Paul Gosar Re-Shares Anime Clip Depicting Him Killing AOC Just an Hour After Being Censured for It
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) retweeted the animated video that showed him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) with a sword, within only an hour of the House voting to censure him for tweeting the clip in the first place.
The mostly party-line, 223-207, vote to censure Gosar and also remove him from his House committee assignments was the first censure of a sitting member of Congress in over a decade.
Gosar retweeted Elijah Schaffer, a conservative podcast host, who tweeted with the caption, “Really well done. We love @DrPaulGosar, don’t we folks?” Gosar had deleted the initial November 7th tweet with the video he had captioned: “Any anime fans out there?”
The video showed what appears to be the opening sequence of the popular Japanese anime show Attack on Titan with the faces of members of Congress over the various animated characters.
The video’s opening slide shows Gosar’s name under Japanese text, which reads “attack of immigrants,” and then shows images of Gosar’s face superimposed with the U.S. Capitol and eventually on a sword-wielding ninja that stabs a large creature with Ocasio-Cortez’s face on it. Images of what appeared to be the southern border of the U.S. and migrant caravans were spliced into the anime clip.
Gosar, who prior to this controversy was best known for the fact that his siblings published an op-ed denouncing him, refused to apologize for the video and instead said he had “self-censored” out of “compassion for those who generally felt offense.”
Within an hour and fifteen minutes after his censure, Gosar retweeted the controversial video. He also retweeted various odd memes and praise from fans including a meme titled “Gosar Life” showing him with sunglasses and smoking a blunt and praise from controversial former Rep. Steve King (R-IA) calling him “the most effective member of Congress.”
Ok. Ok. Bobby Levy on Gettr. pic.twitter.com/kb1WSAICHc
— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) November 18, 2021
Fact check: 💯 https://t.co/7YaHmLgaLF
— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) November 18, 2021
Gosar gave a defiant speech on the House floor prior to the vote, rejecting that the cartoon was “dangerous or threatening. It was not.”
“I do not espouse violence toward anyone. I never have. It was not my purpose to make anyone upset,” Gosar said.
Gosar then compared himself to Alexander Hamilton, the nation’s first Treasury secretary, saying, “If I must join Alexander Hamilton, the first person attempted to be censured by this House, so be it, it is done.”
