Audio: VA07 GOP Candidate Claims People Who Support Removing Confederate Statues Have a “fundamental dislike of America…it’s about perpetuating grievance”

As always, far-right Virginia Del. Nick Freitas (R), a candidate for Congress in VA07, was busy spewing out wildly false disinformation and over-the-top hysteria this morning. Check out the audio, below, in which Freitas *falsely* claims:

• That supposedly everyone, “from the president on down,” agrees on “justice for George Floyd.” Uhhhh…really? Trump believes in “justice for George Floyd?” Uh huh.
• That supposedly Democrats want to “defund the police.” Except that the vast majority of Democrats actually want reforms and other measures regarding the police, NOT abolishing the police or taking away all or most of their funding. Hence, articles like this one in The Hill the other day, which reported, “Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill are quickly shutting down calls to defund police departments as the party grapples with how to respond to demands for reforms in the wake of George Floyd’s death.” Also, see this NBC News article, which reports Congressional Democrats’ “Justice in Policing Act” – which had more than 200 Democratic cosponsors as of early this week – “doesn’t shrink police budgets.”  But clearly, right wingers like Nick Freitas like their narrative of Democrats supposedly favoring anarchy, etc., and aren’t going to let the facts get in the way.
• Freitas claimed, based on who-knows-what evidence, that  “Antifa” (whatever that is, exactly) “was threatening to go into areas like Chesterfield, like Henrico, like rural areas, and their thing was we’re gonna set them on fire…” In fact, that “information” appears to have come from…yep, can’t make this up, crazy State Sen. Amanda Chase(!). Chase’s wild irresponsibility, in fact, forced Chesterfield Police Chief Jeffrey Katz to clarify that “he shared no such information regarding specific threats to Chesterfield, or ‘any active criminal intelligence’ for that matter, with Chase,” and for the Chesterfield County Police Department to post “on social media telling citizens to refer solely to the police department for valid information ‘relating to any known threats, hazards, or informational updates.'” And now Nick Freitas is spreading this disinformation further, even after it’s been refuted by the Chesterfield Police Chief himself. Greeaaaaat.
• Freitas claimed that people who want to take down Confederate statues have a “fundamental dislike of America…it’s about perpetuating grievance.”