Gov. LePage Laments He Can’t Challenge Democrat to a Duel and Point His Gun ‘Right Between His Eyes’
Maine’s Tea Party Republican Governor Paul LePage is under fire after leaving a threatening and obscene voicemail for a Democratic state lawmaker, Rep. Drew Gattine.
LePage left the 30-second message (audio below) for Gattine, calling him a “cocksucker” and threatening him by saying, “I am after you,” and wishing he could challenge him to a duel so he could point his gun “right between his eyes.”
“Mr. Gattine, this is Gov. Paul Richard LePage,” the voicemail begins. “I would like to talk to you about your comments about my being a racist, you cocksucker,” LePage, who has endorsed Donald Trump, said Thursday. “I want to talk to you. I want you to prove that I’m a racist.”
Gattine denies ever calling LePage a racist. Instead, Gattine, who serves as the Chairman of the Maine House’s Health and Human Services Committee, on Wednesday told a reporter “the kind of racially charged comments the governor made are not at all helpful in solving what the real problem is.”
The Maine Democrat was referring to LePage’s remarks in January, in which the Maine governor claimed the state’s drug problems stem from Black drug dealers, “guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty.”
“These types of guys, they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home,” Gov. LePage had said. “Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue we have to deal with down the road.”Â
On Wednesday, LePage doubled down on his previous comments, “saying 90 percent of all drug dealers in Maine are black or Hispanic. He then said that he kept a three-ring binder of mugshots, to prove the point,” according to Salon.
“I’ve spent my life helping Black people and you little son-of-a-bitch, socialist cocksucker. You … I need you to, just friggin. I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you. Thank you,” the voicemail ends.
The Republican governor, having no regrets, fully admits he left the threatening and obscene voicemail, and did not apologize for it, or to Rep. Gattine.Â
“LePage later invited a Portland Press Herald reporter and a two-person television crew from WMTW to the Blaine House [Maine’s governor’s mansion] where during a 30-minute interview the governor described his anger with Gattine and others, told them he had left the phone message and said he wished he and the lawmaker could engage in an armed duel to settle the matter,” the Portland Press Herald reports.
“When a snot-nosed little guy from Westbrook calls me a racist, now I’d like him to come up here because, tell you right now, I wish it were 1825,” LePage told the Press Herald, to explain his obscene and threatening voicemail. “And we would have a duel, that’s how angry I am, and I would not put my gun in the air, I guarantee you, I would not be (Alexander) Hamilton. I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt and he has not done a damn thing since he’s been in this Legislature to help move the state forward.”
Listen:
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Image: Screenshot via David Charns/Twitter