DHS Ken Cuccinelli: Former Maryland Governor Was ‘Screaming and Cussing’ in Barroom Tirade
Ken Cuccinelli, the deputy leader at the Department of Homeland Security, has described the Thanksgiving Eve barroom tirade by Martin O’Malley, the former Democrat governor of Maryland.
“I arrived at The Dubliner to meet with some of my Gonzaga [High School] classmates last night,” Cuccinelli said in a November 29 statement to Breitbart News:
As I walked up to one of the bars among several in The Dubliner to order my Guinness, I heard screaming and cussing behind me to my left, which I did not immediately take notice of other than the fact that it was louder than everything else in the pub. When I turned to look I saw O’Malley and he was obviously screaming at me. For a moment I thought he was trying to be funny, as we’ve met before, which I thought was strange. It was immediately clear that he was cursing and screaming for real, to the point of veins bulging on his neck. He also inspired one or two of his (apparent) buddies to join in the cussing assault. Up to that point I basically shook my head at these folks and ignored them.
That particular bar within the pub had just closed to prepare for a private party, so I turned to walk to a different bar within The Dubliner, at which point O’Malley pushed his way through the small group to confront me face to face, still cursing me, the President, and my Italian ancestry and he got right up in my face, bumped up against me and invited me to take a swing at him, at which point I said “Martin, one of us has to rise above this, and it’s obviously not going to be you.”
During the entire confrontation, Martin was alternating between cursing me, the President and my Italian ancestry, and making comments about immigration policy – some of his comments being particularly odd because they applied to President Obama’s policies, a fact he clearly did not appreciate me pointing out (without screaming it, btw).
On the positive side, Steve Shannon, a Democrat friend of mine who ran against me for Attorney General in 2009, in what appeared to me to be an attempt at de-escalation, poked his head in at the end of Martin’s confrontation and forced some friendly conversation in between Martin and I (“Hey Ken. How are you doing? How is the family?”). I briefly directed my attention to respond to Steve in a friendly fashion as I walked away from that group and went to the still-open bar in the pub to get my Guinness and join other Gonzaga graduates (and a couple other high school buddies who happened to be there).
Martin’s behavior was as sad as it was shocking. I learned on the other side of the pub that Martin’s screaming was so loud that people on the other side of the pub heard him. I also learned from others who have known Martin for years that while his behavior was shocking, it was not new to them
Cuccinelli’s de-escalation in the face of O’Mallay’s invective matches the Washington Post‘s report of the incident:
Siobhan Arnold, who was visiting from Philadelphia, had just met O’Malley at the bar when Cuccinelli walked in. Soon the two men were face-to-face, she said, with O’Malley excoriating Cuccinelli over the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
O’Malley said “something about his [Cuccinelli’s] grandparents,” Arnold said in an interview.
O’Malley’s efforts to denounce the ethics of President Donald Trump’s border-protection policies spotlight the ethical questions raised by O’Mallaey’s tenure as mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland. Breitbart News reported.
O’Malley was mayor of Baltimore from 1999 to January 2007 and was governor of Maryland from 2007 until January 2015.
Many of the illegals were let through the U.S. border in 2014 by President Barack Obama, often after being detained in so-called “cages” at border patrol stations.
The influx of Central American migrants helped to push up Maryland’s housing prices and suppressed wages, so delaying the nation’s recovery from the post-2008 recession.
Under O’Malley, Maryland’s median wages rose by a mere 2.2 percent over the 11 years from 2007 to 2016, according to governing.com. Meanwhile, housing prices rose at a much higher annual rate of three percent, so boosting housing prices up by 82 percent from 2000 to 2019.
The economic stress from O’Malley’s term helped spark a murder boom in Baltimore. In 2007, 282 people were killed in the majority-black city as the murder rate continued falling from the 1990s records. By 2015, the number of murders in Baltimore has jumped to 344 as Democrats denounced police nationwide for strict enforcement.
O’Malley also presided over a period of declining education trends. The Baltimore Sun reported in 2018:
Two years ago, the state experienced an historic drop in scores that education officials partially attributed to the fact that the state previously excluded too many special education students from taking the tests — more than was allowed. Maryland went from one of the top-performing states to the middle of the pack among states.
Since O’Malley left the governor’s office, he has tried but failed to regain a role in the Democratic Party. His public display may help him gain some traction in Democratic Party politics, or with the party’s supporters among investor groups.
In contrast to O’Malley’s cheap-labor policies, Cuccinelli is trying to balance the competing interests of employers and employees.
Cuccinelli said at a press event held by the Christian Science Monitor, “There is a lot of pressure in various sectors to utilize more immigrant labor for employment, whether it is for high-tech or low-tech in the economy … [but the president] has also made clear that is is important to protect ordinary American workers and to not displace them … Is there some perfect [balanced] target point in every industry? Maybe there is, but we’re never going to be able to know it. So which side do you err on? And he has repeatedly emphasized how important it is to protect U.S. workers. Now’s he been clear with me, as well, and you all have heard him say it: he wants to see economic growth and dynamism. And that means, you know, growing companies needing to fill slots. So we’re just in a constant battle to balance those things.”
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