harshbarger, Diana Rep tenn

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A clip from a podcast did not go over well on social media as commenters dragged U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) for calling U.S. Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) “boy.”

“Gosh dang it, boy. Put that – He does not need that cane. That cane is a prop. I swear it’s not real,” Harshbarger said in the clip first posted by Heartland Signal on X. "And I'm wondering, one of my colleagues said unscrew the gold part off of it and see if there's a gun in there. I don’t know about that man. He’s just Weird Al.”

Harshbarger was referring to the Democrat's reactions during Donald Trump’s, [VID] which included hoisting signs of protest, wearing pink or, in Green’s case, pointing his cane at the president and heckling him, before being escorted from the chamber.

“I wanted to go over there and grab a few of them [Democrats] but Al Green was over here with his cane,” Harshbarger told an interviewer.

IFrame Content

Reaction on quickly noted the American South’s long history of emasculating Black men by calling them "boy."

"She called a Black man 'boy,'" progressive podcaster Fred Wellman tweeted, while calling Harshbarger a "racist."

Democratic Georgia state senate candidate Jerrold Dagen quote-tweeted the clip and called on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to call for a censure vote against Harshbarger. Another commentator opined: "Hell is too good for folk like this."

“Imagine if (Green) called her ‘little girl’ and accused her of being a weird person who conceals a weapon by pretending to need a medical device to get around?” asked a fourth. “The GOP would be outraged by such an accusation!”

Harshbarger was originally elected in 2020, after winning a 17-way Republican primary for Tennessee' 1st Congressional District. In 2013, her husband, Robert Harshbarger, was sentenced to four years in federal prison for committing healthcare fraud as part of a pharmacy he ran, and ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution. Her son, Bobby, is a Republican state senator for Tennessee's 4th Senate District.

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03/04/2025

Kyle Mantyla

As President Donald Trump and Elon Musk run roughshod over the Constitution as they work to unilaterally dismantle the federal government, Republican members of Congress are getting an earful from outraged constituents at town hall events around the country.

Rather than trying to justify the Trump administration's recklessness to angry voters, Republicans are simply refusing to hold events and blaming the hostility on "paid protesters."

Rep. Diana Harshbarger was the latest GOP representative to confront a vocal citizenry during a contentious town hall in her district in Tennessee, which she claimed was "totally manufactured" by progressive organizations to make it look like red districts are upset about Trump's policies.

"It's totally manufactured," Harshbarger said during an appearance on "Washington Watch with Tony Perkins" on Monday. "We know for a fact that a lot of the Move On [and] the George Soros organizations are causing them to come to these really red districts. ... When they show up, they just want to disrupt."

"They want to scream over you and they want to talk about things that have no relevance whatsoever," she added. "It's meant to make red districts look like that they are upset with the president is doing and what Elon Musk and DOGE is doing. It's just for optics. That's all it is. It's just for optics."

Harshbarger made an appearance on "The Todd Starnes Show" on Monday as well, where she said that she knows that the people who showed up at her town hall are not actually residents of her district because they had purple hair and nose rings.

"They were probably paid Soros or MoveOn.org protesters," she said. "These people were not constituents and they are showing up in very red districts to make a scene, to start talking over anybody who has legitimate questions to make it seem like, 'Hey, even red district disagree with what the president and Elon Musk is doing.'"

"It was just a show and those people don't live in East Tennessee. Are you kidding?" she continued. "They had purple hair, teal hair. I've never seen them in my life. So yeah, they're paid protesters."

"Nose rings do not fly in East Tennessee," Harshbarger added. "Every now and again you'll see one, but Lord have mercy. No, they're not from my area."

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LOCAL NEWS VID

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by: Jeff Keeling

Posted: Jan 22, 2025 / 08:12 PM EST

Updated: Jan 22, 2025 / 08:12 PM EST

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — The question of whether all January 6 Capitol rioters should have been included in President Donald Trump’s pardons — even those who physically assaulted police officers — has a local flavor.

Kingsport man Albuquerque Head was sentenced to 90 months in federal prison for pulling Metro D.C. police officer Michael Fanone from a police line and into a crowd, where he was beaten. Head, 45, is now free after serving less than half that time.

“Under the Article 2 of our U.S. Constitution the president has the power to pardon,” law enforcement professor Eric Stanton told News Channel 11 Wednesday. “That was a campaign promise that he made and he’s delivering on his campaign promises.”

That delivery has made waves, as have outgoing President Joe Biden’s pardons of family members and public figures he claimed he was afraid Trump may pursue using the justice system. Stanton said he sees an apparent increase in the use of non-traditional pardons as “a slippery slope.”

But he said many people see a difference even between people who may have broken barricades that day and those who assaulted officers.

“Did Donald Trump, President Trump in his first four years support law enforcement? The answer is yes. However, now with this, with the pardoning thing, it is a black eye, if you will, to law enforcement.”

Stanton said what happened that day was “chaos” brought on by protestors’ belief the election had been stolen. He said that’s enough for many Americans to support Trump’s action in what has become an increasingly polarized electorate.

“Whether it was provoked or not, the history books will make that determination. But at the end of the day, if you or I go to the Capitol right now and we break into the Capitol, we’re violating federal law and we will be held accountable, and justifiably so.

“At the end of the day, the folks that vote for Donald Trump or vote for Joe Biden have to make that determination on whether or not they think that these pardons are fair or not.”

