A departing member of Congress says one of the reasons she’s leaving is that President-election Donald Trump “tried to kill me once.”
Then Annie Kuster, a Democrat from New Hampshire, tried to walk back her outlandish claim.
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Retiring Democrat Congresswoman Annie Kuster told @rollcall that “[Trump] tried to k*ll me once. I’m not available for it again.” pic.twitter.com/vAmgqMhseP
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 26, 2024
Kuster chose not to seek re-election in 2024 and soon will be out of Congress, according to a report at the Daily Caller.
In comments made in both Roll Call and the Boston Globe, she said she’s trying to set an example for colleagues who are in their 70s and 80s, but “stick around too long.”
And then there is a part of it related to Donald Trump coming back, she explained. “I was one of the last members of Congress in the gallery on Jan. 6, and as it turns out, we have the security footage that shows it was only 30 seconds from when I was able to evacuate that the insurrectionists were in that hallway hunting for us with zip ties and bear mace and who knows what else.
“I just felt like, he tried to kill me once. I’m not available for it again.”
She’s been in Congress for six terms already.
But, the report noted, that in an interview with the Globe, Kuster was backtracking, suggesting her comment was “tongue-in-cheek.”
“I’ve said somewhat facetiously, he tried to kill me once, I’m not available for that again,” she claimed. “What we went through on Jan. 6 and his attempt to overthrow the government took a toll. That was that was really hard, and not just personally, but on my ability to work across the aisle.”
Her claim that Trump was trying to “overthrow” the government lacks evidence, too, even though Democrats have claimed for years the riot events that day were an “insurrection.”
A real overthrow attempt would include not only plans to remove present leaders, but take over the economy, the foreign policy, the military, the budgetary process and more, none of which Trump, who left the White House voluntarily to allow Joe Biden to move in, attempted.
The Daily Caller report explained Kuster “has consistently been a big fan of hyperbole regarding the protests at the Capitol in 2021.”
Video released by her office showed “her and a pair of House Democrats on the third floor of the U.S. Capitol and three protesters wandering down the halls shortly thereafter. It was, she claimed, evidence of ‘the threat that Donald Trump poses to our democracy going forward.'”
