Rep. Cory Gardner, the Republican Senate candidate in Colorado, attended an August event hosted by a GOP county candidate who has said he doesn’t believe the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting has been proven.
The Pueblo County GOP’s 20th Annual Steak Fry on Aug. 23 was hosted at the home of Tom Ready, the Republican candidate for Pueblo County commissioner and former county party chair, who had posted a story on his Facebook page that was skeptical of the Sandy Hook shooting. Ready also said in a recent debate that he didn’t believe the shooting had been proven.
Gardner’s attendance at the event and Ready’s past dabbling in Sandy Hook trutherism was first reported by the Huffington Post.
“There is still question about whether it really happened,” Ready said at a Sept. 10 debate, in a video posted to YouTube by the Pueblo Chieftain.
He specifically questioned the emotions displayed by some of the victims’ parents. The shooter Adam Lanza killed 27 people, including 20 at the school, before killing himself.
“Some people in the videos, thank you very much, if you recall, there was a picture of a man walking in whose daughter had died. He was smiling and joking,” Ready continued. “When he walked into the room he turned and all of a sudden had tears in his eyes. Why? I question that.”
A flyer for the steak fry, held on Aug. 23, was posted on the Pueblo County Republican Party’s Facebook page and named Ready as the host and Gardner as one of the guests. A photo of Gardner was posted to the county GOP’s Facebook page on the day after the event, and Ready said on his personal Facebook account that Gardner was present at the event.
On July 24, prior to the event Gardner attended, Ready posted a link on Facebook to a story on a website called Red Flag News headlined “Glaring Gaffes in the Official Sandy Hook Story.” The first quote in the story, attributed to Professor Emeritus Dr. James Fetzer of the University of Minnesota, Duluth, questions whether the shooting at Sandy Hook even occurred at all.
“There is no actual evidence or real proof that a mass shooting took place at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012,” Fetzer says, as quoted in the Red Flag News story.
Ready told the Chieftain after the Sept. 10 debate that he did not remember posting the story on Facebook, and he attempted to walk back his comments on Thursday.
“I know those kids were killed,” he told the Chieftain. “But there are some facts that have not been proven. That’s all I was alluding to, period. It’s terrible.”
The Gardner campaign did not respond to TPM’s multiple requests for comment.
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Gardner another Republican pos!
I recommend watching the video. The crowd reaction is pretty fun.
I should have known that the next step in the onslaught of the Right on the United States would be the total politicization of all forms of information.
This is very important. Except for foraging or horticultural or pastoral societies, people depend on others for their information.
That is the opening that the Right has seized. Even if they are ridiculed, enough people are peeled off year by year so as to eventually make a society based on necessary commonalities virtually impossible.
Again, I have stated that this problem is solvable, but I fear that those who could address it are not sufficiently connected to the present American political system.
FruitOfTheLoon
A wholly owned subsidiary of the KochKoalition.
Just show Gardener a RedQueen— make that a KochBuck,
and he’ll do as he has been brainwashed to do.
“There is still question about whether it really happened,”
Wonder if Tom Ready says the same thing about Columbine or the mass shooting that occurred in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado
or, when confronted with these hideous events, does he just dismiss them as incidental occurrences that must be endured in order to have unencumbered gun freedom.???