Congresswoman Elise Stefanik has a lot of explaining to do for her constituents

About the time Congresswoman Stefanik is criticized by national and her own home state media, he has a lot of explaining to do.😮😬

Elise Stefanik ambitiously wants to be the former guy's choice to run (reported in the The Washington Post)...as vice-president❓ Obviously, Stefanik never learned Mother Lesson 101:  Beware who you choose for friends, because they will define you.

Rep. Elise Stefanik is obsessed with former guy Trump

An opinion published in the Albany, New York newspaper Times Union: No doubt U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York District 21 Schuylerville is basking in the outrageous national outrage over her use of the word “hostages” to express her wrong minded sympathy — even solidarity — with the hundreds of seditionists, police assailants, vandals and other thugs convicted in the January 6, 2021, attack on our democracy. Provoking outrage to generate attention is, of course, the MAGA modus operandi.

January 6th convicted sedition rioter the QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley

But this is not just the usual hyperbolic blather from another sycophant of Donald Trump. And Americans shrug off such rhetoric at our nation’s peril.

This offense — a perversion of the very meaning of the word “hostage” — is not some mere bit of demagoguery. It’s part of a broad and relentless assault on the foundations of our republic by Mr. Trump and his loyalists.

There was Ms. Stefanik on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, echoing Mr. Trump’s depiction of the Jan. 6 mob as “hostages,” even as she equivocated by insisting she condemns violence. She’s still using the incendiary rhetoric — the big lie that the 2020, presidential election was stolen from Mr. Trump — that incited that violence.

To call the January 6th insurrectionists “hostages” is to turn the word on its head. It demeans and diminishes the plight of the very real hostages being held around the world. The terrorist organization Hamas still holds an estimated 120 of the more than 230 Israelis and other foreign nationals it kidnapped in the brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Russia is said to have taken at least 20,000 Ukrainian children captive in its invasion of Ukraine, though some estimates range into the hundreds of thousands. Russian President Vladimir Putin wantonly imprisons political rivals and critics of his war, and even foreign journalists such as Evan Gershkovich of The Wall Street Journal. Russia and other repressive regimes like Iran and North Korea have held Americans and other foreigners hostage on minor or trumped-up charges as propaganda tools or pawns in foreign policy.

The January 6th rioters aren’t unwitting, innocent victims of a terrorist organization or a rogue regime. They’re criminals who attacked the heart of our republic, the Capitol in which the representatives of the people had gathered to affirm the results of a free and fair election, the very foundation of our representative democracy. They sought to overturn the results of the 2020, election — which President Joe Biden won decisively by more than 7 million votes — and to reinstall Donald Trump as president instead.

Of the more than 1,230 people charged with federal crimes for their role in that attack, about 730 have pleaded guilty and roughly 170 were convicted at trial, according to The Associated Press. 

Two suspects were acquitted. Some of the leaders of armed, violent anti-government groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, fiercely loyal to Mr. Trump, drew long sentences of up to 22 years in prison. Others with lesser involvement were sentenced to terms of months or even days.

It’s worth noting that, according to The Washington Post, the majority of punishments — 67 percent — were below federal sentencing guidelines.

Yet here comes Mr. Trump, calling these thugs “hostages,” and suggesting that he’ll pardon them if he’s elected president. There’s Ms. Stefanik right behind him, parroting his corruption of the word and recklessly speculating that these people have been treated unfairly.

Who is it, we wonder, that Mr. Trump and Ms. Stefanik so sympathize with? Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, perhaps, who drew the longest sentence, whom Judge Amit P. Mehta called “an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, to the republic and the very fabric of our democracy”? Or Christopher Worrell, who was convicted of using pepper spray gel on police officers? Or Jonathan Pollock, who has been on the run for months, accused of punching police officers, pulling one down a set of steps and attacking another with a riot shield? Or Danny Rodriguez, who drove a stun gun into a police officer’s neck? Or Thomas Webster — a retired New York Police Department officer — who used a metal flagpole to assault an officer defending the Capitol that day?

It doesn’t take a mind reader to know that Ms. Stefanik’s concern isn’t on the conviction of these criminals, but on her own political fortunes, which she has chosen to bond with her obsession for Mr. Trump’s.