Former Obama administration official Brandon Friedman claimed opposition to the IRS is racist following renewed attacks against the agency on Sunday.
On Twitter, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tweeted out, "Happy Sunday. Abolish the IRS," as a joke to his followers. Friedman fired back that this anger against the IRS is not just based on political bias but on the agency’s racial history.
"Republicans don't just hate the IRS because it pays for things like highways and social security. There's history here. They hate what it represents. The IRS was created in 1862 specifically to fund the Civil War, to end slavery and to burn white supremacy to the ground," Friedman tweeted.
He added, "’Abolish the IRS’ may sound like an innocuous anti-tax message, but it's literally a call to defund the U.S. military. The same military that crushed secessionists the first time. It's a fundamentally anti-government message. The insurrection continues."
MY IRS AUDIT FROM HELL, OVER A SMALL BOAT AND THE FOLLY OF 87,000 NEW AGENTS
Twitter users blasted Friedman’s take, calling it "incredibly stupid" and "exceptionally dumb."
"Dumbest tweet I've seen today," former FEC Commissioner Brad Smith tweeted.
Journalist Kimberly Morin wrote, "Here in the wilds of Twitter we have yet another example of an incredibly stupid and ignorant tweet by an incredibly stupid and ignorant left-wing a--hole. #TaxationIsTheft coward."
"When I think of the IRS, I think, ‘Dang nabbit, my great-great-great-great-grandpappy lost his eye in the Civil War. We must avenge his eye by not paying our taxes!’ The Lafayette Co. President Ellen Carmichael joked.
RealClearInvestigations senior writer Mark Hemingway explained, "The IRS was then used to fund the Union Army warring with Indians for the next several decades, presumably as part of that same quest to combat ‘white supremacy.’"
"This is exceptionally dumb, of course. But it's also quite telling that leftists believe the IRS is the one that ‘pays’ for stuff," The Federalist senior editor David Harsanyi wrote.
Conservative commentator Chad Felix Greene tweeted, "How are you possibly this embarrassingly ignorant?"
The IRS came under Republican criticism recently after it was discovered that President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act would include a massive expansion of the agency, including 87,000 new employees over the next ten years.
Despite reports from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that confirmed this expansion would require raising audits on citizens earning under $400,000 per year, mainstream media outlets have largely called conservative concerns "unfounded."
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Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler further attacked GOP lawmakers on Aug. 18 for "preying on people’s fears" on the IRS.