Dems Imply Amy Coney Barrett's Adoptions Were Either Illegal or Racist in Latest Smear Job
When the mainstream media confirmed federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett would be President Trump’s choice to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday, it became evident some Democrats didn’t have much faith attacking People of Praise would stop the nomination from succeeding.
Mind you, they’ll still keep attacking a religious group Barrett purportedly belongs to, one which allegedly subjugates women so thoroughly that Barrett is only being nominated to the nation’s highest court at age 48. Just think, if it weren’t for this strange, patriarchal cult she could have been the court’s first 20-something justice. (Come to think of it, that would have solved the John Roberts problem.)
However, some Democrats either a) don’t think this line of attack is going to be sufficient or fruitful, or b) they’re having a very public, very protracted panic attack over the nomination. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be claiming the judge’s adoptions were illegal or racist.
Barrett, in case you’re unfamiliar, has seven children, five biological and two adopted. The two adopted children are from Haiti. Here’s Barrett describing her family during her 2017 confirmation hearing:
ACB: “Benjamin, our youngest, is 5 & has special needs. That presents unique challenges for all of us, but I think all you need to know about Benjamin’s place in the family is… that the other children unreservedly identify him as their favorite sibling.”pic.twitter.com/NmGbY3M0nI
— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) September 26, 2020
If you thought this wasn’t going to be a line of attack for the left, you’ve failed to sense the utter desperation of the moment.
John Lee Brougher is the managing of influential left-wing PAC NextGen America, funded in part by billionaire and presidential candidate has-been Tom Steyer. He’s also a former staffer with both U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Texas U.S. House candidate Wendy Davis.
He’s also the owner of a private Twitter account — no doubt thanks to this better-left-unsaid thought on Barrett’s children:
As an adoptee, I need to know more about the circumstances of how John Lee Brougher came to be adopted, and the treatment of him since.
There must be some explanation for this tweet. pic.twitter.com/XIWEzWgRB4
— prof. g* (@_prof_g) September 26, 2020
“As an adoptee, I need to know more about the circumstances of how Amy Coney Barrett came to adopt her children, and the treatment of them since,” Brougher wrote in a Twitter post.
“Transracial adoption is fraught with trauma and potential for harm, and everything I see here is deeply concerning.”
Brougher didn’t have much to elaborate on what he saw that was so “deeply concerning.” He’s not answering questions.
Neither, puzzlingly, is Wendy Davis. The Texas abortion firebrand, best known for her 2013 filibuster of a pro-life bill in the Texas legislature and a failed run for Texas governor in 2014, is running for Congress in a tight race. According to Breitbart, her spokeswoman would refuse to say whether or not Davis would condemn Brougher’s remarks.
Another Democrat operative who decided this avenue was worth exploring was Dana Houle, once the Capitol Hill chief of staff for former Democrat Rep. Paul Hodes of New Hampshire. He’s currently a political operative and has his account set to private, again likely thanks to tweets that implied Barrett’s adoptions were perhaps illegal.
“I would love to know which adoption agency Amy Coney Barrett & her husband used to adopt the two children they brought here from Haiti,” Houle tweeted Friday night.
“So here’s a Q: Does the press even investigate details of Barrett’s adoptions from Haiti? Some adoptions from Haiti were legit. Many were sketchy as hell. And if the press learned they were unethical & maybe illegal adoptions, would they report it? Or not bc it involves her children.”
“Would it matter if her kids were scooped up by ultra-religious Americans, or Americans weren’t scrupulous intermediaries and the kids were taken when there was a family in Haiti?” he continued. “I dunno, I think it does, but maybe it doesn’t or shouldn’t.”
Houle’s tweets were quickly picked up by Twitter conservatives, including GOP Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, among others:
Read this from Democrat activist & Hill staffer. Questioning whether #AmyConeyBarrett *illegally* adopted her children from Haiti, maybe snatching them from birth parents! This is the Dem gameplan. Nothing but raw bigotry and hate. I promise you, this will not stand pic.twitter.com/JEMqhe05dY
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 26, 2020
Dem operative’s opening salvo at Judge Barrett: attacking her young children.
This is twisted. Leave the kids alone. pic.twitter.com/LHE5aOVVi6
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 25, 2020
Disgusting. The left now smearing Amy Coney Barrett for adopting children. pic.twitter.com/zFomehwwDW
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) September 25, 2020
In a later tweet, according to Breitbart, Houle explained that he was backing away from his charges — without really backing away.
“Here’s what I tweeted earlier. I shouldn’t have tweeted it. Not bc there is anything substantively wrong w it, but bc it was too easy to misunderstand, to mischaracterize, or use to manipulate the rubes who think I control what the press investigates. (As if!),” he wrote, according to Breitbart.
There was nothing “substantively wrong” with the intimation that Amy Coney Barrett’s adoptions might have been illegal (or even that the children may have been stolen) but you could potentially “misunderstand” or “mischaracterize” it, or perhaps “manipulate the rubes who think I control what the press investigates.” Yeah, those goshdarn rubes, taking the wrong impression away from evidence-free accusations like that.
So-called “antiracism” scholar Ibram X. Kendi, meanwhile, didn’t delete or totally back down from this tweet:
Some White colonizers “adopted” Black children. They “civilized” these “savage” children in the “superior” ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity. https://t.co/XBE9rRnoqq
— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) September 26, 2020
His tweet was in response to a conservative who wondered how Democrats were going to paint Barrett as racist because she adopted Haitian children. But, as Kendi noted, he wasn’t specifically talking about Barrett. Except that he was directly responding to a conservative’s tweet about that has since been deleted:
I’m challenging the idea that White parents of kids of color are inherently “not racist” and the bots completely change what I’m saying to “White parents of kids of color are inherently racist.” These live and fake bots are good at their propaganda. Let’s not argue with them.
— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) September 26, 2020
Those “bots” and “rubes,” always getting the wrong idea.
And when the adoptions weren’t implied to be illegal or racist, they were liberals saying Barrett was using the children to score political points. Washington, D.C.-based journalist Christine Grimaldi also has her account set to private. This was her take on Barrett Sunday:
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) September 26, 2020
You almost have to give the whole “The Handmaid’s Tale” line of attack credit for not being this. Almost. At least that was based on religious “othering” under the pretense of concern over fantastical tales of supposedly occult, misogynist Catholicism. This is just attacking someone’s kids under the pretense of … attacking someone’s kids.
The left did this to Robert Bork over claims he would be a judicial extremist. They did this to Clarence Thomas with Anita Hill. They did it to Brett Kavanaugh with Christine Blasey Ford.
Now it’s Amy Coney Barrett’s turn. And if it takes dragging her children into it, well, that’s what it takes.
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