The Hill
13 hrs ·
Ammon Bundy, the rancher at the center of a 2016 standoff with the government at an Oregon wildlife preserve, is leaving the militia movement after tearing into current the current rhetoric of "hate, and fear, and almost warmongering" by the group and President Trump.
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Ammon Bundy leaves militia movement after ripping Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric
Ammon Bundy, the rancher at the center of a 2016 standoff with the government at an Oregon wildlife preserve, said he is leaving the militia movement after criticizing President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Can't make this up.
Right wing hero torpedoes his movement by making an informed statement.
What's his endgame here?
I refuse to believe he suddenly sprung a conscience.
I think it's legit. I went on his facebook after he made the comments when all of his old fans were going in on him, and he was responding to every damn hater. His responses were totally sincere and sounded like someone who knew what the fukk they were talking about.
It really surprised me. Some people are idiot a$$holes on one topic just because they're super self-interested or totally blinded by a particular ideology. I always thought he was some sort of idiot, but now he strikes me as just someone whose father has driven him into obsession over one particular idiotic crusade, but he can actually have informed, independent viewpoints on other shyt.
Shapiro is an idiot on a lot of topics, but his race commentary has to be the absolute worst. I have never gotten the impression that he has ever learned ANYTHING about racial issues. He just started off with the bullshyt conservative dogma and then filters absolutely everything he hears through that lens.
Can't make this up.
Right wing hero torpedoes his movement by making an informed statement.
What's his endgame here?
I refuse to believe he suddenly sprung a conscience.
I think it's legit. I went on his facebook after he made the comments when all of his old fans were going in on him, and he was responding to every damn hater. His responses were totally sincere and sounded like someone who knew what the fukk they were talking about.
It really surprised me. Some people are idiot a$$holes on one topic just because they're super self-interested or totally blinded by a particular ideology. I always thought he was some sort of idiot, but now he strikes me as just someone whose father has driven him into obsession over one particular idiotic crusade, but he can actually have informed, independent viewpoints on other shyt.
Nope he's not legit. He's just Mormon. They have a cognitive dissonance between their racial bigotry and immigration views.
He said the only real announcement he had made was that he was unplugging from Facebook, after being surprised by the angry response to his remarks on the caravan. His decision to speak out came after his views were solicited on the issue, and sought to do some research to figure out how he felt about it, he said.
“I was asked multiple times from different various individuals what I thought about these caravans, and I didn’t know, to be honest with you, I didn’t know the facts,” he said. “So I began to research and try to determine the facts.”
His verdict on the caravan, which he delivered in a 17-minute video at the time, broke sharply with Trump-aligned orthodoxy on the issue. In the run up to the midterm elections, Trump repeatedly disparaged the caravan as an “invasion,” a national security threat requiring the emergency deployment of thousands of military troops.
“The facts were rejected,” Bundy told The Post. “I could only see that 99 percent of it was that same Trump rhetoric of calling all these people terrorists. And they’d pick out an isolated issue, and go ‘oh look 40 of them are charging the border so all 5,000 of them are bad. . . . These refugees are not all the same. They didn’t come from the same places. They didn’t even come from the same country.”
He also acknowledged the violence migrants are fleeing: “The conditions in Honduras factually are terrible … Many of the refugees have testified that they had lost a husband or a mother or a brother or a sister or children and that they’ve been threatened.”
He said some anti-immigrant arguments are “fear-based” and “based upon selfishness”.
“He has basically called them all criminals and said they’re not coming in here. It seems that there’s been this group stereotype,” Bundy said in a 17-minute clip. “But what about those who have come here for reasons of need? … What about the fathers, the mothers, the children, who have come here and are willing to go through the process to apply for asylum so they can come into this country and benefit from not having to be oppressed continually by criminals?”
“We have been asked by God to help, to be welcoming, to assist strangers; to not vex them,” Bundy tells the camera. “And one way I can think immediately is, this country is in a labor crisis. Our labor workforce is so minimal that every employer will tell you that they cannot find the employees needed to fill the positions in their businesses. … And yet now we have thousands of people willing to come in here, and it appears … that they’re willing to work. … My family would love to sponsor a couple of their families.”
“I have been frankly surprised, disappointed, and even at times disgusted the amount of people who profess to be Christians, but will not truly adhere to what Christ said,” he said.
“I really question his doctrine ever since he started it about building a wall,” Bundy, 72, told the Guardian on Wednesday. “I don’t like walls. I think we oughta be able to get along with neighbors … Trump’s wall never did sit very good with me.”
“Are they good people or bad people? If they’re good people looking for refuge, we’re Americans and we should have a heart and we should try to help them,” he said, noting the harrowing journeys some have probably taken. “How much suffering and effort are they putting forth to get to our border? They are after some freedom and liberty and a better life.”
Cliven, however, said it was “hard to tell what the truth is” and referenced unsubstantiated reports that migrants could be earning payments to be part of the caravan. Trump and other Republicans have repeated baseless claims that Democrats were funding the migrants, and Ammon acknowledged these falsehoods on the “conservative side”.
Cliven said he believed migrants should have an opportunity to apply for asylum.
“Are they really refugees or are they really criminals? … We need to settle down and sort them out,” he said. “We can take care of a few thousand people for a few days.”
Cliven emphasized that borders and national sovereignty were important to him and that the use of weapons could be justified in some cases: “That is the United States’ job to protect our borders. If they have to use teargas, I hope they don’t have to and I hope they wouldn’t do it.”
The Bundys are Mormons, and the father and son both referenced faith in their commentary about migrants.
“We are sort of a worldwide church. We do believe that all of the people on this earth are Heavenly Father’s children,” said Cliven, noting that there are Mexican members of the Mormon church. “We do believe we’re equal, and we oughta be treated equal and not be divided.”
Cliven said he also thought Trump’s proposed border wall, a signature part of the 2016 campaign, would be largely pointless.
“They can’t build a wall to stop people … I don’t think it’s going to do any good,” he said, adding, “We have an obligation between both countries to deal with each other, and we are neighbors … Those refugees who are coming from far south, I think we gotta deal with them. I don’t think they’re that big of a problem.”
Cliven, who was infamously caught on camera in 2014 referring to black Americans as “the negro”, and questioning whether they were “better off as slaves”, said he had learned a lot about the unfairness of the US prison system.
“There’s a pretty good percentage of people that shouldn’t be in jail,” he said. “They are making money off of prisoners … It’s a bureaucracy instead of the justice system.”
He said he was perplexed by America’s high rates of incarceration: “We are supposed to be the freeest nation in the world … I was in jail with several thousand people. I’ve seen a lot of good people in there. The smartest people in this nation might be incarcerated in their jails.”