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Joe Walsh: Former Congressman Tweets ‘Watch Out Obama’ After Dallas Shooting

By Patricia Ramirez
Published on: 18:21 PST, Jul 8, 2016

Joe Walsh, a former Republican Illinois congressman (single term) raised eyebrows and ire after sending out a thoughtless tweet following last night’s horrific Dallas shooting. The Dallas shooting, which has been dubbed the single deadliest attack on law enforcement since September 11, 2001, resulted in the deaths of five Dallas police officers while wounding six more. The Dallas shooting, tweeted about by former congressman Joe Walsh, was reportedly in response to a rash of deadly incidents in which police officers shot and killed black suspects.

As Fox 13 Now reported, immediately following the news of the Dallas shooting, former congressman Joe Walsh took to social media to declare that “This is now war,” further adding that President Obama should “watch out.”

“This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you.”

Congressman Walsh posted the incendiary words to Twitter, but soon after deleted the tweet. Most likely due to immediate and angry backlash from his followers and those around the world who read the controversial tweet. Joe Walsh deleted the tweet, but not before it was memorialized eternally in the form of a screenshot.

[Photo by Joe Walsh/Twitter]
After deleting the original tweet, a tweet that could clearly be interpreted as an open-ended threat to President Barack Obama, Former congressman Joe Walsh posted a new tweet. The replacement tweet clarified his first. In the second tweet, he didn’t tell President Obama to “watch out;” rather, he simply blamed “Obama’s words” for the Texas tragedy.

Despite former Congressman Walsh’s recant of his previous words, not everyone in the Twitterverse was buying it, and several people called out Walsh for the original tweet.

Another Twitter user suggested that Joe Walsh be investigated by the Secret Service for inciting violence against the POTUS with his first tweet.

Yet another Twitter respondent to former congressman Joe Walsh’s initial tweet, a tweet in which he suggested that Barack Obama “watch out” in the wake of the Dallas shooting, made it clear that the former congressman wouldn’t be getting close enough to the POTUS for Obama to need to worry.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, the Dallas shooting was the deadliest attack on U.S. law enforcement since 9/11. In the 9/11 attacks, 72 police officers lost their lives. Many of those police officers were killed when they attempted to rescue people trapped in the Twin Towers, which subsequently collapsed. While former congressman Joe Walsh didn’t mention 9/11 in his initial tweet or his follow-up replacement tweet, Walsh did continue to “post vile,” as one critic so succinctly put it, on his Twitter feed.

In an American shooting that had nothing to do with Islam, former Congressman Joe Walsh found a way to turn the tragedy into a religiously-motivated, divisive tool. On his Twitter page, Joe Walsh refers to himself as “the voice of freedom”

The former congressman didn’t stop at inciting religious tensions and making a perceived threat against a sitting president, either. He continued on Twitter, calling out “black thugs” for the death of the four (ultimately five) Dallas police officers.

He went on to say that not only did Obama have “blood on his hands,” but so does Governor Dayton of Minnesota.

A quick view of former congressman Joe Walsh’s twitter feed makes it apparent that he spends a lot of his time posting about race relations in the U.S. Most of what he has to say involves the “fact” that cops kill more white people than black people. He never bothers to mention that there are statistically more white people than black people in the United States.

Even after deleting his earlier anti-Obama tweet, former congressman Joe Walsh once again attacked the president when Obama later called for more gun control in the U.S. following the shooting of 11 Dallas police officers.

According to multiple reports, including one by Fox News, the Dallas shooter (who has been identified as 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson), had a virtual arsenal of weapons at his home. Among the weapons were a plethora of guns and materials for making bombs.

What do you think? Was Walsh’s original anti-Obama tweet appropriate? Was he correct to delete his words? Is former congressman Joe Walsh’s stance correct and/or commendable?

[Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images]

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