Florida Rep. Allen West refused to name which of his fellow representatives were communists when pressed on the issue by CNN’s Soledad O’Brien on Thursday morning. O’Brien was following up on comments West made last week when he insisted 78 to 81 members of Congress are communists, specifically singling out the Congressional Progressive Caucus. West has since doubled down on that assertion.
“Communist, progressive, Marxist, socialist, statist … I’m looking at the ideologies,” West told to O’Brien. “I’m looking at the things they believe in and if you don’t think that we have to stand upon truth and be able to identify and clearly contrast the different principles and values and ideologies … here in this country then we’re never going to get to the fact of accepting the true debate that is happening in America. We don’t need a bureaucratic nanny state. We need to stay a constitutional republic.”
