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Kathy Hochul Going on a Left-Wing Bomb-Thrower’s Show Won’t Help Her Improve ‘Political Discourse’

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New York governor Kathy Hochul appears on the The Dean Obeidallah Show, October 29, 2022. (Screenshot via The Dean Obeidallah Show/YouTube)

If you were going to denounce rhetorical extremism in American politics, is there anyone worse you could talk to than Dean Obeidallah?

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After Nancy Pelosi’s husband was assaulted by an unstable homeless drug addict who seems to have drifted in the past few years from left-wing insanity to right-wing insanity, embattled New York governor Kathy Hochul sought to capitalize on the attack by blaming Republican rhetoric.

Hochul told SiriusXM host and self-described “comedian” Dean Obeidallah, “It is bone-chilling to think that there are people out there that have been so radicalized. . . . It has to be not just called out, but not the act itself, but also the whole environment that allows the conspiracy theorists to become radicalized, and the sharing of social media, and the consequences that can prove for people that are innocent. And that’s what’s so deeply, deeply disturbing about this incident and really what’s happened to political discourse.”

At this point, anyone who has paid attention to online political commentary in America in recent decades will stop in their tracks and ask: If you were going to denounce rhetorical extremism in American politics, is there anyone worse you could talk to than Dean Obeidallah? Hochul, who was also a guest on the show in May, ought to ask herself: Exactly what are the limits of political discourse on your own side? Why are you associating with Obeidallah? Let’s consider just a sampling of his work.

To start with, he has for years now been accusing Republicans of conspiring to impose “Christian sharia law” and trying to turn America into “the Christian version of Saudi Arabia” and a “Bible theme park.” He equates pro-lifers with “religious fascists”:

Naturally, this includes overwrought Handmaid’s Tale analogies:

In Obeidallah’s view, Republicans are not a legitimate political party but a wartime foe that must be “crushed” and “utterly destroyed.” He argues that the media must not even cover Republicans as the elected representatives of millions of Americans, that the Democrats should decline to even talk to them, and that Biden calling Republicans fascists “did NOT go far enough”:

This is, in Obeidallah’s world, literally war, with Republicans to be treated as foreign enemies:

He repeatedly compared Donald Trump to Hitler, called him a terrorist, and called for him to be jailed for life:

It’s not just Trump; he also wants Dick Cheney jailed:

On the other hand, Obeidallah has, shall we say, a nuanced view of political violence from his own side. When a mob chased Brett Kavanaugh from a restaurant, he mocked Kavanaugh. When Rand Paul, a victim of an attack from a neighbor and a target of the congressional baseball shooting, was yet again set upon by a mob, Obeidallah claimed that Paul was just worried about “dissent.” He cracked in November 2016 that “We will be rioting soon — try to stop us!” But he complained in the summer of 2020 that “the focus shouldn’t be on the riots in Minneapolis.”

Obeidallah even once told an interlocutor on Twitter, “I can see more and more why Craig Hicks did what he did” – referencing a man who killed three college students in North Carolina in 2015:

He has no problem with harsh, profane insults targeting Republican politicians, even ones who are disabled or coming off major health crises, or who he attacks for their appearance; he argues, in fact, for “brutally mocking” political opponents:

He hasn’t, however, limited this to politicians, but also to their supporters among ordinary citizens:

Of course, when the media smeared the Covington Catholic kids, he went further than anyone in attacking a bunch of teenagers as “racist kids”: “Are they being taught to embrace white supremacy in school, at home, from Trump or all three?”

He even called David Harsanyi, of all people, an antisemite:

When Obeidallah gets called out for his bomb-throwing, he cites how Trump “ended PC” as a model:

Another time, he accused another Twitter user of “wearing a Nazi outfit” for posting a picture of his father (who was killed in Vietnam) in a U.S. Army uniform. And this is just his Twitter. In his columns, TV appearances, radio work, and standup comedy, he has compared Republicans to the Taliban for being against abortion in the immediate aftermath of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, claimed that Larry O’Connor was a fascist and threatening him for tweeting a picture of lieutenant governor Winsome Sears at him, referred to the Trump administration as “Trump’s regime,” and accused Kyle Rittenhouse of using “white supremacist hand symbols.” He’s not just a guy whose brain was broken by Trump — he was like this during the Bush years (hence, the Cheney rhetoric and his profane insults at voters even then), he mocked Mitt Romney for having an adopted black grandson, and he’s already made an early pivot to “DeSantis is more dangerous” than Trump — who, you may recall, Obeidallah wants jailed for life.

But then, I guess Obeidallah has the most important qualification to talk to Hochul:

The governor should be asked whether Dean Obeidallah’s rhetoric is the type she thinks should be mainstream political discourse in America.

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