OPINION:
The Democratic Party’s Ted Lieu, lawmaker from California, said he was so upset at the recent shootings of Texas church-goers that he couldn’t even stand to stay on the House floor to take part in the somber moment of silence.
He walked out.
That’s right — he took his sorry, grandstanding, self-aggrandizing self and left the floor, mid-moment of silence.
And then he ran to Facebook to explain his supposed heartfelt angst that drove him to flee. In a video.
He cut a video of himself to explain why he couldn’t stay for a moment to honor the victims and families of victims of the mass shooting in Texas.
Can you say tone deaf? How about selfish S.O.B.?
“My colleagues right now are doing a moment of silence in the House of Representatives’ chambers,” he said, The Hill noted. “I respect their right to do that and I myself have participated in many of them. But I can’t do this again, I’ve been to too many moments of silences. In just my short period in Congress, three of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history have occurred. I will not be silent.”
Right. Apparently, he will not be respectful, either — no, not even for a moment.
Not when there’s gun control to be passed.
“Pass gun safety legislation now,” he said, ostensibly to his fellow congressional colleagues. “I urge us to pass reasonable gun safety legislation, including a universal background check law supported by 80 percent of Americans, a ban on assault rifles and a ban on bump stocks. We need to do that, we cannot be silent. We need to act now.”
Now, right now, while the moment of silence — by definition, a blink of time — is commencing.
Talk about a face slap.
Talk about disrespect.
Lieu took a simple and normally uncontroversial courtesy and turned it into a tool for his own political will. And that’s a stain on his office — on the Democratic Party — that won’t disappear any time soon.
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