New York's long-serving Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel bitterly lashed into his conservative foes, comparing Tea Party members to racist “white crackers” and Republicans to “terrorists.”
“It is the same group we faced in the South with those white crackers and the dogs and the police,” the 83-year-old Harlem congressman told the
Daily Beast. “They didn’t care about how they looked. It was just fierce indifference to human life that caused America to say, ‘Enough is enough. I don’t want to see it and I am not a part of it.’ What the hell! If you have to bomb little kids and send dogs out against human beings, give me a break.”
On the subject of House Republicans, Rangel, first elected 43 years ago, was equally harsh, saying they'd done more damage to American competitiveness than al-Qaida ever could, The Daily Beast reported.
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“What is happening is sabotage," Rangel said in the interview, which went online Friday. "Terrorists couldn’t do a better job than the Republicans are doing.”
He said there's a couple of Republicans, however, he didn't mind -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Rep. Peter King.
"People only go for Christie because he is reasonable," Rangel said. "He says something nice about the president helping out Jersey and now he is on the hit list by Republicans. And now my friend Peter King is on their hit list. Peter King, a Republican, is considered a goddamn communist.”
Rangel was censured by the House and stripped of his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee after scandals including a rent-regulated apartment, taxes on a Dominican villa and use of congressional stationery to fundraise for the school of public service at the City University of New York. In 2012, he won the primary vote in a newly redrawn district by little more than a thousand votes.
He's not made public any plans to retire.
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