GOP Candidate Says Violent, Neo-Fascist Proud Boys Just ‘A Group To Scare Left-Wing People’

Washington state GOP congressional candidate Joe Kent told supporters at a recent event that the Proud Boys — the all-male, far-right, neo-fascist organization whose leaders were convicted for seditious conspiracy after trying to violently overthrow the U.S. government on Jan. 6, 2021 — are really just a bunch of hooligans who scare progressive Democrats.

During a Sept. 21 event marking the opening of a new Clark County GOP headquarters, an attendee asked Kent about ads being run by his opponent, Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, tying him to the Proud Boys. The attendee said she wasn’t familiar with the group, but asked how Kent countered the accusation.

Kent, a former special forces operator and foreign policy adviser in the Trump administration, scoffed at Gluesenkamp Perez for trying to make the Proud Boys “scary-sounding.”

“Look, the Proud Boys are the guys who went and fought antifa,” Kent said, using a nickname for the anti-fascist, left-wing movement that confronts neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.

“So, the left says they’re terror, I don’t know,” he continued. “It’s just, it’s a group to scare left-wing people. It’s like saying antifa to a bunch of Republicans. So really, it’s a scare tactic.”

In fact, the Proud Boys are nothing like antifa and have been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a watchdog organization that highlights that the Proud Boys are known for their “white nationalist memes” and “anti-Muslim and misogynist rhetoric.”

But the Proud Boys are perhaps best known for their central role in the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attempt to stop the constitutionally mandated transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.

Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison for the key role he played in orchestrating the attack on the U.S. Capitol that resulted in more than 140 police officers injured and several later dying by suicide. Other Proud Boys leaders, all of whom are Trump loyalists, were also found guilty of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to prison.

A Kent campaign spokesperson did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment about why the Republican is downplaying the dangers of a violent, extremist, neo-fascist organization.

Here’s a video of the GOP congressional candidate making his latest remarks. Kent’s comments on the Proud Boys begin around the 42:28 mark.

Kent, who unsuccessfully ran against Gluesenkamp Perez in 2022, has been tied to alleged Proud Boys and far-right extremists.

In 2022, he took donations from Jan. 6 rioter Carlos Ayala, whom the FBI later arrested on felony and misdemeanor charges. He paid $11,375 to a “consultant,” Graham Jorgensen, who was identified as a Proud Boy in a 2018 law enforcement report. In 2021, one of Kent’s top campaign advisers, Matt Braynard, organized a rally in support of insurrectionists who had been arrested. Kent spoke at the rally, too.

The Republican congressional hopeful is also a close affiliate of Joey Gibson, the founder of a Christian nationalist group, Patriot Prayer, that has coordinated with the Proud Boys to organize several demonstrations and violent rallies.

Kent hasn’t tried to hide his associations with extremist groups. In March 2022, he posted on social media that it was “Great to see all the Patriots at GRIT rally in Olympia yesterday!” GRIT, which stands for Government Resistance Impedes Tyranny, was a themed event hosted by the anti-government extremist group Washington State Three Percenters.

Kent’s campaign also did not respond to a request for comment on whether he unequivocally condemns white nationalism and political violence.

More recently, the GOP congressional hopeful made some curiously timed statements on social media about Ukraine that echo the propaganda being pushed out by pro-Putin outlets.

“Ukraine is out of men, so their only option is to get NATO involved. What happens when Russia kills French troops in Ukraine?” Kent asked in one post in May, despite there being no French combat troops (or any troops from a NATO country) deployed to the region.

His post came about an hour after the prospect of French troops in Ukraine was raised on another social media app by a pro-Kremlin feed.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates this congressional race a “toss-up.” Polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight only features one poll in this race so far, and it shows Gluesenkamp Perez leading by four points.