Malliotakis Receives Stinging Indictment of First Week From Hometown Paper
Rep. Malliotakis wrapped-up her first week in office and things aren’t going well according to her hometown paper.
Here’s what the Staten Island Advance had to say:
EDITORIAL: Malliotakis might have satisfied supporters, but let America down | From the editor
1/8/2021
By Brian J. Laline
Hi Neighbor,
I wish I could say I’m a proud Staten Islander over the way our new member of Congress dealt with the horrible, and deadly, attempted coup of the United States government Wednesday.
I am not, though I am certain many of my neighbors are.
Even after the extraordinary events of the day Wednesday, Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis — on the job just three days — said she still had “deep concerns about some of the irregularities” in the election process.
“I still have a constitutional responsibility to review this and vote accordingly,” she said, adding that what happened Wednesday “is a completely separate situation.”
“I believe that it doesn’t matter whether it was 10 votes, 10,000 votes, or enough to overturn the election. I think what occurred in these states needs to be investigated,” she told Fox News.
So she voted against certifying Arizona’s and Pennsylvania’s electoral votes. And, if every single state election official is to be believed, voted to thwart the will of the people of those two states.
There is so much wrong with this, where to begin?
Was objecting anything more than a grandstand move by the 100 or so House members, aimed at keeping their base — and the Trump Family — happy? You decide. They all knew their objections meant nothing in the electoral process and the election would be certified.
What did their objections accomplish beyond dividing our nation even more?
Any thinking American knows “voting irregularities” exist. Yes, poll workers make mistakes. Yes, dead people sometimes vote. Yes, there are instances of non-citizens making their way into the voting booth. Yes, absentee ballots get mangled, lost or sent to the wrong people.
But so many mistakes, so many dead people, so many non-citizens to overturn an election?
It’s absurd, and Nicole Malliotakis knows it. Or she should, since every state government official stood by their vote count, and every court tossed lawsuits brought by Donald J. Trump and his followers.
Or does the new congresswoman believe they all are in on a monumental hoax?
Fine, if she wants an investigation, launch one. If the congresswoman is concerned about irregularities, she should call for a commission to study it. She should continue her call for voter identification laws.
She should do something, except thwart the will of the people.
To stand before America, just hours after armed thugs broke into the Capitol Building at the behest of an unhinged president, endangering every single member of Congress — including the congresswoman — is just plain wrong.
And so is trying to convince us that the attack and the attempted coup “is a completely separate situation.”
It is not a separate situation.
It is a situation that resulted from relentless fabrications with no basis in fact put forth by the leader of the congresswoman’s party. And then enforced by his supporters and members of Congress, whose only “proof” of widespread fraud were the rants of a man who told us the coronavirus still ravishing our nation would disappear by Easter. Last Easter.
A staggering 3,964 Americans didn’t get to see the mess in Washington play out Wednesday. Because on Wednesday, they died. They lost their lives to Covid while the Trump-fueled insanity was going on.
No matter the support Americans showed Donald Trump over the past four years, and for whatever reason they did, Wednesday afternoon was the time to declare it over.
Donald Trump incited Wednesday’s riot and the assault on the democracy he was sworn to defend.
You can call it treason.
Fight to take back “their” country, he told the cheering mob. This is not “their” country, Mr. Trump. This is “our” country. All of us.
Predictably, Staten Island’s Trump Contingent – or at least some of it – is on the defensive.
Telling me I’m a FRAUD (caps his), or “a disgrace to my profession,” one emailer had this to say:
“I was in DC yesterday — it was very peaceful. We now know Antifa were the ones to break the windows and sit in the offices. We now know the police LET THE PROTESTERS IN to the Capital (sic) building.”
This is a mindset Donald J. Trump has fostered in our country and in our community.
Congresswoman Malliotakis was quite forceful in her attack on the mob. Arrest them, she said. Prosecute them to the “highest extent possible.”
“It’s obviously something that is very sad and disturbing and I condemn in the highest possible regard,” she said. “This is completely unacceptable and does not help anybody’s cause or efforts.”
What did she think might happen with the frenzied thousands gathered just a mile away when the guy she counts as one of her most notable supporters – Rudy Giuliani – urged violence?
“So let’s have trial by combat,” he told the mob.
Yet, after months of feeding into the Trump delusion, the congresswoman was still outraged over the insurrection. But she could not find it within herself to jump off the Trump train and do the right thing for America.
Instead, along with more than 100 of her brand new House colleagues, she chose to object to the will of the people.
I don’t know anything about the communities from which Congresswoman Malliotakis’ colleagues hail. But I do know the community of Staten Island.
Her electoral objections had far less to do with “constitutional responsibility” and far more to do with playing to the very large Staten Island Donald J. Trump Contingent that elected her.
Leadership? Hardly.
Brian
Brian Laline is executive editor of the Staten Island Advance/SILive.com
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