In lefty-land, you can make Nazi salutes, scream obscenities, chant “from the River to the Sea,” spraypaint vile statements, and tear down posters of hostages, but whatever you do, don’t annoy a Democrat.
Maxine Waters encouraged lefties to harass Trump supporters and drive them out of the public sphere, and was a brave freedom fighter for doing so. But New York City firefighters can’t catcall Letitia James without bringing the wrath of God down on themselves.
The FDNY firefighters who booed NY AG Letitia James will be punished and face reeducation.
FDNY firefighters are now being asked to turn themselves in or risk being hunted down.pic.twitter.com/RN36alncWt
— Suhr Majesty ™ (@ULTRA_MAJESTY) March 9, 2024
The catcalling took place at a ceremony for FDNY firefighters who were being promoted, which calls into question why Letitia James, the Attorney General of the State of New York, was speaking in the first place. I’m pretty sure that the AG hasn’t much of a role in fighting fires in NYC, although she has lit quite a few political ones in the city.
FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh is hunting down smoke-eaters and other staffers who mercilessly booed New York Attorney General Letitia James – and cheered in support of Donald Trump – during a department promotion ceremony this week, The Post has learned.
FDNY Chief of Department John Hodges fired off an email to other agency honchos warning a reckoning led by the department’s Bureau of Investigation and Trials was coming over the chorus of boos and chants of “Trump” that James received at Thursday’s event.
“BITS is investigating this, so they will figure out who the members are,” Hodges wrote FDNY chiefs Saturday in the letter obtained by The Post.
“I recommend they come forward. I have been told by the commissioner it will be better for them if they come forward and we don’t have to hunt them down,” he continued.
Hunting Trump supporters in New York City seems very on-brand, come to think of it.
The reason given for “hunting down” Trump supporters in the FDNY is that they need to be “educated”–and I am not joking about that. Using terms like “education” and “reeducation” are also quite on-brand for NYC Leftists.
Of the many absurd things about this is this striking thought: the FDNY firefighters are being accused of being inappropriately political at this ceremony, and in less charged political environments I might agree with the point. But as we all know, politics are perfectly fine at all events according to Democrats, as long as they are the right kind of politics.
For instance:
Appointed by Mayor Adams. How bout that. Don’t make those “job related ceremonies” political, right? How’d that go at the ceremony for his police chief? Graphical communist manifesto.
What a fucking disgrace NYC has become. pic.twitter.com/FMEht6zvh5
— Theo Jordan (@Theo_TJ_Jordan) March 11, 2024
Everything in NYC is political, and Letitia James has made it her career to go after Donald Trump, so turnabout is fair play.
But power is not fairly distributed. If people had been cheering for James, everybody in power would have gloried in it. It was the content of the speech, not its political nature that was unacceptable.
A list of talking points for deputy chiefs doing the investigation obtained by The Post said: “We want the members to come forward. They will come to headquarters to be educated why their behavior is unacceptable.”
An FDNY retiree fumed at the department’s heavy-handed response.
“It was a political stunt for the city to have the AG there. When it backfired, they sent their fascist pit bulls after guys for exercising their First Amendment rights,” he said. “Most were off-duty and not in FDNY uniform.”
Famed constitutional and criminal law attorney Alan Dershowitz blasted the FDNY’s hunt down.
“Firefighters have an absolute constitutional right to boo the attorney general, and the government has no power to punish them for it,” Dershowitz told The Post. “So efforts to get the names of the booers is an effort by the government to chill free speech and is unconstitutional.”
I wish we didn’t live in a world where shouting at one’s political opponents was the default act of speech, but we do. There is no longer anything resembling discussion and coming to agreements, and Letitia James has been a major proponent of the “politics of personal destruction.” Every politician on the Left has spent the past eight years attacking Trump and his supporters, and James has been at the forefront of this effort for several years.
The FDNY wants her to know it’s not appreciated. Good. Democrats are masters of harassment, and they complain bitterly when even the most minor turnabout is used against them. It’s not like they went all Maxine Waters on James. They just booed her.
Was it classy? No. Was it even close to what is normally tolerated by New York Lefties by their own? Not at all. New York City politicians basically allow riots if done by the Left. If these were BLM activists, they would be applauded for seeking justice.
Trump supporters, though, are “hunted down.”