Stupid Politician of the Week:
Sinema Mocks Arizona- State Is ‘The Meth Lab of Democracy’
Sinema told activists at the liberal Netroots Nation conference that states are the laboratories of democracy before she went on to take a jab at her state.
“As we see in this very quote, that states are the laboratories of democracy and then my state, Arizona, is clearly the meth lab of democracy,” Sinema said.
She went on to attribute the quote to former “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart, saying she wished she could take credit for it. “I’m happy to steal it and use it all the time,” she added. Stewart referred to Arizona as a “meth lab” several times for what he deemed a series of controversial laws passed by the state legislature.
This isn’t the first time Sinema has been critical of Arizona or its voters. She told the San Antonio Stonewall Democrats in 2011 that people watching in “the past several years” had concluded Arizonans were “crazy” people.
“Over the past several years, people would watch what has happened to Arizona be like, ‘Damn, those people are crazy. Is it something about the water?’ No, the water is fine, we stole it from Colorado,” Sinema said.
“When we grew up I remember in first grade we learned a song about Arizona,” she added. “Arizona is the state of the five C’s: cattle, copper, citrus, cotton, and climate. And those were the five things that our state historically made its money off of. But I would add a sixth C, it’s called ‘crazy.'”
Republican operative Josh Ashbrook also noted Sinema has looked down on Arizona on Twitter.
Sinema faces Rep. Martha McSally (R., Ariz.) this November in the general election. McSally, a retired Air Force officer, was the first woman in U.S. history to fly a fighter jet in combat and the first to command a fighter squadron.
DeSantis shuts down reporter for trying to use his children to corner him on LGBTQ issues: ‘My children are my children’
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) abruptly shut down a reporter’s attempt this week to use his children as bait in a question about LGBTQ issues.
In a wide-ranging interview about fatherhood and parents’ rights, Time magazine national political correspondent Molly Ball asked DeSantis how he would respond if “one of his children turns out to be gay or trans.”
DeSantis, according to Ball, momentarily demonstrated his displeasure with the question — the framing of which implied a progressive view about LGBTQ identification — by flashing his eyes before “swiftly” shutting it down.
“Well, my children are my children,” DeSantis said. “We’ll leave that — we’ll leave that between my wife and I.”
DeSantis and his wife, Casey, have three children: two girls and one boy. The oldest child is 6 years old and the youngest is 3 years old. So it’s not clear why Ball sought to use DeSantis’ young children to make a point about his personal views on parenting children who identify as LGBTQ.
Meanwhile, DeSantis refused to back down on his position that it is “totally appropriate” for a government to intervene and prevent “gender transitions” of children.
“As a parent right now, I can’t take my 6-year-old daughter and get her a tattoo, even if I want to do that,” DeSantis said. “You don’t have the right to do things that are going to be destructive to kids.
“I think that some of these parents are being told by physicians who are making a lot of money off this that you have to do this, otherwise your kid can end up doing something like commit suicide. I think that they get bullied into thinking this is the right decision,” he said.
DeSantis, according to Ball, is billing himself as the “parents’ candidate” in the 2024 election because, as a 44-year-old parent of three children, he understands what parents care about. He believes that fighting for the issues important to them — whether they’re Republican, Democrat, or independent — will help win him the election.