Trump, in an announcement, praised Gosar as "a loyal supporter of our America First agenda" and "highly respected in Arizona," and announced he "has my Complete and Total Endorsement!" The statement made no mention of the House's rare rebuke — only the fourth in almost 40 years — which further stripped Gosar of his two committee assignments, on the Natural Resources and the Oversight and Reform panels.
Gosar has announced the video, which was produced by his taxpayer-funded office, had been mischaracterized and was not meant to be a threat. In addition to Ocasio-Cortez, the video further depicted Gosar's character attacking President Joe Biden with swords.
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Gosar is no stranger to controversy. He's made appearances at right-wing fringe events, including a meeting in Florida last February hosted by a man who has advanced white supremacist views, and earlier this year looked to form an America First Caucus with other hard-line Republican House members; that aimed to promote "Anglo-Saxon political traditions."
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Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, in the meantime, has called the censure an "abuse of power" by Democrats and signaled payback should Republicans retake the House majority next year.
Many say that the Democrats' decision to censure Gosar — with support from only two anti-Trump Republicans — is about so much more than an animated video.
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It's about an anything-goes society on the Hill in which conduct that would get any office worker discharged — posting a video showing him killing a colleague — is considered acceptable by one side.
It's about open hostility and mistrust between the two parties in the House, and using any available weapon, procedural or otherwise, to hurt the opposition.
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And it's of the perpetual vow of payback, with Kevin McCarthy flatly stating that his party will exact revenge from the Democrats if, as seems overwhelmingly plausible, the GOP wins the House next year.
"Mr. Gosar, who is 63 years old but acts like a teenager on TikTok, deserves ridicule more than censure, which should be reserved for serious offenses," the Wall Street Journal editorial page states.
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Gosar revealed his defiance by retweeting the edited Japanese anime an hour after the House beat him for that very video.
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What was striking regarding watching McCarthy and other Republicans who supported Gosar is that they mainly wanted to talk of anything else. They rattled off all the problems facing the nation. They criticized Democrats who had said or done objectionable things, from Ilhan Omar's past anti-Semitic remarks to Eric Swalwell having once had a relationship with a Chinese woman now suspected of being a spy ("sleeping with the enemy").
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