Joyce Kaufman, Allen West's Chief Of Staff, Advocated Hanging Illegal Immigrants Who Commit Crimes

Representative-elect Allen West (R-Fla.) decided this week to follow up a controversial and highly successful congressional campaign with a staff announcement in the same vein.

Conservative radio show host Joyce Kaufman will serve as chief of staff to West, a Tea Party-backed political insurgent from Florida's southern coast.

Kaufman is a local staple on Sunshine State airwaves, talking politics from 12pm-3pm on WFTL as part of a lineup that includes heavyweights such as Lou Dobbs and Michael Savage. According to the WFTL website, she'll be retaining a correspondent position while she carries out her Capitol Hill duties for the West camp, a setup that a House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct believes could be "potentially problematic," according to ThinkProgress.

Perhaps more problematic than her employment future, however, is her rhetorical history. As if a blend of her two commentator colleagues, Kaufman is herself known for lobbing partisan firebombs that often focus on issues such as illegal immigration and, more broadly, Democratic leadership.

From the Florida Independent's rundown of a few of her most combative statements:

* In August 2007, when discussing illegal immigrants, she said on her show, "If you commit a crime while you're here, we should hang you and send your body back to where you came from, and your family should pay for it."

* She became infuriated at illegal immigration after she called Comcast and the recording said, "Press 2 for Spanish."
* She said at a rally, with West standing by, "Calling illegal immigrants 'undocumented workers' is like calling a drug dealer a pharmacist without a license." She was furious that children of illegal immigrants were educated in public schools and received health care at emergency rooms. "There are people who want to change your way of life, and some of them may be your gardeners," she said.

The Florida Independent also notes Kaufman has rarely spared Muslims from her harsh words, and, according to the Washington Post's transcript of her show Tuesday, she referred to Democratic leaders such as outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as "garbage":

"Over these months I have been blessed to form very wonderful relationships with the West family," Kaufman said, adding that she had been a supporter of his campaign. "I looked at this family and [told] myself, how do you not fight and put them up on the pedestal when we've got this garbage up on the pedestal now, people like Nancy Pelosi?"

While some might think to chalk West's contestable chief of staff choice up to a case of him failing to thoroughly vet his pick, one report recently pointed out that "West is believed to have been on Kaufman's show more than 100 times" over the past four years.

Comments

[rayinpa]

06:06 PM on 12/14/2010

Don't forget this man's former chief of staff said (in reference to illegal immigration): "If you commit a crime while you're here, we should hang you and send your body back to where you came from, and your family should pay for it." So what do you expect him to say?? This guy’s going to be a lot of fun in the press. No wonder he wants the right to censor the media.

[notillegal2]

01:00 PM on 11/19/2010

Now we're talkin'

[middledge]

04:13 PM on 11/16/2010

They all want to be stars.
Joyce Kaufman is in heaven....all she ever wanted was attention....she''d tried every kind of radio she could, which really wasn't all that much....swing shifts, weekends, and over nites at the smallest local AM stations.. Ms Kaufman was a little heard 'air talent', who after 25 years took her shot with illegal immigration, which was the harbinger of Tea Partydom, on a her first big signal AMer, WFTL. She picked up some national rubbernecking exposure on CNN and press for hauling a couple of thousand shoes to D.C, and a 'Hold there Feet to the Fair" immigration rally ..... that was the birth of this rw poly talk actress... that Alan West didn't immediately distance himself from her is astonishing. Her air personality is calculated unrestrained bigotry....her calculations were right....this local talk actress has finally gone national..

[salidon]

01:08 PM on 11/11/2010

Hearing Spanish seems to set off a lot of people of the Southern-Anglo, or Anglo-Evangelical, Anglo-Protestant, Romano-Anglo persuasion. I wonder, upon first hearing English, were the American Indians just as infuriated.

[Leon Rodriguez]

08:08 PM on 11/11/2010

They probably did but if they protested, The Anglos killed them and demonized them to their base to establish them as the enemy. Their solution is always guns, slander and violence.

