Rubin Demands Media ‘Stop Treating Republicans Like [They’re] Normal!’

Ex-Republican Jennifer Rubin is so far to the left these days that she feels compelled to lecture the liberal media on how they’re too soft on Republicans. The Washington Post columnist appeared on MSNBC Saturday to preach to the choir about how the media needs to adopt “new rules” and treat Republicans like pariahs.

Has she been living under a rock?

Guest hosting Saturday’s Velshi, MSNBC contributor Maria Teresa Kumar was talking about Democrats moving to censure Arizona Republican Paul Gosar over his violent anti-AOC tweet. This was just the launching pad to characterize all Republicans as bloodthirsty violent extremists. Their strong evidence? Parents standing up to radically left school boards.

How “fascist” of them!

Kumar teed up Rubin to wail about how the GOP has embraced its “autocratic tendencies” (click “expand”):

Jennifer, you are a Republican, correct me if I’m wrong, but then you also have Steve Schmidt who is a Republican no longer. David Jolly who is no longer. Bill Kristol who oftentimes corrects what Republicans are doing, And also George Will. You have a group of Republicans who are sounding the alarm that what is happening right now among the upper echelons of power and increasingly in the lower areas of elected government from school boards and so forth is asymmetrical to what the party stands for. How can we talk about what seems to be happening that is not only anti-democratic, but also has autocratic tendencies at the end of the day where you try to intimidate your fellow members across the aisle because they do not agree with you. Can you speak a little to that? 

Reminding Kumar she was an “ex-Republican” she sneered that the GOP has been “tacitly encouraging and rationalizing violence” for “years.” 

Rubin falsely complained that Republicans “whitewashed” the Jan. 6 riot, when actually Republicans did condemn the riot, which was a far cry from the endorsement or whitewashing the media and Democrats did towards Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots in 2020. 

And Rubin had no sympathy for parents angry at far-left school boards. She herself whitewashed the National School Boards Association together with Merrick Garland labeling parents as domestic terrorists to gripe about parent “temper tantrums”:

We have an explosion of threats of intimidation at local officials both school boards and voting officials. When the Attorney General of the United States says he intends to investigate it, you have an absolute temper tantrum from members of the Republicans senate [mocking] ‘How dare you question parents!’ It is not questioning parents, it’s holding people responsible for violent threats and violent action. 

Rubin then rallied the media to treat Republicans like fascist threats. “They have to stop treating Republicans like normal politicians,” she cried. Adding:

I have to say the mainstream media is part of this. They cover these issues and go right back to having Republicans on talk shows and asking them about other issues. Allowing them to air their phony grievances and rather than grilling them incessantly about why they tolerate this behavior. This is fascist behavior. This is what fascist regimes do. They use extra outside the bounds of reasonable democratic, small d, methods of getting their way. They intimidate, they threaten and use the threat of violence. This is absolutely intolerable. It has been going on for years now in the Republican party…

….I think you also have to have some new ground rules for the media. I think they have to stop treating Republicans like normal politicians. They are not normal politicians. This is not normal conduct. This is a party that spends its entire time cooking up these ridiculous cultural memes, fanning violence and coming up with outright lies.

Kumar agreed, even smearing the right as responsible for mass-murder:

Jennifer, what you are saying is absolutely right. We are living in asymmetrical times and we have to call it what it is. I think oftentimes people say they’re just words, but let’s not forget the Tree of Life tragedy was based on inspiration from the former president. What we saw in the El Paso massacre was inspiration from the former president that played out online and then went offline and to tragedy. So you are absolutely right. We have to start creating and talking about what is happening before someone does get hurt.

The media will bend over backwards to label all violence the right’s fault, even when inconvenient facts get in the way of their narrative, (such as the El Paso shooter being an eco-extremist.)

You can contact Velshi’s advertiser Liberty Mutual at the Conservatives Fight Back page linked.

Read the transcript below:

MSNBC’s Velshi
11/13/21
8:45:15 a.m. Eastern

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Joining me now is Jennifer Rubin, Washington post columnist and MSNBC contributor and the author of Resistance: How women saved democracy from Donald trump. I want to underscore that one, Jennifer, thank you for joining me right now. I want to ask you, this is the conversation that Jay Rosen spoke about in the New York Times in an opinion piece where he was mentioned, he was saying how the conversations we’re having among the Republican party are really so asymmetrical to what is currently happening. Jennifer, you are a Republican, correct me if I’m wrong, but then you also have Steve Schmidt who is a Republican no longer. David Jolly who is no longer. Bill Kristol who oftentimes corrects what Republicans are doing, And also George Will. You have a group of Republicans who are sounding the alarm that what is happening right now among the upper echelons of power and increasingly in the lower areas of elected government from schoolboards and so forth is asymmetrical to what the party stands for. How can we talk about what seems to be happening that is not only anti-democratic, but also has autocratic tendencies at the end of the day where you try to intimidate your fellow members across the aisle because they do not agree with you. Can you speak a little to that? 

JENNIFER RUBIN: Sure. I’m an ex-Republican, by the way. I left the party. 

KUMAR: [chuckling] I wanted to remind everyone. 

RUBIN: Just wanted to get that straight. Get that out there. The Republican party for a while now has been tacitly encouraging and rationalizing violence. You can go all the way back to the 2016 campaign when Donald Trump was out there encouraging his supporters to slug hecklers and critics and all the way through the presidency when he would joke to police officers about allowing them to rough up suspects. That continued all the way through January 6th to the point where now virtually  the entire Republican party is whitewashing that affair, um trying to downplay it. Now you have not only Gosar, but people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and other people who use violent imagery who intimate  violence will result if the elections don’t go their way. We have an explosion of threats of intimidation at local officials both school boards and voting officials. When the Attorney General of the United States says he intends to investigate it, you have an absolute temper tantrum from members of the Republicans senate [mocking] ‘How dare you question parents!’ It is not questioning parents, it’s holding people responsible for violent threats and violent action.  Why wasn’t the congress member interviewed by the Secret Service? Which is supposed to take serious even humorous, supposedly, pictorials of the attacks of the president or attacks on public officials. This is absolutely untenable. 

I have to say the mainstream media is part of this. They cover these issues and go right back to having Republicans on talk shows and asking them about other issues. Allowing them to air their phony grievances and rather than grilling them incessantly about why they tolerate this behavior. This is fascist behavior. This is what fascist regimes do. They use extra outside the bounds of reasonable democratic, small d, methods of getting their way. They intimidate, they threat and use the threat of violence. This is absolutely intolerable. It has been going on for years now in the Republican party. I think, number one, the House should do something about it. By the way, I think they might get a couple of Republican votes. Both Congresswoman [Liz] Cheney and Congressman Adam Kinzinger will go along with it which I think would be very healthy. 

I think you also have to have some new ground rules for the media. I think they have to stop treating Republicans like normal politicians. They are not normal politicians. This is not normal conduct. This is a party that spends its entire time cooking up these ridiculous cultural memes, fanning violence and coming up with outright lies. So where is the media–

KUMAR: Jennifer, what you are saying is absolutely right. We are living in asymmetrical times and we have to call it what it is. I think oftentimes people say they’re just words, but let’s not forget the Tree of Life tragedy was based on inspiration from the former president. What we saw in the El Paso massacre was inspiration from the former president that played out online and then went offline and to tragedy. So you are absolutely right. We have to start creating and talking about what is happening before someone does get hurt.