Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich warned Tuesday that Reps. Maxine Waters and Rashida Tlaib are “radical demagogues” whose policies would “undermine the U.S. Constitution.”
Waters has encouraged “the rule of the mob over the rule of law” while “urging people to mobilize against the court and the police at a time of great tension,” Gingrich asserted, a clear violation of her responsibility to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution.
Moreover, Waters’ promotion of “confrontational” coercion to force society to render the result the mob wants creates “an immediate threat to public safety,” Gingrich noted.
He was referring to Waters’ trip to Minnesota this week and her statement that “we are looking for a guilty verdict” in the ongoing murder trial of Officer Derek Chauvin. Waters further said that if Chauvin is not found guilty of murdering George Floyd confrontation is in order.
“We’ve got to stay on the street, and we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business,” she said.
As bad and dangerous as Waters’ call for mob rule is, however, Tlaib’s call to abolish the police and close prisons may be worse still, Gingrich proposed.
If followed, her policies would produce “years of violence and predatory assault on the innocent” that would “utterly destroy the rule of law and eliminate public safety,” he said.
“No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed,” Tlaib tweeted, provoking Detroit’s police chief to call for her resignation.
Tlaib “was setting a standard that was not merely radical, it was insane,” Gingrich observed, especially given the spike in murders and violent crimes in 2020.
“In 2020, United States had the biggest increase in murders in history,” he observed.
In Tlaib’s home district, “the evidence is devastating,” Gingrich said. According to the City of Detroit’s 2020 Crime Report, there was 327 homicides in 2020 — up from 275 the previous year — or a 19 percent increase.
Non-fatal shootings in Detroit jumped an astounding 53 percent, from 767 in 2019 to 1,173 in 2020, he added.
Tlaib’s proposal to cease policing and close down prisons in the middle of this devastating violence “is beyond outrageous,” Gingrich said. It would lead to “thousands of victims of violent crime.”
“There should be real consequences for this kind of life endangering, society threatening irresponsibility,” he stated, and members of the House of Representatives should repudiate their pro-criminal, pro-mob rule positions by voting to remove them from the committees on which they serve.
There is a silver lining to Tlaib’s “anti-police, anti-prison, pro-criminal position” and Waters’ “call for mob rule to replace the rule of law,” Gingrich suggests.
For one, their radical proposals will draw attention to the “staggering and frightening rise in crime,” underscoring how every American “is now endangered by the anti-police, pro-criminal policies of the left,” he said.
It will also draw attention to “the kind of crazy ideas which now pass for legitimate policy proposals on the radical left,” he added, something most Americans are unaware of.
“Because crime and violence are going to continue to rise under the pro-criminal, pro-illegal immigration, anti-police policies of the Biden administration,” he said, “these issues of the innocent versus the criminal will continue to grow in importance.”
“This is beyond politics,” Gingrich concluded. “This is about insisting that members of Congress do not promote mob rule or work to make America less safe.”
“It is about insisting that our leaders protect and defend the US Constitution and act in America’s best interest as they have sworn to do,” he said.