David Clarke, the sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, and a frequent Fox News commentator, said on his radio program on Glenn Beck’s The Blaze network this weekend that he’s supporting the small group of armed militia members who are occupying a federal building in Oregon because the country has reached a “pitchforks and torches moment” that can’t be fixed by an election.
He added that he doesn’t want the situation in Oregon to “come to armed conflict against the federal government,” which means that “the federal government should stand down on this, just get out of there.”
“When are we going to have that pitchforks and torches moment?” Clarke demanded after reading lengthy passages from the Declaration of Independence and comparing President Obama to King George III. “When are we going to have it? Or are we going to sit around and just wait for the next election and, ‘Oh, if we could just get a Republican in the White House, this will all be righted.’ No, it won’t.”
Clarke praised the “small band of patriots” holed up in the Oregon wildlife refuge building, who say they are protesting the imprisonment of ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, who were convicted of arson on federal lands, although the Hammonds have not backed the siege. He mocked the critics who say that the dispute can be resolved in a quieter way by talking with the government.
“There’s no working anything out with this federal government!” he said. “We’re $18 trillion in debt and rising. The Congress just passed an omnibus spending bill of $1.2 trillion which funded all of Barack Obama’s priorities. I’m through waiting for the next election. I will continue to vote, but if you think I’m going to sit around waiting for that, thinking that that’s going to be that magic moment, then you don’t know the People’s Sheriff. I’m through with that, and that’s why I backed the Hammonds in this situation.”
He went on to criticize the state of Oregon and the local sheriff for not interfering in the Hammonds’ case and told his listeners that they should use metaphorical pitchforks and torches by blogging and calling into talk radio in support of the Oregon group and urging Congress to “shut down the Bureau of Land Management.”
