I’d lay bets that Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI), the man with the big mouth in the photo at left, pushed Code Pink protester Nour Jaghama, the little woman in the photo below, and not the other way around.
The former Navy SEAL is a big guy. She’s a little woman. Moreover, Van Orden has a history of angry outbursts, cursing, and yelling at kids and throwing books to “teach them a lesson” (see Wikipedia article here).
The veteran of five combat deployments probably has PTSD and an anger problem. I’m not being judgmental about that; it’s just an observation.
But he’s a bigoted, opinionated, closed-minded ass, and I’ll be judgmental about that, although I’m not saying he shouldn’t be in Congress. That’s up to his district’s voters, and they have a right to elect a Jan. 6 rioter (details here) to the Congress he defiled, if that rows their boat.
The incident happened on Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Milwaukee where Republicans were gathered for their nominating convention, in a line for a Republican women’s lunch. According to Jaghama, Van Orden cut in line ahead of her, “so I stood in front of him, because I was first” (see story here.)
Witness Tighe Barry, another Code Pink protester, says Van Orden “just grabbed this poor young woman of color and threw her out of the way and said, ‘I need to pass'” (see story here).
This is what Van Orden posted on X (see it here):
“While standing in line to enter an event at the RNC today, I was assaulted by what appeared to be a member of the pro-Hamas group CODEPINK. A nearby police officer witnessed this assault and I understand they have been arrested. This appears to be an incident of political violence and I will never tolerate this.”
That from a Jan. 6 rioter. Jaghama is Palestinian, and Van Orden hates Palestinians (see his Facebook post here).
She was arrested, released after 15 hours in jail, and charged by the cops with “battery on a sitting Congressman.” It’s a common police tactic to arrest protesters on trumped-up charges, hold them for a day or so, then release them. This effectively removes them from the protest.
That’s what appears to have happened here. Jaghama says the police never asked for her side of the story, and within 24 hours the D.A. declined to prosecute her (see story here).
CodePink’s statement (read it here) says Van Orden “falsely accused Nour of assault after running into her from behind. He then used social media and press remarks to incite vitriol against our organization, CODEPINK, by attempting to link us to terrorism and political violence.”
That behavior is so typical of Van Orden that it’s much more believable than anything he says. Van Orden is a bully who starts trouble, as shown by the library incident described in the Wikipedia article above where he took out his hatred of LGBQT people on a kid who was simply using the public library.
Everything screams staged incident to “teach a lesson” to a protester. In the video below he brags to a Republican audience, “I’ve been hit harder by an air coming out of a blow dryer.” If that’s an “assault” which sends him running to the police, he’s a colossal pussy.
Because CodePink has filed a formal ethics complaint against Van Orden (read it here), the truth of what happened may come out. There’s a good chance it was caught on a police bodycam, as cops were on the scene.
When all is said and done, what probably happened is the Palestinian-hating bully spotted the little Palestinian woman, shoved her, lied about it (just as he lied about his role in the Capitol riot) in order to have her arrested, and stoked political hate by calling her a terrorist.
This is the kind of person Van Order is. It’s reflected in his cursing at Senate pages, yelling at the kid in the library, and interrupting a Biden state of the union speech by yelling “liar!”
Even by Republican civility standards, he’s uncivilized. Wikipedia notes Van Orden also was caught with a loaded handgun at an airport security checkpoint; with his temper, he could easily turn violent.
I think his problem is he still thinks he’s on a battlefield and everyone is his enemy. This man badly needs counseling.