Source: Pool / Getty
On Monday, President Joe Biden, an advocate for abolishing the death penalty, announced that he would commute sentences for 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row. The three death row inmates who were excluded from that list were Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted for the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, Robert Bowers, who shot and killed 11 Jewish Americans at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2018, and Dylan Roof, who was sentenced to death in 2017 after he massacred nine congregants at a historic Black church in South Carolina in 2015. So, two high-profile white supremacist mass shooters and an equally high-profile terrorist were excluded from the clemency list. Who could possibly have an issue with that?
Oh, wait — a MAGA Republican has an issue with it, and also, it’s somehow Obama’s fault.
During an appearance on Fox News, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) revealed that she is unhappy with Biden’s decision to decline to commute the sentences of murderous white supremacists; she’s also mad at Democrats like Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) for supporting abortion rights while opposing the death penalty; and, just for good measure, she’s mad at former President Barack Obama and his former White House staff for cursing America with perpetual Marxism, apparently.
“So the sanctity of life is not something that she holds dear to innocent children in the womb,” Tenny told host John Roberts.
Like most white conservatives whose critical thinking ability is demonstrably non-existent, Tenny is making an absurd argument with a stale, decades-old “wataboutism” narrative, as well as the use of buzzwords like “Marxist” that are tossed around in MAGA America by people who clearly have no idea what it means.
From Raw Story:
Tenney went on to question Biden’s Catholic faith because he declined to commute the death sentences of white supremacist murderer Dylann Roof, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and synagogue shooter Robert Bowers.
“Biden claims it’s his Catholic faith. How do you spare some and not others just because they look like they were politically motivated?” she opined. “If you’re going to believe in the death penalty or not believe in the death penalty, you have to be consistent. And obviously, Joe Biden was not consistent in this.”
Tenney suggested Obama “holdovers” at the White House and Marxism were behind the commutations.
“I hate to say this, but it’s probably some Marxist-leaning Democrats, Obama holdovers that are staffers because we know that Joe Biden is basically checked out and is not even really doing the work in the White House,” she asserted. “But also, why is this guy still the president of the United States when he’s incapable of committing, you know, doing this work?”
First of all, it’s just wild that Tenney is demanding Biden be “consistent” while appearing to be anti-death penalty, but also appearing to be mad at Democrats for being anti-death penalty and mad at Biden for not being anti-death penalty enough. (For the sake of bandwidth, let’s not even bother addressing the ridiculous and science-denying narrative of equating the “lives” of unborn, non-sentient fetuses to that of fully-grown adult human beings.)
Again, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 death row inmates. It’s obvious to anyone with a brain that the ones who were excluded were denied because commuting their sentences would have outraged far too many Americans. There would be arguably o better way for a sitting president to show Black Americans that he doesn’t give a damn about them than to spare the life of Dylan Roof. Republicans and Democrats alike spend far too much time at least pretending to denounce any and all forms of antisemitism for a president of either party to turn around and let Robert Bowers live. As for the Boston bomber, Teenye is clearly old enough to remember what the energy was like in America after that event. Commuting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence would have resulted in massive, bipartisan outrage. Perhaps Biden was being a bad catholic — according to Tenney, that is — but he was being a good president who sometimes understands compromise is necessary.
But, honestly, it’s doubtful that Tenney’s gripe truly has anything to do with the death penalty. After all, Biden reportedly issued his commutations in order to get ahead of the incoming Trump administration as Trump promised to continue federal executions during his second term.
If Tenney’s diatribe wasn’t just more partisan nonsense, she wouldn’t be invoking the name of a Democratic president who hasn’t been in office for nearly a decade. WTF does Obama have to do with any of this?
Then again, maybe Tenney is really just mad because the lives of white supremacists weren’t spared while the lives of the disproportionately Black inmates were. That would track with the current GOP, which has ridden white grievances all the way to the White House for the second time in eight years.
Sad.
SEE ALSO:
Black Death Row Prisoners Are Most Vulnerable To Suffering Botched Executions, New Study Finds
