'Outrageous rhetoric': Maryland governor blasts fellow Republicans for 'defund the FBI' proposals
After the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, August 8, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called for the federal government to “defund the FBI” and “dismantle the DOJ” — and her rhetoric has been echoed by other far-right MAGA Republicans and supporters of former President Donald Trump. But one conservative non-MAGA Republican who is adamantly opposed to defunding the FBI or dismantling the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. During a Sunday, August 14 appearance on ABC News’ “This Week,” Hogan forcefully called out the MAGA Republicans who have been demonizing the FBI since the Mar-a-Lago search.
“Defund the FBI” is Greene’s version of “defund the police,” a slogan that left-wing activists unveiled in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The ironic part about Greene saying “Defund the FBI” is that “defund the police” is a slogan that right-wing media pundits have been using to attack the Democratic Party, although truth be told, “defund the police” is a slogan used by street activists — not part of the official Democratic Party platform. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York City Mayor Eric Adams (a former police officer), and former Philadelphia Mayor Mike Nutter are among the many Democrats who have stressed that they are adamantly opposed to defunding the police. And the Rev. Al Sharpton, the liberal activist who hosts “Politics Nation” on MSNBC, has said that while he supports “reforming the police,” he is opposed to defunding the police.
Hogan, during his “This Week” appearance, stressed that anti-police rhetoric is “dangerous” whether it’s coming from the left or right. The Maryland governor, a moderate conservative along the lines of the late Sen. John McCain or former New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman, complained, “First, we had the left talking about defunding the police and attacking police officers, and now, we have these federal law enforcement officers. And it's absurd…. It’s outrageous rhetoric."
Hogan added that “there are threats all over the place” following the Mar-a-Lago search and that “losing faith in our federal law enforcement officers and our justice system…. is a really serious problem.”
On August 8, far-right Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, a MAGA Republican, tweeted, “The FBI has proven time and again that it is corrupt to the core. At what point do we abolish the Bureau and start over?” But this is the same Jeff Duncan who, on June 8, 2020, tweeted, “It’s a sad and scary day in America when we have citizens calling to defund and dismantle the police. This dangerous call to action would NOT make our communities safer. It would only weaken law & order and cause far more chaos than we’ve already seen.”
On August 11, Greene tweeted, “Our government has become an institution that protects and serves the elites, while the people suffer under the America last ruling class. We must defund the FBI, dismantle the DOJ, and gut the agencies of political biases and persecutions. I believe in the people.”
Conservative but not MAGA or far-right, Hogan is a two-term Republican governor in a deep blue state that President Joe Biden won by 33 percent in 2020. Because of Maryland’s gubernatorial term limits, Hogan cannot seek reelection in the 2022 midterms — and author Wes Moore, Maryland’s 2022 Democratic gubernatorial nominee, is up against GOP nominee Dan Cox, a far-right conspiracy theorist who Hogan has been vehemently critical of and slammed as a “QAnon whack job.”
Watch Hogan's "This Week" appearance below or at this link.
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