MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN the league was “looking into” the tweet referencing President Trump and the House impeachment inquiry. The umpire has since deactivated his Twitter account.
Major league umpire Rob Drake tweeted “I will be buying an AR-15 tomorrow, because if you impeach MY PRESIDENT this way, YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER CIVAL WAR!!! #MAGA2020”, according to a copy of the tweet obtained by ESPN. MLB says it is aware of it. News: https://t.co/Qf7VMAXEoJ
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) October 23, 2019
Drake, 50, who has been a full-time MLB ump since 2010, is perhaps best known for a 2011 altercation with St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina, who was suspended for five games after bumping him and spraying him with spit. Drake co-founded “Calling For Christ,” an umpire training academy in Arizona, where he lives, according to his official MLB profile.
The MLB and Drake did not immediately return a request for comment.
Drake’s tweet suggesting violence over Trump’s increasing political peril echoed a right-wing talking point that began on the extreme fringes of the political spectrum but has grown increasingly common.
In March, The Washington Post reported that commentators on Fox News and MSNBC had discussed the potential of a second American-on-American conflict, although both pundits later walked back their comments by saying they considered the battle cultural rather than physical.
In September, Trump tweeted a quote from Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress, who said on a Fox News segment, “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President, it will cause a civil warlike fracture in this nation.” Fox News host Tucker Carlson has suggested a federal gun buyback program would lead to armed battles between Americans. On Oct. 11, former House speaker Newt Gingrich told Fox News “we are as close to a cultural civil war as we have been since the 1860s.”
The talking point has become so common now that Drake wasn’t the only Trump supporter to make headlines Wednesday for talking about civil war and guns.
Rick Wiles, a Florida pastor known for making anti-Semitic comments on his nightly YouTube program, TruNews, also discussed on his show taking up arms against Democrats if Trump is impeached.
“If they take him out, there is going to be violence in America,” Wiles said on Wednesday. “There are people in this country — veterans, cowboys, mountain men, guys that know how to fight — and they’re going to make a decision that the people that did this to Donald Trump are not going to get away with it and they’re going to hunt them down.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/24/buying-an-ar-mlb-probes-ump-who-reportedly-threatened-cival-war-over-impeachment/
2019-10-24 10:28:00Z
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