Former Clinton Adviser Posts Bookstore's Information, Urges More Dems To Attack
The latest tactic adopted by the Trump-hating left is to publicly confront and harass any individual associated with the president, whether that be current and former members of the administration or just teenagers wearing a MAGA hat while out to eat at a fast-food restaurant.
That tactic, to be carried out by rank-and-file leftist activists, has been encouraged by prominent Democrat Party leaders like California Rep. Maxine Waters, among others, and has now claimed former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon as a “targeted victim” of the left’s harassment … as well as a Virginia bookstore owner who defended Bannon from the harassment.
According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Bannon was minding his own business and quietly browsing in Richmond’s Black Swan Books when he was approached by a female customer who began to berate him loudly and called him a “piece of trash,” among choice words and phrases.
The bookstore’s owner, Nick Cooke, requested the woman be quiet and leave Bannon alone and asked for her to leave the store — which she initially refused to do — which led him to call the police with regard to the disturbance in his place of business.
“Steve Bannon was simply standing, looking at books, minding his own business,” explained Cooke of the incident. “I asked her to leave, and she wouldn’t. And I said, ‘I’m going to call the police if you don’t,’ and I went to call the police and she left. And that’s the end of the story.”
“We are a bookshop. Bookshops are all about ideas and tolerating different opinions and not about verbally assaulting somebody, which is what was happening,” Cooke added in an appeal to the left’s supposed devotion to “tolerance” and being open-minded with regard to differing opinions.
But despite that appeal from Cooke, that wasn’t really the “end of the story,” as the bookstore owner’s actions actually worked to transfer the left’s target of hate to himself from Bannon, a shifting that was encouraged by the actions of former senior Clinton campaign adviser Phillipe Reines.
According to The Daily Caller, Reines decided Saturday afternoon that what the bookstore owner had done was unacceptable to his liberal sensibilities and publicized on social media the store’s contact information, such as address and phone number, in an obvious bid to incite harassment of Cooke and his staff.
The tweet, which can be seen below, has not been deleted and contains the name of the store’s owner, its physical and email address, phone number and even a picture of the storefront.
A woman saw Steve Bannon in a VA book store. She took the opportunity to call him a “piece of trash.”
Nick Cooke, the owner of Black Swan Books, called the police.
Black Swan Books
2601 West Main St
Richmond VA 23220
804.353.9476
info@blackswanbooks.comhttps://t.co/uFqN8KZNhy— Philippe Reines (@PhilippeReines) July 8, 2018
The Daily Caller asked Reines why he felt the need to publish all of that information on his social media account and he replied with an exceptionally snarky email in defense of his incitement to harassment, one which contained several references to past actions or statements from Trump.
“You have some very fine people on both sides,” Reines replied in an obvious rip on Trump’s post-Charlottesville commentary. “They may want to contact the store as many did after Sarah Slanders™️ was asked by the owner to leave the Red Hen restaurant. For convenience, I copied & pasted the store’s ‘Contact Us’ page.”
“Presumably they post their contact information on the World Wide Web in the hopes people contact them. Hence the name ‘Contact Us.’ That’s all. It’s not like I Tweeted Lindsey Graham’s cell phone number,” he added in reference to Trump’s sharing of Graham’s phone number during the 2016 primary campaign.
In response to a disapproving comment on his post that shared the contact information of the bookstore, Reines defended his actions and stated unpersuasively that he wasn’t attempting to incite harassment against the bookstore owner, even if that is how it blatantly appeared to others.
“I’m providing a service to the public by providing the contact information the bookstore posted on their website — presumably with the hope of being contacted,” he tweeted. “I presented facts w/o encouraging any behavior. I’d point out through it’s possible this woman stopped a book burning.”
I’m providing a service to the public by providing the contact information the bookstore posted on their website – presumably with the hope of being contacted. I presented facts w/o encouraging any behavior.
I’d point out through it’s possible this woman stopped a book burning. pic.twitter.com/ofDi2aA3tM
— Philippe Reines (@PhilippeReines) July 8, 2018
Should anything unfortunate befall the owner of Black Swan Books, Reines and his obvious call to incitement against the bookstore owner will be wholly to blame.
This man has become so consumed with his hatred for Trump that he now has no regard for the lives and businesses of others who are at best only tangentially related to the Trump administration. That sort of attitude sends us down a dark path our society would be far better off avoiding, but it seems the left is insistent on traveling that dangerous road that will expose countless innocent Americans to harassment — or worse — for the political ideology of themselves or others.
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