Kennedy’s words were met with scattered chuckles.
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Kennedy is known for his colorful remarks, often referring to his political opponents as “a special kind of stupid.”
He also once encouraged constituents who wish to defund the police to “call a crack head” the next time they are in trouble. On another occasion, he jokingly alleged that someone at the Biden White House was “smoking the devil’s lettuce.”
While Kennedy’s comment to Vought last week was not out of character for Kennedy, it was unsettling for some due to his offhand reference to the death of “fact-checkers.”
Although Kennedy did not apparently intend the statement as a threat of violence, the remark was indicative of a general hostility toward fact-checking, which has become more prominent since the rise of Donald Trump, who makes false or misleading claims on a near-daily basis.
In fact, within moments of taking the oath of office, President Trump said in his inaugural address that the U.S. government has provided “sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals, many from prisons and mental institutions that have illegally entered our country from all over the world,” an unfounded characterization of immigrants that featured heavily throughout his campaign.
Of particular concern to some, including Pastor Lyndon Marcotte of First Christian Church in Pineville, Louisiana, is Kennedy’s apparent “conflation” of those who oppose Trump with people who are enemies of God.
“You have a very inflammatory situation politically in this country,” Marcotte told Yahoo News. “And the idea that anybody opposes somebody’s views deserves to die like the fact checkers in Noah’s story—there were no fact checkers in the story. That’s a pretty dangerous thing to be saying in my opinion. Some people take that stuff literally.”
Marcotte added that Kennedy’s remarks are “part of a carefully crafted designed character that he’s created to generate soundbites for himself to get attention.”
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“He knows it plays well with a certain demographic, and he’s more interested in soundbites than he is in actually governing and doing anything else to help real people with real needs in their lives,” Marcotte said.
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