BREAKING: Radio shock jock won’t be Allen West’s chief of staff, claims ‘electronic lynching by proxy’
Radio host Joyce Kaufman and Congressman-elect Allen West
Right wing talk radio host Joyce Kaufman told her listeners Thursday that she telephoned Congressman elect Allen West Wednesday night and informed him that she would not accept a job as his chief of staff.
“I owe you an explanation, and I owe Congressman West a statement,” Kaufman told listeners before making the announcement during her noon to 3 p.m. show on WFTL-850 AM in Fort Lauderdale.
The withdrawal follows an outcry over comments Kaufman has made in the past, calling for the hanging of illegal immigrants, and saying if the election did not go West and Republicans’ way, her followers should get out their “gun cartridges.” Among her statements at a July 4 tea party rally for West: “If ballots don’t work, bullets will.”
Saying she was proud of West’s accomplishment in getting elected in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District, Kaufman said she was withdrawing because of what she called “vile” attacks on her by unnamed enemies, which she said were designed to hurt West.
“I will not be complicit in this effort to diminish his stature [through] attacks against me,” Kaufman told her listeners. “I will not allow myself to be defined by others. I return to my program on WFTL And as I have always believed, I’m in God’s hands.”
Kaufman, who is half-Puerto Rican and half Jewish, even played the race card in her denunciation of those who have criticized her comments.
“I will not be used in an electronic lynching by proxy,” she said during the show. “The insanity of using a Hispanic woman to lynch a black American Army hero elected to congress — what they’re trying to do is bring down Congressman-elect Allen West. They’re not fooling me, and they’re certainly not fooling you. they are vile, they could care less that an election was won fair and square, they’re bitter.”
The comments are ironic, given Kaufman’s history of anti-immigrant rhetoric, which prompted an Hispanic Republican group to denounce her and call for West not to make her his chief of staff.
She said that West is “going to be under perpetual attack, and you know, he and I knew that, and that was one of the reasons why he thought I’c make a great chief of staff, because I told him they’re gonna come at you; you’re gonna need a close friend, you’re gonna need someone who tells you the truth.”
Kaufman brushed off her past incendiary comments, saying “they” — apparently meaning media outlets like MSNBC, which reported on her comments, have falsely ascribed her views to West.
“Sometimes I say things that I wish I had said differently,” she said before announcing her withdrawal from West’s staff, “and that get people in trouble. I think that’s part of my charm.”
She claimed that she is a “peace loving person,” and said her past statements were only intended to encourage people to vote.
And she blamed “Saul Alinsky tactics” for “emails from individual nut-jobs” like the person who sent a threatening email, addressed to Kaufman, to the radio station on Wednesday, which caused a shut-down of schools throughout Broward County. Tantalizingly, Kaufman said the threat came from someone “who’s not even from our community.” Local police and the FBI are investigating the threat.
“I’ve done a lot of unexpected things int he last seven days that have impacted this company profoundly,” Kaufman said. And she praised her station, where she will continue as a talk radio host. “Many of the bigger conglomerates out there would have cut me loose.”
“Most people understand that I am exactly who I said I was and I am nothing like what people said I was,” Kaufman said, lashing out an unnamed opponents. “They have an agenda, they are relentless, they are not very nice. They don’t care who they hurt or how many people they hurt to further their agenda. It’s one thing for me to take their arrows. I’m bulletproof. But it’s another thing for people who did not choose to get in the line of fire.”
They may think this is a win, but the victory is ours,” she said. “They’re going to have to find another way to bring him down, and it won’t work.
UPDATE: In comments after stepping aside, Kaufman also called the media “vermin” and said “attacks” on her were an example of racism against West, because he is a black conservative. She said the media lied about her allegedly inciting violence, and called the media “evil.”
Kaufman’s cries of racism are part of a pattern on the right, in which media highlighting statements by conservatives are decried as racist. Recently a blogger for incendiary online host Andrew Breitbart condemned Politico for highlighting West at all:
Naturally, the confusion comes from one of Andrew Breitbart’s race-obsessed bloggers [emphasis added]:
Certainly, the election of two Black Republicans to Congress should be a welcome sign of advancement to the self-described chaperones of minority interests, especially since Allen West and Tim Scott were elected in the Deep South (Florida and South Carolina respectively). But as they continue to demonstrate again and again, the far left’s pining for “diversity” ends where political thought begins. Consider Politico’s recent attempt to smear West, a retired Army Colonel, as a right-wing version of the despicable and shameless Alan Grayson.
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9 Responses to “BREAKING: Radio shock jock won’t be Allen West’s chief of staff, claims ‘electronic lynching by proxy’”
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Electronic lynching? She’s into Clarence Thomas’ playbook.
A clear victory for George Soros.
She’s just a poor, beleaguered Hispanic woman trying to protect a Black man from lynching, donchaknow… and those “them” are such not nice people!
For such a flame thrower, she’s actually very thin skinned. Another few days and this story would have gone away; with 435 members of Congress, who really pays attention to who their chiefs of staff are?
I certainly would have kept on paying attention to Kaufman and West. We should also be paying attention to her station, its advertisers and just how much violence is incited there. A few months ago I was driving in Georgia and had a station on where the sponsor of a local right-wing talk show was a gun shop that came on with a rant against Obama, urging people to buy weapons. For what? Yes, for What? You know what’s in their hearts though they can’t quite say it because they know they’ll go to hell. Hell.
This is freedom of speech taken well beyond the rule against shouting Fire in a crowded theater. There are laws against inciting violence. We can debate economics and health care but it’s hard if the other side is demonstrably packing.
In truth, plenty of Republicans were concerned about West’s choice of Kaufman, as well. Can’t imagine her in the same building as Barney Frank.
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Kaufman is a beleaguered Hispanic? She is Hispanic? She could have fooled me!
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