Another Tea Party leader is accusing the left of unfairly blaming the Tea Party for the mass shootings in Arizona, describing how “revolting and disgusting the left is for trying to associate the tea party with violence like this.”
Sal Russo, the leader of the Tea Party Express, said on Fox News today that shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner “was obviously a leftist. He admired Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto. Those are not volumes that are popular with the Tea Party so he was obviously a left-wing anarchist, he was probably Anti-Semitic.”
Russo also criticized Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who told a town hall in Abu Dhabi today that Loughner is an “extremist.”
“I think it is a sad commentary,” Russo said, “when you try to use an isolated criminal element, of somebody who is obviously mentally disturbed, and suggest that there is some society problem of extremism here. We don’t have that kind of extremism.”
[TPM SLIDESHOW: On The Ground In Arizona: TPM Retraces Shooting Suspect’s Steps]
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Russo joins Tea Party Patriot leader Mark Meckler, who accused the left of using the shootings for political reasons, saying: “It’s genuinely revolting…I think it sinks to the level of evil.”
