The disgusting extremism of Republican Jay Rodne, Snoqualmie’s own resident bigot

Over the past few days, we’ve seen a vile esca­la­tion of anti-refugee rhetoric from some of the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s most bom­bas­tic fig­ures, includ­ing pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates like Don­ald Trump and Ted Cruz in the wake of the hor­rif­ic attacks in Paris, France. A num­ber of Repub­li­can gov­er­nors have also got­ten into the act, declar­ing that the states they’re sup­posed to be in charge of will not accept refugees (which is not a deci­sion they have the author­i­ty to make).

Our own state’s chief exec­u­tive, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, has been force­ful­ly push­ing back against this non­sense, not­ing that Wash­ing­ton has a long tra­di­tion of accept­ing refugees, and that fed­er­al author­i­ties already have an exten­sive screen­ing sys­tem in place. For that, Inslee has earned the scorn of one par­tic­u­lar­ly mean and extrem­ist Repub­li­can state rep­re­sen­ta­tive: Jay Rodne of the 5th Leg­isla­tive District.

Rodne has been trash­ing Inslee on Face­book and engag­ing in immi­grant and refugee bash­ing. His posts, which we’ve been track­ing for a while, have caught the atten­tion of the mass media, includ­ing The Seat­tle Times and The Stranger.

In an inter­view with Fox affil­i­ate KCPQ, which ran yes­ter­day, Rodne did not back down, telling the sta­tion “I stand by those comments”.

These are the spe­cif­ic com­ments that Jay Rodne stands by:

Oba­ma wants to import 1.5 mil­lion mus­lims into the U.S. This is absolute mad­ness! Islam is incom­pat­i­ble with west­ern civ­i­liza­tion! How any­one peo­ple need to die? In the inter­im, Ami­cans, arm yourselves!!!!!

– Jay Rodne, Novem­ber 13, 2015 at 9:55 PM

The Seat­tle Times deemed the first false state­ment wor­thy of a Truth Nee­dle debunk­ing, which ran online and in this morn­ing’s paper.

Rodne kept at it this week, writing:

The assault in Europe con­tin­ues and Oba­ma and Gov Inslee’s response is to open the door to unvet­ted Syr­i­an migrants. Where is the leadership?

– Jay Rodne, Novem­ber 17, 2015 at 1:59 PM

Inslee is doing no such thing, of course. As he said on Tues­day after par­tic­i­pat­ing in a White House brief­ing on secu­ri­ty pro­to­cols relat­ed to refugee resettlement:

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment reaf­firmed that refugees go through the high­est lev­el of secu­ri­ty screen­ing of any cat­e­go­ry of trav­el­er to the Unit­ed States. This mul­ti-lay­ered screen­ing process involves the use of bio­graph­ic and bio­met­ric infor­ma­tion, such as back­ground checks and fin­ger­prints, which are screened against mul­ti­ple law enforce­ment and coun­tert­er­ror­ism databases.

Refugee screen­ing experts per­form mul­ti­ple in-per­son inter­views, and each screen­ing is again reviewed by a supervisor.

Refugee can­di­dates also under­go a med­ical screen­ing. And because of the par­tic­u­lar con­di­tions regard­ing the Syr­i­an cri­sis, there are addi­tion­al secu­ri­ty screens in place for Syr­i­an refugees. The U.S. State Depart­ment is con­tin­u­al­ly mon­i­tor­ing the process to ensure we have the strongest pos­si­ble safe­guards in place to pro­vide refuge to those who need it while keep­ing out those who would seek to harm us.

Fed­er­al offi­cials also made it clear that there is a lot of mis­in­for­ma­tion about the type of peo­ple who are flee­ing from per­se­cu­tion. The U.S. State Depart­ment pri­or­i­tizes the high­est-risk and most-vul­ner­a­ble groups of peo­ple – chil­dren, the elder­ly, and vic­tims of tor­ture or abuse. About half of all Syr­i­an refugees are children.

We are for­tu­nate that our nation’s loca­tion and bor­ders do not put us in the same sit­u­a­tion we see in Europe, where boats and rafts full of refugees wash ashore with a sig­nif­i­cant­ly dimin­ished abil­i­ty to track who is arriv­ing or departing.

