A Republican former lawmaker who suggested Obama supported Islamic State militants and urged voters to take up arms over a proposed energy tax is now blaming Comedy Central and a Shakespeare play for the shootings of two GOP congressmen.
Michele Bachmann -- who called on her constituents to become "armed and dangerous" over an emissions tax for energy production -- rebuked comedians, media personalities and political figures for inspiring an Illinois man with a history of domestic violence to shoot two lawmakers and three others.
"The assassination plot directed at Republican members of Congress Wednesday morning is proof positive of Trump Derangement Syndrome," Bachmann told WND. "The political left is more than unhinged; they have fallen into a dangerous delusion of their own making."
Republican majority whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX) were wounded Wednesday morning while practicing for a congressional baseball game, and two Capitol police officers and a legislative aide were also wounded.
"The assassin was a Bernie Sanders volunteer, Rachel Maddow fan, avid follower of Comedy Central and of Bill Maher," Bachmann said. "The [would-be] assassin obviously listened well to his TV political ‘teachers’ and took his ‘resist’ marching orders to an unthinkable level, based upon the hysterical, fact-deprived, profanity-laced ravings of the lunatic left."
She called for a production of William Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," which depicts the assassinated Roman emperor as a Trump-like figure, to be shut down after the mass shooting.
"The Trump assassination play in New York’s Central Park should close," Bachmann said.
During her time in Congress, Bachmann was known for outrageous political rhetoric.
"Really now in Washington, I’m a foreign correspondent in enemy lines, and I try to keep everyone back here in Minnesota know exactly the nefarious activities that are taking place in Washington," Bachmann said in 2009, during the debate over the cap-and-trade energy tax. "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing."
She helped promote and legitimize conspiracy theories questioning former President Barack Obama's birthplace, and she also suggested that he might be the antichrist and had "been the best friend of terrorists."
“The Obama doctrine has been to offer aid and comfort to our enemies while he has cut off our allies,” Bachmann said. “Everything that he has done has been to lift up the agenda of Islamic jihad. He has furthered Islamic jihad across the world, and we’ve never seen anything like this before.”
