Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn and Mike Lee joined conservative media figures and others to produce a collaborative video framed as an “answer to the mob” and a defense of the American founding and its heritage.
Produced by the Media Research Center, a conservative institution, the video features Lee and Blackburn alongside commentators Mark Levin, Dan Bongino, Dana Loesch, National Review editor Rich Lowry, and more. It argues that the American founding was “an epochal human event” and that its principles should be respected.
“Free speech is a pillar of a free society and the best way to collectively seek and defend the truth,” Loesch argues. “Firing and canceling those who offend woke sensibilities is grotesque, illiberal, and un-American.”
The video also seeks to address weeks of national unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s death by offering a full-throated defense of America’s law enforcement.
“When there is a crisis — national or personal — we turn to America’s real heroes: the men and women in uniform overseas and our first responders here at home,” Blackburn states. “Our doctors, nurses, our firefighters, and most importantly, our police.”
“The police are necessary to protect the vulnerable and to keep dangerous communities from descending into chaos,” Lee adds.
In recent weeks, the NYPD has seen officer retirement applications spike by over 400 percent, which a NYPD spokesperson described as “a troubling trend.” Attorney General Bill Barr said Wednesday that while he believes there is “a widespread phenomenon” of police unfairly treating African American suspects, the country’s police need “more investment.”
The video closes by directly addressing the protests, which have become a flashpoint over the status of the country’s heritage.
“How dare you disrespect our heroes and trample on our heritage,” Levin declares, while Bongino adds that “your hideous tactics match the hateful rot of an ideology that you champion.”
“Your vandalism and cancellations, your lies and riots, will not stand,” Tom Fitton, president of the conservative legal group Judicial Watch, says.
This week, vandals cut down a flagpole at a New York memorial honoring five firefighters who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks, while others destroyed a statue of Frederick Douglass on the 168th anniversary of his “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” speech. On Sunday, Senator Tammy Duckworth (D., Ill.), a prospective running mate for Joe Biden, said the country should “listen to the argument” for tearing down statues of George Washington.