Head is among the January 6 rioters who pleaded or were found guilty of physical crimes against officers. In a stipulation as part of a plea agreement, he acknowledged as “facts beyond a reasonable doubt” the following about that afternoon:

That he knew Fanone, identified as “Officer M.F.,” was “engaged in the performance of official duties as an officer” when he “wrapped his arm around (Fanone) and pulled the officer into the crowd.”

That when Fanone came to the front of a police line about 3:15 p.m. that day, Head “used a riot shield to push officers at the front of the police line and, at one point, struck Officer M.F.’s hand with his own hand.”

That as officers were pushing rioters back several minutes later, Head got ahold of Fanone’s neck “and pulled him into the crowd of rioters outside the tunnel, yelling ‘I got one!’

That after Head was able to hold a struggling Fanone for 25 seconds and pull him further, Fanone broke free but was surrounded by other rioters and kicked, punched, stunned with a device and had rioters try to remove his service weapon from its holster as they held his arms.

“Some of these individuals did very serious things, very serious assault on police officers, assault on others, broke into a secure facility, etcetera, to where they were prosecuted, they were found guilty by a jury of their peers or in a bench trial, and they received punishments for it,” Stanton said. “As a result, now it’s like basically it’s wiped clean and we start all over again.”

“There were officers that were obviously hurt. Some of them will have permanent scars for the rest of their lives they have to deal with, both physically and mentally. And so when you say you support law enforcement, do you support them all the time or not?

“That’s going to be up to the general public to decide whether they think that this is a situation that still warrants the fact that the president supports law enforcement.”

He isn’t surprised that even some Republicans and some conservative law officers aren’t backing the president’s decision to pardon people who committed violence against officers. He’s also confident that a lot of police officers fully support Trump’s decision.

“There’s police officers out there that don’t have a problem with it. It goes back to political affiliations. Police officers are human, just like you and I are, and even though they’re out there impartially enforcing the law at night, when they go home, they still lean one way or the other on the political spectrum.

“So those that may be right-wing conservatives might say this is totally justified and others might say it’s not.”

Northeast Tennessee Republican Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger supports the pardons and said “there is nothing wrong with what Presiden Trump did.”

“These people were incarcerated and they shouldn’t have been,” Harshbarger said.

The congresswoman also criticized the way the Jan. 6 cases have been handled.

“Let me just tell you what some of these Jan. 6 people have told us,” Harshbarger said. “The FBI has a way of entrapping you and you have no other choice besides pleading to get whatever sentence they decide they want to give you. So you’ve got to look a little deeper into these allegations and into the things that’s being reported.”

For Stanton himself, the actions of protestors who committed violence against law enforcement officers that day are a bridge too far.

“Personally, I just believe anybody that’s harmed any first responder whether it’s law enforcement, police, fire, EMS, one of our dispatchers etcetera, should not be pardoned.”

Federal Bureau of Prisons information shows Head, who pleaded specifically to assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers — the government dismissed other counts — was out of federal custody as of Tuesday. He had been sentenced to nearly the maximum eight-year sentence for the count to which he pled guilty.

Following the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, Republican lawmakers are reportedly looking to shift the focus from the relentless Trump-centric news cycle.

According to HuffPost, Republicans are responding to the search on Trump's property by criticizing an unrelated topic: The Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Per the news outlet, Republican lawmakers are "desperate to change the subject to something else ― anything else" and are now focused on "pushing an extremely weird and false talking point: Tens of thousands of tax collectors are coming for you."

On Monday, August 8, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) shared his reaction via Twitter as he pivoted to concerns about the IRS. “The FBI raiding Donald Trump is unprecedented,” he tweeted. “The Biden Admin has fully weaponized DOJ & FBI to target their political enemies. And with 87K new IRS agents, they’re coming for YOU too.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) also tweeted his complaints about the United States justice system as he shared his disapproval of the IRS. “One more example of our two-tiered system of justice,” tweeted Johnson. “Who do you think they’ll weaponize the 87,000 IRS agents against? The answer is obvious. Their political enemies.”

On Tuesday, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) tweeted to criticize Democrats' passing of new legislation to provide funding for more than 80,000 agents.

“Senate Democrats just passed their insane tax-and-spend package, which includes funding for more than 87,000 new IRS agents — more than State, DoD, and CBP combined,” Cammack tweeted. “This nonsense +wild weaponization of the FBI + Democrats’ inflation, crime, border crises = @HouseGOP landslide.”

Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) also warned American citizens about the IRS and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) echoed a similar sentiment. "If the FBI can raid the home of a former US President, imagine what 87,000 more IRS agents will do to you,” tweeted Banks.

“The same Democrats cheering on the FBI raiding President Trump’s house are trying to give the IRS 87,000 new agents and an additional $80 billion,” tweeted Boebert. “And we’re supposed to believe they won’t alsoweaponize the IRS?”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) also expressed frustration as news about the FBI's search continued to circulate online.

“The @FBI raid on President Trump was approved by Director Wray, who also claimed that the illegal FISA warrants used to spy on Trump were constitutional,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who voted in favor of confirming FBI Director Christopher Wray. “Today’s raid is outrageous and unjust, but predictable.”

“Using government power to persecute political opponents is something we have seen many times from 3rd world Marxist dictatorships. But never before in America,” tweeted Rubio.

Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) also argued that the FBI's actions were an example of "inconsistent and partisan" action. “The inconsistent and partisan application of the law by the FBI has gone too far,” argued Harshbarger. “The Democrats, for too long, have used our government agencies from the FBI to the IRS to target their political opponents.”