Ari Fleischer: 'Alarming' thought police tactics of left will hurt Democrats, they should denounce it
'Different voices' and 'different approaches' must be tolerated, Fleischer says
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“Alarming” thought police tactics of the left demonstrate a mob mentality that “is going to hurt the Democrats,” former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told “America’s Newsroom” on Wednesday, adding that “they really should denounce it.”
Fleischer made the comments reacting to videos of Black Lives Matter demonstrators screaming at people as they dined outside in the nation’s capital. The videos have gone viral this week while protests picked up steam nationwide following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Kenosha, Wis., on Sunday.
Frederick Kunkle, a Washington Post staff writer, posted a video Tuesday on Twitter that showed a crowd of protesters gathering closely around a woman, identified as Lauren Victor, as she sat outside on a sidewalk. The group demanded she raise her fist in solidarity as they chanted at her, “White silence is violence” and “No justice, no peace!”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}One woman asked her, demandingly, “Are you a Christian?”
Other diners appeared to raise their fists, but Victor did not. She appeared to try reasoning with the crowd, raising her arms in seeming disbelief. Kunkle reported that after the confrontation, a citizen journalist named Chuck Modiano asked her, “What was in you, you couldn’t do this?”
Victor responded that she felt she was under attack.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}MANHUNT FOR GUNMAN LAUNCHED AFTER 2 KILLED, 1 WOUNDED IN KENOSHA
“In the moment, it didn’t feel right,” Kunkle reported that Victor said, adding that she felt like there was something wrong about being forced to raise her fist. “I’m very much with them. I’ve been marching with them for weeks and weeks and weeks.”
“What has happened to tolerance?” Fleischer asked responding to the video. “One of the hallmarks of our country, our strength is that we tolerate other points of view.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He added that “when you see this you have to wonder, it could happen to me.”
“I think anybody who wears a MAGA hat, like Nick Sandmann [an 18-year-old graduate from Covington Catholic High School who was at the center of a nationwide viral video controversy] did at the Lincoln Memorial, [former White House press secretary] Sarah Sanders, a Republican, just goes to have dinner, and now this,” he continued.
“These tactics are alarming, it’s thought police tactics. It’s going to hurt the Democrats. They really should denounce it.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Fleischer was referencing the 2018 incident when Sanders said she was told to leave The Red Hen restaurant in Virginia by the owner because she worked for the president.
He added that “different voices” and “different approaches” must be tolerated.
“When you start to have this type of intimidation, you’re crossing a terrible line and sending a terrible message about the core, what makes us strong, which is we respect each other's voices,” Fleischer said.
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Fox News’ Paul Best and The Associated Press contributed to this report.