Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin made headlines for all the wrong reasons this week after quoting Thomas Jefferson and saying the tree of liberty made need to be refresh with blood if Hillary Clinton becomes the next president.
There's no ambiguity there, but Bevin would like you to believe there is.
Bevin responded to the criticism by suggesting that his remarks were being misrepresented: “Any intelligent person can understand the message I delivered,” he said in a statement. Bevin told a reporter at the Lexington Herald-Leader that his comments were about "military sacrifice" and the need for Americans to back the “thousands of men and women in uniform fighting for us overseas.” But, as journalist Matthew Yglesias wrote, Bevin’s actual speech “is completely at odds” with that claim, which The Atlantic’s David Graham called “pure spin.” Bevin, noted Yglesias, was “clearly talking about patriots winning back liberty from the tyranny of Democratic Party governance.”
We all know what Bevin meant and it had nothing to do military sacrifice overseas, unless he's saying we must bleed tyrants in other countries, but that wouldn't make any sense either.
Bevin clearly quoted Jefferson at the "Values Voters" summit because he knows they love assassination fantasies, but he doesn't want to take responsibility for stoking those fantasies.