HARTFORD, CT — Gov. Dannel P. Malloy didn’t mince his words Wednesday when asked about President Donald Trump’s retweets of three videos from a fringe group in Great Britain.
“To feed into a religious fear, to offend our allies, to offend our fellow citizens of this country is about as low as a sitting president in modern times can get in any given morning,” Malloy said at a press conference Wednesday. “He should be ashamed of himself, but even if he’s not ashamed, I’m ashamed for him.”
Trump retweeted anti-Muslim videos from Britain First, a ultranationalist group.
White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said it didn’t matter whether the anti-Muslim videos were real.
“Whether it’s a real video, the threat is real,” Sanders told reporters Wednesday afternoon.
Malloy said disparaging a billion people based on their religion is “unAmerican.”
The remarks also come a day after Lucian Wintrich, of Gateway Pundit, was charged with second-degree breach of peace at the University of Connecticut following a physical altercation with a woman who took the text of his speech from the podium.
Wintrich, who was reportedly happy with his mugshot, has since threatened to sue the university and the woman with whom he had an altercation. The event was hosted by the University of Connecticut Republicans, which released a statementThursday, almost two days after the event.
“We brought Mr. Wintrich to campus to have a conversation about identity politics, and we understand that this is a controversial issue. We welcomed such discussion and planned to facilitate a lengthy question and answer period after Mr. Wintrich’s speech. We are disappointed in those that took action to prevent Mr. Wintrich from speaking because they simply disagreed with what he had to say. There are civil ways to express dissatisfaction towards a speaker but heckling and disrupting an event is not appropriate. This only impeded the attendees who wanted to engage in such a dialogue.”
UConn Republicans said they don’t agree with “everything that Mr. Wintrich says, nor should we be expected to … Lucian Wintrich is responsible for his words and his actions.”
Malloy said he thinks the university, which didn’t sponsor the event, handled the situation appropriately.
“I think that it’s important we have an exchange of ideas, even those ideas that we don’t like,” Malloy said.
At the same time, Malloy said no one should be providing stages for people to be “racist, misogynistic, or advocate violence.”
“There are lines, but I think those lines can be respected,” Malloy said. “Obviously when something gets out of hand we shouldn’t be surprised based on the tenor of the discussion being had, but we can also be disappointed that it gets out of hand that way,” Malloy said.
