Vichy Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, Collaborator With The Enemies Of Democracy In The Sedition Party

The Arizona Republic reports, ‘I love Andy Biggs’: Book says Sen. Kyrsten Sinema praised him after Jan. 6:

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema privately praised [seditious insurrectionist] Rep. Andy Biggs  months after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol many suspect he helped stoke, and she questioned why she needed to wear a mask in an early 2021 meeting with President Joe Biden, a new book says.

See: Arizona Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar implicated by activist in Capitol insurrection.

“This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future” is an account of the shift from former President Donald Trump to the Biden administration, but it adds new detail to the image of Sinema, D-Ariz., often at odds with her own party and who took Republican positions on several fronts, from tax policy to combating the spread of COVID-19.

“Silent” Sinema’s office declined to comment about the forthcoming book, which they characterized as “unsourced rumors.”

In a passage about negotiations over Biden’s stalled “Build Back Better” agenda, authors Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, both reporters for the New York Times, use unnamed sources to describe a September fundraiser Sinema attended with Republican-friendly business groups.

The groups opposed a bill trying to merge the version that passed the House of Representatives and a slimmer outline being considered in the Senate.

Sinema told the groups there were elements of the package she liked, such as the child tax credit and provisions intended to address climate change, a position she publicly discussed as well. But Sinema then reportedly offered views that were a “delight” to her audience.

Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin write in their new book that @SenatorSinema discouraged Biden from coming to Arizona, touted herself as anti-tax and anti-government to GOP lobbyists, and defended colleague @RepAndyBiggsAZ's positions https://t.co/K4icyePdbr

— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) March 16, 2022

“I come from a fiscally conservative state,” she said, according to the book. “And I’m interested in maintaining pro-growth tax policies that ensure that we can get through this pandemic without losing ground.

Note: When she was in the House, Sinema voted against the GQP’s massive 2017 tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. In the Senate, she told these corporate donors that she would defend their tax cuts. Sinema reportedly fights to protect unpopular tax breaks she opposed; Come clean, Sen. Sinema. Arizona deserves to know why you now support tax cuts you opposed.

“Arizonans don’t like taxes, and we don’t really like government. We love our country. And we love our military. And that’s about where it ends.”

What a cynical view of Arizona.

At the same event, Sinema, the book says, also had kind words for Biggs, R-Ariz., who has faced calls for an ethics and criminal investigation after promoting the false narrative of a stolen election in 2020.

Sinema described him as a “dear friend.” Both served in the Arizona Legislature, and Sinema has long cast herself as willing to work across the aisle to advance her legislative priorities.

“I love Andy Biggs,” Sinema said, according to the book. “I know some people think he’s crazy, but that’s just because they don’t know him.”

Sinema has had a long-standing friendship with Biggs and has joked at Phoenix-area business events they both attended in years past about what may have seemed an unlikely relationship.

I would say that she is an extremely poor judge of character, but her own character is seriously in doubt. They are both horrible people. No wonder they are friends.

Other Democrats in Arizona and elsewhere broke off relations with those they viewed as especially culpable for the Capitol riot.

In another passage, the authors said in the spring of 2021, Sinema was “the first-ever lawmaker to argue with White House aides when they asked her to wear a face mask in the company of the president, repeatedly asking why that was necessary when she had been vaccinated.”

That would have been a significant shift from her early stance on the pandemic.

At the outset of the pandemic, Sinema urged Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs to delay the March presidential primary and publicly condemned Gov. Doug Ducey for not following scientific guidance on managing the disease.

“I don’t think it makes sense to design your policy based on whether or not there are enough hospital beds for people to die in,” she said in a June 2020 interview with “The Gaydos and Chad Show” on KTAR-FM (92.3 FM).

“I think we should be designing our policy about how do we reduce the spread, so fewer people are dying, fewer people are in the hospitals and fewer people are contracting the virus. That should be our focus. And we can do that while also safely reopening our businesses and our economy.”

Sinema on Tuesday was one of eight Democratic senators, including Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., to side with Republicans on a vote to end the federal masking mandate on planes and other public transit.

That came on the heels of Biden’s State of the Union address in which no one was asked to wear masks.

The book says White House aides thought Sinema “sounded more like Mitt Romney than a member of Biden’s own party.”

She told one unnamed Republican senator she believed there were up to six other Democratic lawmakers who agreed with her on policy matters but were content “hiding behind my skirt.”

