A two-year old video of NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch seemingly advocating violence against reporters has resurfaced after Thursday’s deadly shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, MD.
Loesch, in 2016, said journalists were “the rat bastards of the earth” and seems to say she would be “happy, frankly, to see them curb-stomped.” Loesch, however, says the video, which was tweeted by writer and civil rights activist Shaun King, was taken out of context.
“Feel free to get the entire video, not 46 seconds, wherein I discussed a series of debunked reports & say I was pleased that they, the stories, were ‘curb stomped,’ Loesch wrote to King. “You don’t get to exploit the tragedy of a psycho-stalker who took his obsession with a woman out on an innocent newspaper staff out on me over a rhetorical phrase used several years ago.”
The clip begins with the “curb stomp” comment and then segues into Loesch’s grievances with the media.
“These people are just the worst thing that could ever possibly happen to the American political system right now with the way that they cover so many things,” she says in a segment that aired on NRA TV. “Nobody gets a fair shake on policy, no one gets a fair shake where it concerns immigration. They conflate illegal and legal immigration. … I have so many things that I hate about mainstream media, there is no way we are going to fit it in the allotted time today. They are the rat bastards of the earth. They are the boil on the backside of American politics.”
Https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/1012564791561457665
Feel free to get the entire video, not 46 seconds, wherein I discussed a series of debunked reports & say I was pleased that they, the stories, were “curb stomped.” But you had to insist I was discussing people. I’m not like you, @ShaunKing. I don’t encourage or excuse violence. Https://t.co/IWZQA5jsT1
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) June 29, 2018
Loesch has had an especially high profile recently as the NRA has come under increased criticism amid a recent slate of fatal shootings. After the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, several majorcompanies cut ties with the group.