Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary candidate Kathy Barnette is a "phony" who should not be touted as representing former President Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement, according to Newsmax's Greg Kelly on Wednesday night.
Kelly, host of "Greg Kelly Reports," showed several clips of Barnette to reinforce his suggestion the candidate was "woke" and not conservative. He added she was "unvetted by the press" because media members had been focused on GOP front-runners Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick heading into Tuesday's primary.
"She sounds like, well, woke, liberal [former New York City] Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said that his son, who happened to be Black, faced racism everywhere he went," said Kelly, who then showed a video of Barnette speaking before a "Barnette for U.S. Congress" banner.
Barnette failed in a House bid for the Philadelphia-area 4th Congressional District two years ago.
"I am a Black woman, as you can clearly see, married to a Black man, and I have a Black son," Barnette said in the video. "Racism, systemic racism, is very important to me. It is a very important topic to me.
"My baby, he's 14 years old, almost 6 feet tall; I want him to be able to walk into a world that is safe. I want him to be able to drive wherever he wants to drive, and to live his best life.
"If he makes a mistake, it is my prayer that people will give him grace … if he makes a mistake, where he runs into the justice system, I pray that people will do the right thing."
Barnette was seen speaking before the 2020 election, and after George Floyd died in the custody of Minneapolis police officers.
"I, like you, wanted to make sure that these police officers receive ... that George Floyd received justice," Barnette said. "And that these four police officers did not get a tap on the wrist, right? I wanted that, just like everyone else in this nation.
"And I can say, for strong certainty, that I would have been out there right along beside each and every one of you who were protesting in Minneapolis; I would have been right there, locked arm and ready to have my voice heard – to make sure that those who were in power recognize that we are watching them and we are … what our expectations are.
"I would have been right there."
Kelly said, as a fellow military service veteran, he had been "excited" to learn about Barnette's service. However, after going to her campaign website could not "figure out what she did, or when she did it."
The Barnette website claims, "Kathy served her country proudly for 10 years in the Armed Forces Reserves where she was accepted into Officer Candidacy School."
"There's no such thing as the Armed Forces Reserves. It doesn't exist," said Kelly, who served nine years in the Marine Corps Reserves. "There's the Army Reserve, there's the Marine Corps Reserve. Nobody calls it the Armed Forces Reserve … [and] it's 'Officer Candidate School.' It's not a typo.
"There's something off here. Ten years unaccounted for. She hasn't released her DD-214. This is the definitive, basic document that a veteran gets when they leave active, or even reserve, service. Where is it? Why haven't we've seen it?"
Earlier in the show, Kelly showed video of Barnette at Mount Vernon, where she stood before a replica of "extremely shanty" slave cabins on George Washington's former plantation.
"I heard some white people behind me talking about, you know, just the high and mightiness how we revere President George Washington — specifically to those Blacks who came and were treated in the most inhumane way," she said.
"But as those white people were standing behind me, talking about the high and mightiness of how we revere President Bush … I mean President Washington, I was thinking to myself we truly have to have a balanced view of history. We have to balance history off. We cannot cut off our nose to spite our face."
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