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Far-right Extremism

Sandy Rios Backs Trump’s Civil War Warning: ‘It’s Reality’

Sandy Rios speaks at Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., on September 21, 2018. (Photo: Jared Holt for Right Wing Watch)

American Family Association governmental affairs director and radio host Sandy Rios told listeners that President Donald Trump was not out of step to share a warning with the nation that a “Civil War-like fracture” would happen should he be impeached.

On Tuesday's edition of “Sandy Rios in the Morning” on American Family Radio, Rios took issue with GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s reaction to Trump tweeting a quote from evangelical pro-Trump pastor Robert Jeffress’ warning of a “Civil War-like fracture” if Trump is impeached. Kinzinger wrote on Twitter: “I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. … I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President.  This is beyond repugnant.”

“I would just say to Congressman Kinzinger, if I ever cared to interview him, which I don’t—this is not the first thing he’s done that has not won my approval, that’s for sure—if he has seen war-torn areas, then he, of all people, should be the watchman-on-the wall warning,” Rios said. “Because I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to understand that the tensions are growing in this country so much so that there is a divide that’s setting in that is much like a precursor to any civil unrest.”

Rios compared modern-day America to the time before the American Civil War when “families were divided” over the issue of slavery. Rios asked her viewers: “Are your families divided over politics right now, over President Trump, over his policies? Are you having problems in your own family, with your own friends, at work? You know that you are!”

Trump and Jeffress putting out warnings of a rupture in the nation akin to that of the Civil War, Rios argued, “is not a stretch and it’s certainly not repugnant. It’s reality.”