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment feels con­fi­dent that we have in place robust and thor­ough secu­ri­ty pro­to­cols and prac­tices that allow us to pro­vide a safe har­bor to those flee­ing unfath­omable types of bru­tal­i­ty and vio­lence while also keep­ing us safe.

React­ing to Rod­ne’s Novem­ber 17th post crit­i­ciz­ing Inslee (quot­ed in full above), Denali Finan­cial CFO Chris Dukelow wrote:

I’m not sure why my ‘STATE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive’ is wast­ing time on mat­ters in which States have zero juris­dic­tion. How about fig­ur­ing out Mcleary [sic], busi­ness issues and trans­porta­tion infrastructure?

Rod­ne’s response was to dou­ble down:

Chris, many of the Gov­er­nors who have said “no” to the reset­tle­ment of Syr­i­an migrants have put teeth into their stance by man­dat­ing that no state fund­ing would be used for the relo­ca­tion services.

This could have huge bud­getary impli­ca­tions that would fur­ther drain scarce resources away from being used for oth­et [sic] bud­get items, such as Mcleary [sic]. So, I am sor­ry but this issue has a very sig­nif­i­cant nexus to our state budget.

Dukelow did­n’t care for that answer one bit.

So is this a bud­getary issue or a fear issue? I guess I don’t under­stand how refugees uti­lize state resources any­more than oth­er cit­i­zens. They get jobs, they pay sales tax, they start busi­ness­es and pay B&O tax­es, they live in places that pay prop­er­ty tax­es. And I’d ven­ture to say that they would be off assis­tance pro­grams a hel­lu­va lot quick­er than some of our “own” deadbeats.

Rodne also shared a map on Tues­day of the states with Repub­li­can gov­er­nors who have been false­ly declar­ing that their states will reject Syr­i­an refugees (which, again, is not some­thing that they have the pow­er to do), com­ment­ing approv­ing­ly, “The tide is turn­ing in favor of com­mon sense!”

Much of the grist for Rod­ne’s com­men­tary is pro­vid­ed by reac­tionary right wing author and colum­nist Pamela Geller. Rodne is so enam­ored with her that he is in the habit of post­ing videos and links she’s shared sev­er­al times a week.

Although Rodne told KCPQ that he believes “the vast major­i­ty of Mus­lims in the world are peace­ful and want noth­ing more than to live in peace with oth­er faiths”, his many Face­book posts demon­strate he is Islam­o­pho­bic. Here’s another:

These are the bar­bar­ians that we are up against. This is an exis­ten­tial threat–our very exis­tence as a civ­i­liza­tion is being threat­ened. Islam is incom­pat­i­ble with west­ern val­ues of tol­er­ance, per­son­al free­dom and respect for the rule of law. It is time for Amer­i­ca to wake up and con­front the real­i­ties of the chal­lenges that we face.

– Jay Rodne, Octo­ber 31, 2015, 3:01 PM

Notice here Rodne does­n’t both­er to dis­tin­guish between “the vast major­i­ty of Mus­lims” and the “small per­cent­age of that 1.5 bil­lion Mus­lim prac­ti­tion­ers who pre­scribe to a medieval inter­pre­ta­tion of their faith that com­mands them to com­mit acts of atroc­i­ty against our civ­i­liza­tion”. He instead false­ly says that Islam is “incom­pat­i­ble” with Amer­i­can val­ues. He’s wrong about that.

Rod­ne’s refusal to take back his com­ments in his KCPQ appear­ance prompt­ed the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to call for his imme­di­ate removal from the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee by the House Repub­li­can cau­cus, with Rodne sits on as the Rank­ing Mem­ber. (The Com­mit­tee is chaired by Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lau­rie Jink­ins of Taco­ma; its vice chair is Demo­c­rat Chris­tine Kilduff.)

“Jay Rod­ne’s big­ot­ed and Islam­o­pho­bic com­ments are just unac­cept­able, and some­one who holds these hate­ful views should not hold a cru­cial posi­tion of pow­er in Olympia” said Jamal Raad, Wash­ing­ton State Democ­rats Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor, in a state­ment sent to NPI. “The House Repub­li­cans are meet­ing right now for pre-ses­sion days and can change com­mit­tee assign­ments. The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty urges them to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to do the right thing and strip Jay Rodne of his lead­er­ship posi­tion on the Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee. Tol­er­at­ing those kinds of harm­ful com­ments is just plain wrong.”