Congressional Democrats were right to call on the National Guard for a safe and peaceful transfer of power, but it was overkill and hypocritical by the people who denounced troops defending our cities from burning this summer, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., said Saturday on Newsmax TV.
"The president was right and we should have sent in the National Guard," Van Drew, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, told "Saturday Report" about the then-unpopular move to protect cities, businesses, and federal property from violent, destructive race riots.
But, now those same Democrats "overdid it" in defending President Joe Biden's inauguration this week.
"We didn't need as many National Guard as we had in D.C. – sent in a ton of National Guard," Van Drew, who left the Democrat Party to become a Republican after House Democrats' first impeachment of President Donald Trump, told host Carl Higbie. "It looked like, literally, you were getting sworn in in Venezuela, as opposed to the United States of America.
"It was pretty crazy, and it was overkill. Back then, they didn't want any to come in, it would look to militaristic. So, which is it? I don't know."
Van Drew added a rebuke not only for the hypocrisy of the National Guard deployments, but the Democrats' double standard on defending against political protests, and their ultimate disrespect for those D.C. troops, kicking them out of the Capitol Building to a cold parking garage this week.
"What I am so tired of is politicians who love to give fancy speeches about how great our military is, but that's the way they get treated," Van Drew said. "That was unconscionable, it was unbelievable, it was unacceptable.
"We're taking better care of people who aren't even legal citizens."
Van Drew also added a warning of those who were so adamant to defend speech and peaceful protest this summer and now the same people seeking to censors speech and silence conservatives.
"We cannot tolerate violence, we cannot tolerate domestic terrorism," Van Drew said, but adding censorship speech and forcibly denying protest is a slippery slope.
"We have to be really careful that in our thrust to make sure that we're more safe, which is important, that we do not take away people's civil liberties," he said.
"It has been said many times: Those that would give up liberty for safety deserve neither."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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