7 months ago
48
We begin today with the editorial board of The Miami Herald saying that the city of Miami is partly to blame for allowing Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio, sentenced yesterday to 22 years in federal prison for seditious conspiracy in charges related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, to flourish.
On Tuesday, his lawyers tried to tell the judge — U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, appointed by Trump in 2017 — that Tarrio was merely a “miguided patriot” who thought he was saving the country. But a jury didn’t believe that. Neither did Kelly.
And neither do we.
That’s because Miami already knew about this guy. Tarrio was a stain on this community long before Jan, 6, when he was parading around with a bullhorn and a bunch of other black-shirted men, his extremism on full display during gatherings at places like Versailles. As far back as 2018, we knew the ugliness that he harbored inside: He was in that infamous GOP mob pounding on the door of the Miami campaign headquarters for congressional candidate Donna Shalala when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was visiting, screaming expletives and yelling: “Open up, it’s the Proud Boys in here.”
But, right, he’s just a “misguided patriot.”
That Miami allowed someone like this — a two-bit criminal-turned-police-informant and then hatemonger — to exist in plain sight is both reprehensible and an embarrassment. Community leaders keep trying to cast Miami as the city of the future. How does that forward-looking ideal square with tolerating an Enrique Tarrio, who — until he was charged — was happy to stand with those who tried to subvert the peaceful transition of power for the first time in U.S. history? And where was the Miami GOP’s condemnation of Tarrio back when he was pounding on doors or shouting through a bullhorn?
