With lots of backlash for the Billings Gazette Editorial board’s article about Sheriff (ret.) David Clarke coming to Billings for the Yellowstone County Lincoln-Reagan Day Dinner in a couple weeks, Sheriff Clarke responded with his letter to the editor below.
In Response To The Gazette’s Editorial On My Upcoming Speech
As a conservative first, who happens to be black, I’m used to fierce debate with the left because I don’t fit in their political box. However, a recent editorial in Billings Gazette on my upcoming speech to the Yellowstone County GOP is not simply a criticism of my politics, it’s a direct personal attack against me and illustrates a greater hypocrisy.
This political hit-piece is typical of the liberal media’s hateful campaign against anyone that doesn’t pass their progressive litmus test. You can tell that these editors read the Democratic talking points. As an African-American conservative, I hear these same talking points everywhere I go.
The nameless, faceless cabal at the Gazette didn’t take aim at the merits of my political positions. Instead, they resorted to personalized attacks through name-calling, cherry picking incidents, misrepresenting facts, and even threatening me.
And since these journalists failed to properly research, they may not know just how seriously we take threatening the use of a gun against law enforcement. The war on cops has been fueled by left-leaning editorial boards and has inspired their followers to assault and kill police in attacks in Dallas, Baton Rouge, and New York City.
It’s clear that either the editorial board has a political agenda or they simply don’t know what they’re talking about. After all, they don’t even understand the legal definition of deadly force. Hypothetically, if a member of the editorial board kills me for simply punching one of them – absent from great bodily harm likely to cause death – it wouldn’t justify their use of deadly force against me. The unlawful use of a firearm to settle disputes is actually one of the main reasons for violence in urban areas and the leading cause of death for black males under the age of 25 – another fact regarding crime that this editorial board clearly doesn’t understand.
But one of the reasons this board doesn’t understand urban crime and especially black conservatives is probably because they … (read Sheriff Clarke’s full Rebuttal to the Gazette in this week’s Yellowstone County News paper.)
