John Avlon Compares Citizen's Arrest Of Karl Rove To Domestic Terrorism Of Hutaree Militia

Avlon Compares Citizen's Arrest Of Karl Rove To Domestic Terrorism Of Hutaree Militia

By CSPANJunkie Sunday Apr 04, 2010 9:00am



Former Chief Speechwriter and Deputy Policy Director for Rudy Giuliani's 2008 Presidential Campaign John Avlon in another one of his false equivalency Wingnuts segments compares the attempted citizen's arrest of Karl Rove by Code Pink to the Hutaree militia planning to attack and kill law enforcement officers and their families.

CHETRY: So, let's start with wingnuts on the left this week. You're calling out a group that we saw a lot of during the George W. Bush administration, anti-war group, Code Pink. What happened this time?

AVLON: That's exactly right. Code Pink sort of blasts from the past, engaging in the kind of street theater confrontational tactics this time at a book signing by Karl Rove, former Bush advisor, in Beverly Hills. They tried to do a citizens arrest and it was all caught on tape.

CHETRY: And a little bit of what happened, and how Rove was able to get in what you call the best line of the night. Here's a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Look what did you, you outed a CIA officer. You lied to take to us to war. You ruined the country.

KARL ROVE, FMR. BUSH ADVSIOR: Here's the deal --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The only comfort I take is that you're going to rot in hell.

ROVE: With all due respect, this goes to show the totalitarianism of the left. They don't believe in -- they don't believe in dialogue. They don't believe in courtesy. They don't believe in First Amendment rights for anybody but themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: They don't believe in First Amendments for anybody but themselves, and Karl Rove dissing what he called the totalitarianism of the left.

But really, I mean, this is classic wingnut stuff. It's great theater, politics of confrontation and these ugly, ugly accusations, rot in the hell.

ROBERTS: All right. What about the wingnuts on the right?

AVLON: The wingnut on the rights -- a whole different breed, ladies and gentlemen. You know, earlier this week, we saw the arrests of the Hutaree militia group in Michigan.

This is a real deep strayed wingnut, kind of off-the-bridge stuff. Its leader David Stone convinced several members of his family and others to take military training and most important, most crucially, a plot allegedly to kill law enforcement officer and detonate an IED during his funeral procession to set off a civil war inside the United States.

Transcript via CNN.