Basheer Jones is a Cleveland city councilman and a candidate for mayor of Cleveland in the upcoming September 14 primary election. He is also unusually forthright, even for a twenty-first-century Democratic politician, about his contempt for the land in which he seeks elected office.
Jones is a devout, observant Muslim, and already, according to CleveScene, his “personal religious beliefs and organizational ties have become linked with his campaign. Jones made a number of questionable campaign expenditures in 2020 to international Muslim organizations and figures, including expenses likely related to his December travels in Egypt and the sponsorship of a Muslim orphanage there and a Quranic school in Senegal.”
What’s more, “a recent controversial video shows Jones saying, ‘women are not our leaders.’” Jones, like Muslim spokesmen all over the Western world when confronted with statements that are politically inconvenient, insists that his words were “taken out of context.”
But that is not remotely the worst of it. On Sunday, the RAIR Foundation published an exposé on Jones that contained audio of Jones speaking on January 3, 2016, and making fun of Muslim immigrants who were thankful to be in the United States, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.
“Before 9/11,” Jones asserts, “our people, our brothers and sisters from the immigrant communities, like, ‘America is a great place. Oh, it’s the land of the free, home of the brave.’ You’d see the imams, big imams, on the stage, singin’, you know.” Here the crowd starts to laugh softly; Jones chuckles a bit along with them and continues: “‘I pledge allegiance to the flag,’ you know, ‘this is the greatest place in the world.’ And we were tellin’ you, ‘Ah, no it’s not. Ah, we know about this place. This place, we know, we know that guy, somethin’ about him.’ And then 9/11 hit. Everybody started comin’ to us. ‘Brothers, please, come, come march with us, stand –’ Brother, we been tellin’ you, that they’ll change on you just like that, man.”’
Jones was apparently referring to American authorities supposedly turning on Muslim communities after 9/11 and subjecting them to “Islamophobic” counter-terror measures. In any case, his contempt for the grateful immigrants, and I-told-you-so implication that he had somehow been vindicated after 9/11, when America proved to be not so great a place after all, ought to have raised eyebrows among those who backed Jones for Cleveland City Council and are now supporting his mayoral ambitions.
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There is no indication, however, that anyone was concerned in the slightest with their candidate’s anti-Americanism. We are, after all, talking about the Democratic Party. This is the party that stood by and did nothing when Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Kabul) tweeted: “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. I asked [Secretary of State Antony Blinken] where people are supposed to go for justice.”
Yes, that’s right: She equated the United States and Israel, both of which go out of their way to avoid civilian casualties, with jihad terror groups that target civilians and use them as human shields. As monstrous as her words were, they didn’t lower her stock among Democrats in the slightest degree. If anything, likening the U.S. to jihad terror groups made Omar even more of a rising star in the party than she was already. On Twitter, Leftists rushed to trash the U.S. and defend her, insisting that she was absolutely right to equate the United States military with bloodthirsty jihadis who murder little girls for going to the schools that the U.S. military built for them.
And so it is with Basheer Jones. Now that it is a matter of public record that he thinks it ridiculous to consider the United States “the greatest place in the world” and to pledge allegiance to it, he won’t drop in the estimation of far-Left voters in and around Cleveland. If anything, they will think more highly of him than they did before. For the Democratic Party’s core constituency, hatred of the United States and contempt for those who love this country is not a bug, but a feature.
In ordinary times, Basheer Jones’ statement would be something that should disqualify someone from elected office and drive him from public life forever. But these are not remotely ordinary times. Basheer Jones, mayor of Cleveland, is now a live possibility. And after that, the sky’s the limit. Governor Jones, Senator Jones, President Jones – why not? Hate America on the Left today, and you can write your own ticket.
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