Fascist Goons Disrupt Katie Porter Town Hall, Welcome To Post-January 6 GOP Politics

But maybe Porter incited the violence just by being there.

On Sunday, rightwing goons showed up to a town hall event held by Democratic Rep. Katie Porter at a park in Irvine, California. Led by Nick Taurus, a self-described "American Nationalist" with a history of political thuggery, who's running a decidedly fascist-toned campaign against Porter, about 30 people showed up to heckle and interrupt the town hall, which had been billed as a "family-friendly" chance to hear from the congresswoman and ask her questions.

It was Porter's first in-person town hall since the pandemic, and was attended by about 300 people, including families with children, the Los Angeles Times reports. Porter, who touted the start of monthly payments from the Child Tax Credit she helped to include in the American Rescue Plan, noted that as a mother of three kids herself, she'd wanted to be sure the event accommodated families. Staffers at the town hall handed out "popcorn, snow cones and pocket copies of the Constitution" to kids in the crowd, and we're sure more than one young politics nerd in the bunch were thrilled to get all three.

And then Taurus and his brownshirts started heckling Porter, for America. In an Instagram post Thursday, Taurus had invited his followers to "CONFRONT KATIE PORTER!" and called her "a far-left ideologue supported by Bay Area academics, the billionaire class and foreign lobbies!" and to "DEFEAT THE GLOBALISTS!"

The Orange County Register reports that about 20 minutes into the event, the group

hurled personal insults at the congresswoman, witnesses told the Register. That's when men from the two camps clashed, with several people knocked down and a shade canopy broken.

Following the fracas, a 51-year-old Porter supporter was cited and released; police say he punched one of the protesters and gave him a bloody nose. See, Democrats are violent monsters, beating up on peaceful fascists who simply want to exercise their right to shout down a member of Congress and scream personal insults about her children:  

Before Porter started speaking Sunday, attendee Bethany Gilboard, 67, of Laguna Woods saidTaurus and his group of around 30 people were waving Trump flags and yelling insults at the congresswoman.

"It wasn't just policy disagreement," Gilboard said, recalling some protestors yelling about Porter's past as a survivor of domestic abuse and saying "some really horrible stuff about her kids."

Another witness, Viann Corbin, said that while Porter was talking about childcare and the new Child Tax Credit, one of the protesters yelled something about Planned Parenthood, which we bet really proved Porter doesn't actually care about kids at all because she wants to abort them all.

Corbin said she then saw several men push each other and knock each other down. Video shows that Porter stopped speaking at that point and rushed toward the fight, wrapping her arm around an elderly woman who was near the clash.

Yes, she ran toward the trouble to protect people. She's even a hero when she doesn't have her white board handy. Porter told MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Monday night that she was worried for the safety of a couple of attendees "who were using walkers, who couldn't move out of the way," and that she simply wanted to be sure they weren't knocked over while police were on the way.

Porter added that the outbreak of violence was "disappointing and scary, especially for families and seniors," and said that after the January 6 attacks, "it's hard to feel safe in Washington right now and now it's hard to feel safe in Irvine."

Police broke up the scuffles after about a minute; the Irvine Police Department said five officers had been assigned to the town hall, and eight more arrived after being called to assist. (Then some idiot on Twitter almost certainly said "I thought you socialists wanted to defund them!!!" and felt very clever.)

After the troublemakers were taken away from the town hall, Porter continued it, and reporters started digging into what a bold fresh specimen of humanity this Nick Taurus is. Surprise! He likes to pose like some kind of fascist strongman! 

And how about his campaign announcement? Taurus explained that Porter's "far-left politics" and the "spinelessness" of the Orange County Republican establishment had "left the citizens of our great district under siege!" Not that there's anything at all coincidental about the decidedly martial tone of his announcement:

So today is our opening salvo. No longer will AMERICANS bow to the billionaires, anti-White extremists and the GAY mafia. No longer will we kowtow, tap dance and grovel to the whims of the Left. In the words of our great President Donald J. Trump "From this day forward, it is going to be only AMERICA FIRST!" Let's get to Washington! Christ, Country, Community!

Gosh, that's a catchy alliterative slogan. I guess "Kinder, Küche, Kirche" was already taken. He explains the slogan further on his campaign site, noting that Katie Porter and the Left are literally "harnessing the power of academia, the corporations and other agents of Satan to destroy the United States," which sounds pretty bad all right.

While he's at it, he insists that REAL America was founded in 1776, not 1619, and just to underline the point, he invokes the beauty of whiteness and cites the single most racist line in the Declaration of Independence, noting that America is all about destroying and subjugating inferior beings:

The United States of America is a nation ensconced in the Anglo-Saxon political tradition extending back to the Magna Carta. Our nation is one of conquerors, explorers and settlers, who forged a nation from a wilderness, crossing an unforgiving continent populated by warlike Indian tribes, foreign empires and an unprecedented assortment of wild beasts.

Nothing fashy there, he simply wants One Country, One Folk, and One Leader, Donald Trump.

Oliver Willis has found a real smorgasbord of far-Right bloviating and lies in Taurus's social media, including several anti-gay comments, as well as posts insisting that George Floyd's convicted murderer, Derek Chauvin, was railroaded, the poor guy.

In a post using the hashtag "#CHAUVINDIDNOTHINGWRONG," Taurus wrote , "Black people are so oppressed in America that their families receive millions in settlement money despite using counterfeit bills & resisting arrest (George Floyd) or selling drugs and hiding bodies in their car (Breonna Taylor)." [...]

Taurus also claimed in another post, "The level of violence perpetrated by Blacks in our inner cities on a normal day exceeds anything done by supposed 'White Supremacists.'"

Not surprisingly, Taurus is running on a platform of banning all immigration for 25 years, banning "critical race theory" (which he calls "anti-White Racism"), and freeing all January 6 attackers because they're political prisoners.

He's also a great admirer of white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes:

In the caption of a selfie with Fuentes he posted on June 30, Taurus wrote , "This guy is the truth and it was an absolute honor to meet him! AMERICA FIRST IS INEVITABLE!" The slogan "America First is inevitable" has been used by Fuentes and his white supremacist allies as a rallying cry.

Taurus has also lied about the coronavirus vaccine, because how can you be a credible Republican candidate without falsely insisting it has killed as many Americans as died in the Iraq War, and that getting the vaccine will apparently turn you into Waylon Smithers in a Devo parody:

You might also be interested in this thread collecting numerous videos showing Taurus attacking people at various events last year.

Well gosh, the OC Republican establishment must be just horrified by this guy, huh? After Taurus claimed in a video Sunday night that a representative of the OC GOP had invited him and his group to please go attend Porter's town hall and "press" her about what she's doing in Congress, a party spox emailed the Register to explain that sure, the party wants all constituents to

be engaged in the democratic process which includes encouraging attendance at townhall events where they can hold their representatives accountable. That is critical to our democracy.

However, the email went on, it's also very important to hold these "policy discussions in a peaceful and respectful manner."

So we guess Taurus's claim about the OC party lacking a spine is pretty on the nose, if it issues a mealy-mouthed statement like that, the end.

[ OC Register / LAT / American Independent / Crooks & Liars / NBC News ]

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