Rawstory:
A little-noticed YouTube video of a recent town hall meeting with Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley reveals the Senator gave a strikingly anemic reply to a man who compared Barack Obama to genocidal Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and made an implied threat against the president.
“The President of the United States,” said Tom Eisenhower, who claimed to be a World War II veteran. “That’s who you should be concerned about today … Because he’s acting like a little Hitler.”
He added that he would “take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me,” according to a report in the Pocahontas, Iowa newspaper The Messenger.
By his words, he seemed to be advocating something much stronger than a protest. Some in the audience applauded. One man booed.
The video below distorts the audio in portions of the man’s statement, but he apparently made reference to the “death panel” myth, suggesting he would be told to die after he “hit 80.”
Update: Brady Campaign chastises Sen. Grassley for ignoring veiled threat
The Brady Campaign, an activist gun control organization named for James Brady, President Ronald Regan’s press secretary who was shot in the head during an assassination attempt, is not at all happy with Sen. Grassley.
From the Iowa Independent:
“It was a credit to the senator’s audience that they booed Mr. Eisenhower, but Sen. Grassley also has a responsibility as an elected official to categorically denounce Mr. Eisenhower’s statement and the sentiment behind it,” said Doug Pennington, assistant director of communications for Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Grassley may not have taken the threat seriously, Pennington said, since Eisenhower appears to be a senior citizen.
“Yet we recently saw 88 year-old James W. von Brunn shoot and kill a security officer at the Holocaust Memorial Museum here in Washington, DC,” he said. “Sen. Grassley should have taken Mr. Eisenhower and his words very seriously.”
This video is from YouTube, uploaded Aug. 24, 2009
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