Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 187
Bad Instincts
Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) told CNN the Republican party was a “cult” and President Trump is a “would-be dictator.”
Said Walsh: “I’ve given up on the Republican Party, the Republican Party is a cult, right. They no longer stand for ideals. The Republican Party right now is all about washing their leaders’ feet every day, that’s what they do.”
Joe Walsh, the former congressman who’s challenging President Trump in the Republican presidential primary, told CNN that he lost his popular radio show and had just received notice before arriving to the studio for the sit-down.
Joe Walsh, who has announced a Republican primary challenge to President Trump, was among the high-profile U.S. political figures ensnared by Sacha Baron Cohen last year when he was convinced to speak “about the benefits of teaching children as young as preschoolers how to use guns in what was, unbeknown to them, a fictional program,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Walsh in the video: “The intensive three-week Kinderguardian course introduces specially selected children from 12 to 4 years old to pistols, rifles, semiautomatics and a rudimentary knowledge of mortars. In less than a month — less than a month — a first-grader can become a first grenade-er.”
Walsh then provides the clincher at the end of the video: “Happy shooting, kids.”
“As a Trump supporter I do my best not to pay attention to what he says. If I pulled my hair out for every nutty thing he said, I’d be bald.”
— Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), in an interview on MSNBC.
Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) told Yahoo News that he merely was “talking metaphorically” when he tweeted “I’m grabbing my musket” if Donald Trump loses the election and not about actual violence.
Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) told the Chicago Sun Times that Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), “recovering from a stroke, has to show voters he is physically ‘capable’ to keep doing the job.”
Said Walsh: “I think that myself and any Republican voter in this state has questions about Sen. Kirk’s health, similar to if he were running a business and we’d want to know that he’s in condition to run that business… I think it’s up to him to provide whatever medical information he needs to provide to show that he’s capable of doing this job, that’s all.”
Walsh also said he’s mulling a Republican primary challenge of Kirk.
Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) told The Hill that he is considering a challenge to Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL).
Said Walsh: “I am very seriously considering challenging him in a primary. Mark Kirk has got to be challenged.”
“The one-term lawmaker isn’t backing off his inflammatory comments that made him a conservative star, though, as he weighs a quixotic comeback bid… Walsh has since built a local following in the Chicago area with his conservative talk show — and if anything has upped the controversy level with a string of racially charged comments in the past few years.”
Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) said that his social media post calling for Islamic terrorists to “behead the cowards at CNN, MSNBC” and other news outlets was “satire,” TPM reports.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.