Crazy fuck:
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wildly claimed that IRS agents armed with assault-style rifles were preparing to show up on Americans’ doorsteps to audit their taxes once the agency has an additional $80 billion to enforce the law and sniff out cheats.
“Are they going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small-business person in Iowa?” Grassley asked Thursday on “Fox & Friends.”
“I think they’re going after middle-class and small-business people, because basically they think ... they aren’t paying their fair share, and we’re going to go after them,” he added.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) falsely warned that a “new army of 87,000 IRS will be coming for you” if you “make $75,000 or less.”
Critics complained that such claims are not only flatly false, but dangerous for agents.
“Contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig Thursday.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement Friday that the “incendiary conspiracy theories Republicans are pushing about armed IRS agents are increasingly dangerous and out of control. High-ranking Republicans are saying shockingly irresponsible things,” he added.
“Given the social media chatter we’re already seeing, it’s all too easy to imagine individuals using these conspiracy theories as justification for violence against public servants and their families,” Wyden said in the statement.
Here’s some context:
First, the senator probably meant AR-15s, not AK-15s. Second, as Grassley probably knows, the IRS has already made it explicitly clear, in writing, that its focus will be on suspected corporate and high-income tax evaders, not “middle-class and small-business people.”
But more important is the picture the Iowa Republican painted for Fox News viewers: IRS officials, Grassley suggested, aren’t just going to enforce existing laws, they might also target small-business owners with assault rifles, "ready to shoot."
It’s the kind of rhetoric that appears designed to convince the public — or at least certain portions of the public — that IRS employees should be perceived as armed and potentially dangerous.
As a Washington Post analysis added yesterday, there’s plenty of related talk on the political fringe. The problem is the increasingly blurry line between the fringe and prominent Republican voices.
We haven’t seen much polling out this race but the last poll we saw was on July 16th:
Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley leads Democrat Mike Franken by 8 percentage points among likely Iowa voters, according to a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll — a first look at what could be Grassley’s most competitive election since 1980.
Grassley leads 47% to 39% against Franken, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, in the latest poll, conducted July 10-13 by Selzer & Co. Another 7% of likely voters say they would vote for someone else, 2% say they would not vote and 5% say they are not sure.
While Grassley leads Franken, the margin is narrower than in any Iowa Poll matchup involving Grassley since he was first elected to the U.S. Senate. Grassley has not polled below 50% in a head-to-head contest since October 1980, before he went on to defeat incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. John Culver.
“It is his weakest showing since 1980,” pollster J. Ann Selzer said of Grassley.
Still, election forecasters say the race is solidly positioned in Grassley’s favor.
Since Grassley’s 1980 victory over Culver, which he won by 8 percentage points, a Democrat has not won even 40% of the vote against Grassley. His closest result since then was in 2016, when he defeated former Lt. Gov. Patty Judge by 24 percentage points, taking 60% of the vote to Judge’s 36%.
“It’s a solid lead,” Selzer said. “But it’s just not as huge as we’ve seen in the past.”
The new poll of 811 Iowa adults — including 597 likely voters — has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points for questions asked of all Iowans and 4 percentage points for questions asked of likely voters.
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