A screen shot from CNN.com this morning
It’s no wonder Carl Paladino supports the candidate for president who wants to do something about the media. The Buffalo businessman last graced the news in April, when he told NPR’s Morning Edition that he and his fellow Trump supporters wanted an exterminator “to get the raccoons out of the basement” of government. I assume he was referring to waste, fraud, and abuse, for which raccoons are notorious, but some reporters thought he meant black people. In defense of this maybe tenuous reading, Paladino does look like the kind of person who refers to black people in code, constantly. But you can understand why he might consider himself the victim of uncharitable reporting. This morning, CNN comes along with this:
A top Donald Trump supporter drew fire Wednesday for a tweet that he says was a “well-intended mistake,” which seemed to call for the lynching of Attorney General Loretta Lynch. The tweet from New York businessman and former gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino said “Lynch @LorettaLynch let the Grand Jury decide,” according to reports and screen grabs on Twitter. The message was replaced with another that simply said “@LorettaLynch let the Grand Jury decide.” Paladino was apparently weighing in on FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that the bureau would recommend no charges in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
This story appeared under the headline Trump supporter tweet appears to call for lynching of Loretta Lynch. Appears to whom? Speaking as a person who has to go back and delete part of every tweet in which I use Twitter’s @ autofill, I did not at first read Paladino’s as advocating the lynching of the Attorney General.