The chairman of the Maryland Republican Party has called for the state comptroller’s chief of staff to be fired for an inflammatory Facebook post.
Maryland GOP Chairman Dirk Haire joined in the chorus of backlash demanding the removal of Len Foxwell, chief of staff to state Comptroller Peter Franchot, after Foxwell offered comment on an NPR article about members of the right-wing “patriot movement” calling on their militias in Idaho to defy the governor’s stay-at-home orders.
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In his since-deleted April 13 Facebook post, Foxwell wrote:
Plus, autographs from Scott Baio and pics with Tawny Kitean, posing all sexy and everything on a sportscar, just like in that old Whitesnake video! Get them in, bar the door and then let Darwin work his magic.
The post was met with outrage from those such as Haire, who interpreted Foxwell’s comments as a call for President Trump’s supporters to be killed.
In an open letter to Franchot, Haire wrote, “I hope you agree with me that Mr. Foxwell’s statements suggesting the genocide of President Trump’s supporters are extraordinarily inappropriate and representative of a base and destructive mindset. A review of Mr. Foxwell’s Facebook page shows many similar posts by Mr. Foxwell.”
“As someone who represents himself as a bipartisan consensus builder,” Haire continued, “I am disappointed in the lack of discipline given to Mr. Foxwell’s for his actions.”
He concluded his letter by appealing to Franchot’s planned 2022 Maryland gubernatorial run, adding, “If you do not terminate him, I will reasonably assume that his comments represent your views and that you do, in fact, authorize his views.”
Franchot responded in a Facebook post on Saturday, writing in part, “Over the past few hours, I’ve fielded a few angry messages and texts from people who are demanding that my Chief of Staff, Len Foxwell, resign or be fired. This, in response to satirical comments that he made on his personal social media feed about the Patriot Movement and their willingness to violate ‘Stay at Home’ orders imposed by the Governor of Idaho.”
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“It has never been my policy to comment on social media content posted by members of my staff, so long as it is done on their own time,” Franchot added. “I won’t start now. Suffice to say, however, that I remain 100 percent supportive of Len Foxwell and the exceptional work he continues to do for me and for the people of Maryland.”
Foxwell himself took to Facebook on Saturday to address the firestorm, characterizing his original post as one made “in a typical spirit of sarcasm and jest,” which had “become misrepresented and misquoted.”
“The NPR article that inspired my original post WAS NOT, in any way, about rank-and-file supporters of Donald Trump,” Foxwell asserted. “Rather, it was in direct reference to the leaders and followers of ‘The Patriot Movement’ – a collection of several alt-right, white supremacist and violent anti-government organizations that gestated in this country following seminal events such as Waco and Ruby Ridge.”
Foxwell went on to characterize the militia’s plan to defy the governor as “utter lunacy” that would threaten fellow U.S. citizens, adding, “Again, this had nothing to do with rank-and-file Trump supporters – notwithstanding my deep, searing distaste for the President’s politics and his catastrophic mismanagement of this crisis. Nor, obviously, did I ever express hope that someone would die. Any suggestions to the contrary are simply, absolutely false.”
Foxwell concluded that he has “family members, dear friends and loved ones” who support the president and urged them to disregard the “insidious ‘fake news’ content” claiming he wants them dead.
