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Allen West Hires Fiery Talk Radio Host (And Potential Rebel) As Chief Of Staff (VIDEO)

Rep.-elect Allen West (R-FL)

Rep.-elect Allen West (R-FL), who built his conservative political career on the torture-related incident that ended his tenure in the military, has gone back to his conservative base with a key staff hire.

As the Palm Beach Post reports, West has tapped local talk-radio host Joyce Kaufman, who has made a name for herself through her fiery denunciations of illegal immigration, to be his new Chief of Staff:

A proud Puerto Rican Jew, Kaufman became a de facto spokeswoman for South Florida’s anti-illegal immigration movement in 2007. She hit a raw nerve with her mostly white, mostly older WFTL audience, and watched her ratings shoot up, when she broadcast that she quit buying cable TV from Comcast after the company’s answering system asked her to “Press 1 for English.”

She’s had a few on-air doozies since, including when she demanded that illegal aliens be hung on the central square! That got her some heat from the Federal Communications Commission.

And that’s not all. Kaufman has also made some fascinating comments on the subject of armed rebellion against the United States government.

Via the local Crowley Political Report site, here is a fascinating video of Kaufman speaking at a 4th of July Tea Party event this past summer:

At about the 5:00 mark, Kaufman read from the Declaration of Independence: “That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

She then continued…

The Founding Fathers were brilliant. They gave us two methods with which to do it. They gave us ballots — and that’s a first line of defense. We go out there, and we change them, we send home all of these incumbents who have done nothing to represent the people. They don’t come to their districts, they don’t talk to us — and they stopped taking my calls.

And then the Founding Fathers were ever so brilliant — and I don’t care how this gets painted by the mainstream media, I don’t care if this shows up on YouTube, because I am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to ensure me my First Amendment rights was they gave a Second Amendment. (Cheering.) And if ballots don’t work, bullets will.”

And at about 7:45, she talked about exactly what she would do if the Republicans didn’t win big in November — a plan that sounds an awful lot like putting together a militia to fight the United States government:

When I say I’ll put my microphone down on November 2nd if we haven’t achieved substantial victory, I mean it. Because if at that point, I”m gonna go up into the hills of Kentucky, I’m gonna go out into the Midwest, I’m gonna go up in the Vermont and New Hampshire outreaches, and I’m gonna gather together men and women who understand that some things are worth fighting for — and some things are worth dying for.”

Wow. Let’s see what West’s office does after Obama’s first veto.

Allen West, FL-22, Joyce Kaufman
Eric Kleefeld

Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.

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