[Eagle Haslanded]

07:27 AM on 11/14/2010

Seems pretty obvious that the Spanish killed more Indians and exterminated more native languages than the Anglo could have done in a billion years. And to think the oppressed Indian populations would even think of calling themselves "Latinos" after the horror of extermination the Spanish and their beloved Church did to them is freaky to say the least.

[Eagle Haslanded]

07:24 AM on 11/14/2010

You're a flthy bigot. Spanish don't bother me. However, if I were President, illegals would not be in the USA very long. It would be a privilege deporting them and then telling their supporters that they too could leave as nobody in the USA would mind.

[KenGirard]

11:13 AM on 01/03/2011

"The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year (2010), nearly 10 percent above the Bush administration's 2008 total and 25 percent more than were deported in 2007. The pace of company audits has roughly quadrupled since President George W. Bush's final year in office."

The total for 2009 was 387,890 which is higher then any year Bush was in office.
Also, the main goal currently is getting illegals with criminal histories out of the country, which is where the main increase is coming from.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/25/AR2010072501790.html

[XTABAY]

11:15 AM on 11/11/2010

Kaufman's diatribe incited one individual to make threats resulting in the lockdown of Broward Co. FL schools yesterday

[juliebird]

11:09 AM on 11/11/2010

One more thought on the "Jeffersonian defense" of this wingnut's call for armed rebellion if the election doesn't go the way she likes.
Supporting the idea that the Second Amendment is, in fact, *not* about welcoming the idea of armed rebellion as a regular feature of dDemocracy, ladies and gentlemen, I give you John Adams:
"To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws." (John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States, 475 [1787-1788])

The right to bear arms was not intended as a means to throw a violent tantrum.

[gwensgal]

01:26 AM on 11/11/2010

Anyone who can say the rabid, vicious things she has said is not a reliable mouthpiece for anyone's agenda but her own.

Mr. Deluded may enjoy having her around now because she's a mouthy bulldog he'll be able to turn loose on his critics. He's under the impression she works for him. In her mind, however, it's the exact opposite. According to her, she made him. She's responsible for his success. He works for her. The minute he begins showing some independence of thought, she's going to waste not a second ripping him to complete shreds.

[Sans Octavian]

01:01 AM on 11/11/2010

Slave labor, perhaps?

[Sassys]

12:38 AM on 11/11/2010

I just posted a comment here about how uncivil we have become and it was removed...So we are not allowed to civilly discuss our incivility? Senseless censoring strikes again!

[InedaName]

11:26 PM on 11/10/2010

On her radio show today, Randi Rhodes (who was on the air for a time in the West Palm market) said that this Joyce Kaufman person is a former deli waitress/biker chick who was originally a liberal until she was lured to the other $ide. Apparently, conservative talk radio pays well.

[RomeoinFl]

11:23 PM on 11/10/2010

She is so toxic, good riddance from the airwaves, with her "guidance" he will be gone come the next election. He owes her because she had him on her show for years fueling this drum beat to the misguided listeners who voted for him..and now, he has to pay back. If you think her comments are offensive now, you haven't heard the half of it.

[Eagle Haslanded]

07:28 AM on 11/14/2010

I loved her comments. They get very high rating. Out with the illegals and their supporters. Nobody will miss either.

[shadowanddaisy]

11:07 PM on 11/10/2010

Embrace irony.

[BlogWatcher]

10:42 PM on 11/10/2010

given this guys past, is anyone surprised who he would assoicate with

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/12/12/sprj.nirq.west.ruling/index.html

[mdbmama]

10:57 PM on 11/10/2010

Not me. I'm just surprised he got elected.

[brt929]

11:19 PM on 11/10/2010

Why? Florida elected a man that embezzled more than a billion dollars out of Medicare as Governor, why would electing a war criminal surprise you?

[CocaColaKid]

10:27 PM on 11/10/2010

Ahhh and America leaps into the 16th Century!

[kaptaintripps]

10:03 PM on 11/10/2010

Oh, Allen. You should be so SO ashamed of yourself...and your comment.