House censures defiant Gosar for violent video, strips committee posts
Friday, November 19, 2021
Cronkite News
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The House censured Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Prescott, Wednesday and stripped him of his committee assignments as punishment for a violent cartoon he posted that appeared to show him killing a liberal Democratic member and threatening the president.
Gosar, speaking to the full House, said he does “not espouse violence toward anyone” and repeated his insistence that the video was intended as a critique of Biden administration immigration policy – an issue he said he will not stop speaking out on.
But Democrats said that the House had to take a stand against members “joking about murdering each other, and the president,” and that failure to do so would lead to actual violence, like the January 6 assault on the Capitol.
“What is so hard about saying that saying that this is wrong?” asked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the member who appears to be slain in Gosar’s video. She criticized GOP leaders who used Wednesday’s debate to attack Biden administration policies because they “cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong.”
“This is not about me or Representative Gosar, but this is about what we are willing to accept,” she said.


Given Gosar’s heavily Republican district, it is “difficult to see how this censure and the resulting media attention could do much damage in a general election” for Gosar, said Jacob Rubashkin, a reporter and analyst for Inside Elections. “The best possible outcome for Gosar politically is that this elevates his star among the far right of the Republican Party and allows him to tap in to a similar donor network that Marjorie Taylor Greene has,” Rubashkin said. “Whether that translates into the same kind of dominant fundraising and media presence is an open question, but it certainly is a possibility given the recent precedents,” he said. For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.Threatening explicit and implicit violence toward anyone is unacceptable. Actions have consequences and today’s vote to censure & strip committee assignments are the result of those actions. Anyone who would threaten another individual with violence is unfit to serve in Congress.
— Raul M. Grijalva (@RepRaulGrijalva) November 17, 2021
Note: This story originally appeared on Cronkite News. It is published via a Creative Commons license. Cronkite News is produced by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
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