Coulter on Garner Incident: ‘Do Not Stand Between a Liberal and His Taxes’

On Thursday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel, conservative columnist and author of “Never Trust a Liberal Over 3-Especially a Republican,” argued the root cause behind the incident that resulted in the death of Eric Garner was the government’s strong desire to collect taxes.

Transcript as follows:

HANNITY: Here with reaction is the one and only Ann Coulter. How are you?

COULTER: Great.

HANNITY: I want to ask you — because there are two ways to look at the Eric Garner case. Now, we can look at it emotionally…

COULTER: I’ll tell you how to look at it. You — you — you…

HANNITY: You tell me. Go ahead.

COULTER: You’re the only one that has been right about this. This is nonsense that this had anything to do with race. This is a tax case. It was Bloomberg that insists on, We’re going to deploy the police to collect taxes because they need to pay the pensions of their public sector union buddies. Bloomberg starts arresting all these people.

And notice which case did the left, did MSNBC, did The New York Times obsess with? Everyone who has seen that tape of Eric Garner says, Oh, my gosh, they have five cops for untaxed cigarettes? But that’s not the case The New York Times is interested in! That’s not the case that — that MSNBC’s interested in!

No, it’s a guy why was in Ferguson who’s trying to kill a cop! I mean, the Garner case is almost everything the left falsely said about Mike Brown. He really does seem to be a gentle giant. Oh, he had 31 arrests. Yes, they’re all for selling untaxed cigarettes! Notice that the left wing — you will never see fascism like a liberal trying to collect taxes!

I’ll give you another example. The EZ Pass records — isn’t that something everyone, both on the left and the right said, OK, we’d like EZ Pass, but we don’t want the cops using that. The ACLU will go to court to prevent EZ Pass records from being used in a rape case, in a murder case! But you know what EZ Pass records are used for all the time? To collect taxes, to prove you were in New York more than you said you were in New York!

There are a million cases like this! It has nothing — I can prove it’s not — has nothing to do with race!

(CROSSTALK)

COULTER: … because usually, it’s Indians the cops are roughing up for selling untaxed cigarettes!

HANNITY: Nine out of the 31 arrests of Eric Garner were for selling untaxed cigarettes. Now, here’s…

COULTER: And point out…

HANNITY: But this is important…

COULTER: … if we knew — if instead of selling untaxed cigarettes, Eric Garner has been accused or guilty of assault, a rape, well, then you wouldn’t say that was undue force. What is shocking about that videotape is, are you kidding me? This is for selling untaxed cigarettes?

Do not stand between a liberal and his taxes because that’s how they pay for their beloved public sector unions and their ridiculous pensions!

HANNITY: You see, $6 a pack state and city taxes for one pack of cigarettes.

COULTER: Oh, yes.

HANNITY: So they have — they have created a black market.

COULTER: Yes!

HANNITY: All right? And you know what? I don’t blame people for going to North Carolina. They don’t want to give their money to the government. Now, it’s even worse…

COULTER: Or an Indian reservation.

HANNITY: What people don’t understand is they send cops into…

COULTER: Right!

HANNITY: … stores every single day in New York to see if they have the New York tax stamp!

COULTER: Right!

HANNITY: And if not, they’re — they’re giving them summonses…

COULTER: Right!

HANNITY: … and arresting them!

COULTER: Right! No, this is the shocking…

HANNITY: What a waste of police resources!

COULTER: This is the shocking part about this story. And to say that this wouldn’t have happened if he was white…

HANNITY: Not true.

COULTER: … no, I will correct you because, usually, it’s Indians because they’re allowed to sell untaxed cigarettes on reservations, but oh, you have to make sure you’re only selling to only other Indians!

There have been huge busts. There have been cops roughing up Indians in the past! I was looking up cases today on Nexis. This is not something new. This is standing between a liberal and collecting taxes!

And why wasn’t The New York Times and MSNBC going more on this case than on a really not very good case from the beginning with Mike Brown and Ferguson? I mean, we saw the tape of him roughing up the poor clerk, from the moment anybody saw that.

This is actually a lovely family. The stepfather was, like, the molecular opposite of Mike Brown’s father, stepfather, the stepfather in Ferguson yelling, Burn this B down, immediately after the verdict to an angry crowd. And by the way, they then did burn the B down! Compared to the stepfather last night, who was absolutely magnificent! What a lovely man! And he said I do not want to see any violence. That would not honor my son’s, or my stepson’s memory.

HANNITY: But I want to put emphasis on this.

COULTER: Why are we fixating on this? Because of taxes.

HANNITY: OK, but this is important because there are both sides of the tax issue here, people need to understand this. Six dollars a pack.

COULTER: Yes.

HANNITY: All right, somebody’s addicted to cigarettes, it’s expensive. It’s now an expensive habit.

COULTER: Yes. Why don’t they just ban cigarettes?

HANNITY: They created the market. Now, on the other side of it they go after the store owners. They are not letting go of that money. So we have cops that should be chasing crack, heroin dealers, gang members, murderers, rapists. No, they’re spending their time because the revenue is so great as it relates for tax revenue from cigarettes for New York City.

COULTER: That’s right. Why don’t they just ban taxes? No, they want the tax money. Again they have to fund the public sector union pension. And only in a case like this do liberals not mind if the police get a little rough. Well, it’s not like it was something minor like a rape or murder. This is someone not paying taxes. We’ll use neutron bombs to collect taxes.

HANNITY: It’s unbelievable.

I want to play Charles Barkley for you.

COULTER: I love him.

HANNITY: He defends officers during an interview from yesterday. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLES BARKLEY, FORMER NBA PLAYER: The notion that white cops are out there just killing black people, that’s ridiculous. That’s just flat out ridiculous. And I challenge any black person to try to make that point. This notion that cops — the cops are actually awesome. They’re the only thing in the ghetto from — between this place being the wild, wild west. So this notion that cops are out there just killing black men is ridiculous. And I hate that narrative coming out of this entire situation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Right on.

COULTER: Not only right on but this is — it dovetails with my column this week titled “Black People the Media Hate,” and Rand Paul isn’t wild about. When I wrote my book “Mugged” about racial demagoguery and a bunch of these liberal racial demagoguery, a lot of these famous cases that were allegedly racist cases, in almost every one of them you would find incredibly decent, honorable, and I would add, brave black people testifying on behalf of the allegedly racist white person, Bernie Goetz or various cops who ended up shooting a black kid. They testified, they told the truth. In the Bernie Goetz case there was a woman with her husband and child on the subway car with Bernie Goetz, and she testified before the jury, no, those punks were bothering the white man. Those punks deserved what they got.

Bernie Goetz’s lawyer did not try to exclude blacks from the jury. They like blacks who have jobs and are married, because who are the ones who are set upon by black criminals the most? People who live in black neighborhoods. These idiotic campaigns by people like Rand Paul thinking he’s speaking for black people by saying, oh, we have to get rid of the drug laws. There are too many blacks and browns in prison. It’s because of their skin color. No. Who pushed for those drug laws? It was black people themselves. They’re the ones whose neighborhoods were being destroyed by crack cocaine.

HANNITY: Ann Coulter, good to see you. Thanks for being with us.

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