wounded veterans. pic.twitter.com/5nQ7sfoJEs
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) April 13, 2019
She really does seem to have a hangup when it comes to vets.
Well anyway, apparently she didn’t get all that nastiness out of her system, because today, she’s back at it, smearing Crenshaw like her life depends on it:
because he's incredibly racist. just inflamed with bigotry. super super racist, ran a racist facebook group before he got elected https://t.co/qmaxAc6cyM
— Talia Lavin (@chick_in_kiev) April 16, 2019
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No, he didn’t run a racist Facebook group before he got elected. He was one of 95,000 members of the Tea Party group on Facebook.
like he was literally part of an FB group that called Islam a "cancer" it's not complicated https://t.co/ByWeX6S89x
— Talia Lavin (@chick_in_kiev) April 16, 2019
According to the Newsweek article Lavin holds up as proof that Crenshaw is “incredibly racist” and “inflamed with bigotry,” Crenshaw says he wasn’t an active member of the group and never requested to be an administrator:
Crenshaw, who was a group administrator as of Friday morning, has shared two of his campaign videos to the group, on July 29 and August 13. Other group administrators have shared his campaign website. In a statement to Newsweek, Crenshaw claimed he has “never actively managed or interacted with that page,” despite posting his videos.
“They contacted me once and said they’d sign me up as an admin, in case I ever wanted to post,” said Crenshaw, who removed himself from the group after Newsweek contacted him. “I quickly forgot about the page and never saw it again. How exactly is this news?”
It’s really not news. Maybe if Crenshaw had engaged in the conspiracy theorizing or participated in racist discussions … but there’s no evidence he did any such thing. Posting two campaign videos and having his website posted there by someone else is hardly proof that he’s a bigot in nice-guy’s clothing. But the fact that Lavin is falling all over herself to defend a well documented anti-Semitic bigot — who has warm, fuzzy relationships with other well documented anti-Semitic bigots — to smear Crenshaw is evidence that Lavin’s every bit the garbage person we know her to be.
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Related:
Hot take: When did the memory of Sept. 11 become ‘sacred’ anyway, asks NYU journalism instructor
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