Jeff Stier, a senior fellow at the National Center For Public Policy Research, couldn’t believe his ears Tuesday night when he appeared on Thom Hartmann‘s show on RT America.
At the 25:25 mark, Hartmann, a liberal, said there hasn’t been any lefty violence in America since The Weather Underground Organization, a radical left group that instituted a campaign of bombings in the mid-70s.
And then on Wednesday we all woke up to a madman — a lefty and rabid anti-Republican — shooting GOP lawmakers in a quaint baseball field in Alexandria, Va.
“Even up until last night, on @RT_America, the left was denying their role in political violence, ” Stier remarked on Twitter.
The senior fellow spoke to The Daily Caller‘s Mirror blog Wednesday about his appearance on RT America.
“I had a very unique experience last night to be on a left-wing TV show [only] to be told the right is inciting violence,” Stier told me by phone. “My view is that is not acceptable. It happens on both sides. The host denies it. And then, unfortunately, we woke up to what we woke up to this morning. I was in shock. My point was, it’s both sides and it’s wrong.”
Asked for specific examples of lefty violence, Stier said, “While it is not my area of expertise, to the extent that there are threats from the right, there are threats from the left. Mayor [Bill] de Blasio supported the honoring of a terrorist from Puerto Rico. They thought it would be a good idea for him to not just march, but honor him.”
Stier believes attacks like the congressional baseball shootings should not be politicized. He wanted to get the word out about what happened on Hartmann’s program because he thought media consumers might not be aware of what the host said.
“I’m thinking no one is going to see it,” he said. “RT, whatever.”
He added, “I tweeted at Thom Hartmann. He’s in denial. Facts don’t matter. When you’re trying to make the outrageous argument that the right is responsible for acts of violence and the left isn’t, obviously he’s [Hartmann] not going to let that get in his way.”
Asked if he’d go on Hartmann’s show again, he readily replied in the affirmative.
“I’m looking forward to going on,” he said. “I’m hoping he invites me on tonight to call him out on this. I hope he has the courage to. I think there are partisans on both sides that lack courage. I don’t blame Republicans for alt-Right stuff. And I don’t blame the left when some crazy person on the left does it.”
But Stier doesn’t exactly love going on the show.
“He’s a radical left winger and I’m a free market libertarian,” he said. “He talks over me, so I don’t love going on but [my publicist] Judy tells me to, so I do. Last night was just …. WOW. The timing is just bizarre.”
Stier said TV broadcasters and pundits need to be careful about what they say.
“Our words do have an impact,” he said. “People need to be accountable on what they say. I would like to see us scale back that type of rhetoric so we can address policy debates.”