Note: When the votes were actually cast, it was only Vichy Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who stood alone against their party and the American people, so this cynical prima donna diva is full of her own self-importance.

Axios adds:

President Biden confessed in private that he didn’t understand Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who helped stymie his biggest legislative dreams, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns write in the first major book about the Biden-Harris administration, coming May 3.

Can’t fault him for that. Sinema likes to call herself an enigma.

“One person close to the president likened Biden’s perplexity at Sinema to his difficulty grasping his grandchildren’s use of … TikTok. He wanted to relate, but he just didn’t quite get it,” the authors write in “This Will Not Pass,” about the 2020 election and President Biden’s first year.

In the spring of 2021, “she became the first-ever lawmaker to argue with White House aides when they asked her to wear a face mask in the company of the president, repeatedly asking why that was necessary when she had been vaccinated.”

She also discouraged Biden from coming to Arizona after the president signed the COVID rescue plan in 2021.

Sinema mocked Biden while speaking warmly about House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, and even defending far-right Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who denied the election results and claimed Antifa had infiltrated the Capitol riot. “I love Andy Biggs,” she said. “I know some people think he’s crazy, but that’s just because they don’t know him.”

In other news, Politico reports, Arizona group tightens squeeze on Sinema donors:

A liberal group that helped push EMILY’s List to cut ties with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) over her opposition to changing Senate rules has a new target in its pressure campaign: the Human Rights Campaign.

The Arizona Coalition to End the Filibuster has helped organize an open letter to the LGBTQ organization, which was first shared with POLITICO, urging it to withdraw financial support from Sinema until she reverses her position and supports eliminating the filibuster. The letter also calls for donors to HRC to stop funding the group unless it backs away from the senator.

“The toll of Sinema’s obstruction — which HRC continues to tacitly support and thus enable — for your constituents is growing each day,” the letter reads, “with the filibuster blocking popular legislation, backed by all or nearly all Democrats, to address the urgent issues of reproductive justice, immigrant rights, gun violence, police reform, workers’ right to organize, raising the minimum wage, and more.”

Signed by more than 100 Arizona-based LGBTQ activists and national supporters, the letter also charges that Sinema’s position on the filibuster is preventing the Equality Act from passing. The civil rights legislation would give legal protections to LGBTQ people, which Democrats said is even more urgent in the wake of Republican-controlled states passing laws such as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

The campaign against HRC is the latest example of Sinema and her supporters coming under fire by Democratic activists, donors and lawmakers because she has stood by the filibuster, which effectively requires 60 votes to pass most bills. EMILY’s List, formerly one of Sinema’s largest financial backers, said in January that it would cut her off unless she got behind ending the filibuster.

The abortion rights group NARAL, as well as liberal groups such as Latino Victory Fund, League of Conservation Voters and Black Voters Matter Fund, have taken similar positions.

In a statement, an HRC spokesperson pointed out a blog post by the group’s staff in February that said it was disappointed with Sinema and had pushed her to support changing Senate rules in order to pass voting rights legislation.

“HRC remains committed to passing the Equality Act, as well as working to stop the onslaught of bills in states across the country that are attacking the LGBTQ+ community,” the person added. “More than 350 bills specifically targeting transgender people — largely transgender youth — have been filed since 2020, including 130 such bills this year and 20 in Arizona alone.”

“If we had the federal protection in the Equality Act, the states wouldn’t be able to be jamming through all of these hateful bills,” said Gina Griffiths, an Arizona-based mother of a transgender 19-year-old woman who signed onto the letter. “The HRC needs to no longer support [Sinema]. … She’s letting the entire LGBTQ community down, and my daughter is not as safe as other people because of it.”

Charlotte Clymer, a former press secretary of rapid response for HRC, also signed the letter.

“There are a lot of great people at the Human Rights Campaign doing amazing work. I admire them,” Clymer told POLITICO. “But the leadership of the Human Rights Campaign needs to wake up and understand the stakes here, and I don’t think they do.”

A spokesperson for “Silent” Sinema declined to provide comment for the story.

Kyrsten Sinema has betrayed the voters of Arizona who elected her to office, and this Vichy Democrat is betraying her country by collaborating with the enemies of democracy in the Sedition Party. If she had any sense of decency she would resign from office and allow a real Democrat to be appointed to her seat. After she sits out a year, she can take that sweet high-paid corporate lobbyist job she is trying to line up by sucking up to her corporate donors.