NYT Contributor Canned After Suggesting Pence Should Be ‘Lynched’

There seemed to be some prevailing feeling that, as soon as Joe Biden was inaugurated, our politicians and pundits would magically just turn the temperature down and get to the “unity” and the “healing”.

This is the same sort of false correlation we drew between the end of 2020 and the end of all the absolutely insane things that happened that year.  We all collectively hoped that 2021 wouldn’t suffer the same curse that last year did, and it’d be sunny and 75 every day, metaphorically speaking.

Well, I have some bad news for us:  We’re still very much in the middle of a nasty political morass, and there are still plenty of people who make a living off of saying wild and unkempt things.

A contributing opinion writer for The New York Times was fired from his think tank job Thursday over a tweet that jokingly suggested former Vice President Mike Pence be lynched in order to unify the country.

Now-former Niskanen Center Vice President for Research Will Wilkinson raised eyebrows Wednesday night when he offered some tongue-in-cheek advice for President Biden following his inaugural address call for unity.

“If Biden really wanted unity, he’d lynch Mike Pence,” Wilkinson tweeted.

It wasn’t long before Wilkinson’s tail was tucked.

“Last night I made an error of judgment and tweeted this. It was sharp sarcasm, but looked like a call for violence. That’s always wrong, even as a joke,” Wilkinson wrote. “It was especially wrong at a moment when unity and peace are so critical. I’m deeply sorry and vow not to repeat the mistake.”

Given that a crowd very nearly lynched Mike Pence less than three weeks ago, it might be a little too soon, pal.