A Florida lawmaker is downplaying his wife’s comments supportive of so-called peaceful protesters who stormed the U.S. Capitol last week to derail certification of the presidential election.
Rep. Cord Byrd, who represents HD 11, downplayed wife Esther Byrd‘s comments about the “coming civil wars” as just figurative language.
“No, and I laugh because you’re in journalism and people use hyperbole all the time,” Byrd told WJXT Tuesday. “The Speaker of the House has said, and I quote, ‘I just don’t know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country.’”
Asked to clarify that statement, Byrd said “people talk about civil wars in the Republican party.”
“There are factions. People believe different things. It was a figure of speech and that’s how it was intended.”
The full statement from Mrs. Byrd: “In the coming civil wars (We the People vs the Radical Left and We the People cleaning up the Republican Party), team rosters are being filled. Every elected official in DC will pick one. There are only 2 teams… With Us [or] Against Us,” Byrd mused. “We the People will NOT forget!”
The Byrds left Twitter in recent days, but the news cycle isn’t quite through with them.
Byrd is currently the Vice Chair of the House Judiciary Committee and Chair of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Subcommittee. His wife’s controversial comments came at a time when public safety was under literal siege, with pro-Donald Trump hordes storming the Capitol.
As order broke down Wednesday in D.C., Mrs. Byrd asserted that complaints about Trump supporters brawling with the Capitol Police reflected a double standard.
“ANTIFA and BLM can burn and loot buildings and violently attack police and citizens,” Byrd remarked on her personal Facebook page. “But when Trump supporters peacefully protest, suddenly ‘Law and Order’ is all they can talk about! I can’t even listen to these idiots bellyaching about solving our differences without violence.”
This continues a history of quotable musings from Mrs. Byrd, such as this from last year about “Proud Boys.”
“Why do you think Facebook is throwing people in FB Jail who share information about Proud Boys? (Side note: I must really have great friends cause a whole bunch have been locked up! 
) I think it’s because they’ve seen a drastic spike in searches and they are worried that people are educating themselves rather than blindly believing what MSM narrative. Anyone have a better theory?”
As well, Mrs. Byrd has made comments supportive of QAnon after the couple was photographed on a boat flying a QAnon flag.
This article first appeared at Florida Politics.
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