N.H. lawmaker who said Hillary Clinton should be ‘shot for treason’ under consideration for Deputy Secretary of Veterans Administration
State Rep. Al Baldasaro says he received a call from the Trump transition team last week informing him that he is under consideration for the position of Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the number two spot in the sprawling department that operates the nation’s largest health care system and has a total annual budget of over $180 billion.
The six-term lawmaker and retired Marine sergeant told talk show host Rich Girard that if he is nominated for the position and confirmed by the Senate, he will resign from the New Hampshire House and will commute between Washington and his home in Londonderry.
Baldasaro, who served as co-chair of the New Hampshire Veterans for Trump Coalition and appeared regularly at Trump rallies, would be a controversial choice.
‘Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason’
During last year’s Republican National Convention, Baldasaro made national headlines when he called Hillary Clinton “a piece of garbage” who should be executed.
“Hillary Clinton to me is the Jane Fonda of the Vietnam,” Baldasaro told WRKO radio host Jeff Kuhner. “She is a disgrace for the lies that she told those mothers about their children that got killed over there in Benghazi. She dropped the ball on over 400 emails requesting back up security. Something’s wrong there… This whole thing disgusts me, Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason.”
The ensuing firestorm of criticism included local Republicans. In response, Baldasaro accused the “liberal media” of misreporting or misinterpreting his words and attacked state party leaders.
“Only in my own state, do I got three idiots that have no damn clue on the constitution and the laws of the land, and that’s [U.S. Senator] Kelly Ayotte, [state GOP chair] Jennifer Horn, and [House Speaker] Shawn Jasper,” he told NHPR’s Josh Rogers.
It was not Baldasaro’s first brush with controversy – far from it.
A history of controversy
In 2011, Baldasaro made headlines when he claimed the state had “sold” children to unmarried homosexual couples for $10,000 each. Baldasaro said he was referring to federal money the state received to cover adoption costs and subsequently acknowledged that “saying the state is selling children to homosexuals” was “a bad choice of words.”
The next year, he again made national headlines when he applauded the booing of a gay soldier during a Republican presidential debate. “I was so disgusted over that gay marine coming out,” he told reporters. “I thought the audience, when they booed the marine, I thought it was great.”
As a legislator, Baldasaro once sponsored legislation that claimed the “original Thirteenth Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution was swept under the rug in a vast governmental conspiracy and declared “the document presented as the United States Constitution is merely a mission statement for the corporation unlawfully established in the Act of 1871.”
In what was described as “the attack of the constitutional illiterates” by a former Republican Supreme Court justice and member of Congress, Baldasaro also sponsored an Emergency Petition for Redress that demanded 189 members of the New Hampshire House of Representatives be immediately removed from office for their vote in favor of legislation that would have repealed the state’s “stand your ground” law.
‘My favorite vet, the king’
President-elect Trump once referred to Baldasaro as “my favorite vet, the king,” but the Londonderry Republican acknowledges the Deputy Secretary position could go to someone more qualified. “I’m waiting to see what happens,” he told Girard. “I was honored just to be asked, you know, but if it don’t come through, well, life goes on.”