Michael Folk is a pilot for United Airways and a Republican member of West Virginia’s House of Delegates. He got upset on Friday night while watching the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, questioning the inspector general of the Intelligence Community, Charles McCullough, about Hillary Clinton’s emails. In fact, Mr. Folk got so upset that he sent out a Tweet that said that Clinton should be hanged on the Mall in Washington, DC.
Pretty quickly, United Airways was confronted with angry petitioners who wanted Folks suspended from flying a commercial aircraft, and they complied. The West Virginia Democratic Party is calling on Folk to resign from the House of Delegates, which so far he has not done.
Obviously, though, Folk has already been stung by the swift reaction and immediate consequences of his intemperance. But, if you look at the comments in the article, you’ll see that Folk has a lot of support for his position. So many people have been marinating their brains in this anti-Hillary craziness, and not just on the right.
She’s become far more of a caricature of a fictional person than the fairly mainstream Democratic candidate for president that she actually is.
The full tweet read: “Hillary Clinton, you should be tried for treason, murder, and crimes against the US Constitution… then hung on the Mall in Washington, DC.”
I don’t know how long you have to soak your brain in right-wing media before it’s marinated enough to believe that Hillary Clinton is guilty of murder and treason, but it’s tad more tinfoil-hatted than thinking that Barack Obama was secretly born in a foreign country.
All I know is that Mr. Folk distinguished himself less by what he said then by being an elected official and someone entrusted to fly jets full of private citizens. What he said appears to be approaching mainstream common wisdom in certain parts of West Virginia and much of the rest of the country.
If it’s true that Roger Ailes is getting sacked at Fox News, maybe we’ll soon be able to do a rough estimate of how much brain damage he caused to our Republic. I’d like to see a final accounting.
Ailes has done a lot of damage, but he’s not to blame for all of this. I’ve seen stuff just as unhinged from some Bernie supporters, including folks who definitely should know better.