Chilling: Misleading Video Edit & AZ Rep Calls For Pramila Jayapal’s Death

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India-West News Desk

WASHINGTON, DC – Condemnations are pouring in after an Arizona state legislator publicly called for the hanging of U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), a remark that has sparked alarm over the growing normalization of political violence in the United States.

State Representative John Gillette, a Republican, posted on social media on September 24 that Jayapal and others who “advocate for the overthrow of the American government” should be “tried, convicted and hanged.” His words were in response to a heavily edited video circulating online that misrepresented Jayapal’s remarks from a March Zoom call about organizing nonviolent protest.

The post appeared under a clip shared by an account called “Patriot Oasis.” The selectively edited version framed Jayapal as urging Democrats to be “strike ready” and “street ready”—a supposed call to violence. In reality, the congresswoman had explicitly been discussing peaceful resistance in the tradition of the labor movement and civil rights leaders.

Jayapal’s full remarks, The New Republic reported, included: “We want to help you seed, participate, and coordinate these nonviolent resistance actions that are going to make a difference over the next coming months. If we were in the labor movement…we might call this getting strike ready. I think of it as getting us strike ready, or street ready, and part of that is understanding our own strength.”

The distortion of her words has been a recurring feature resurfacing most recently amid partisan efforts to tie Democratic rhetoric to the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Democratic leaders quickly denounced Gillette’s post. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the comments were “hateful and vile,” adding: “These dangerous calls for her execution are unconscionable…There is no place for the incitement of political violence in this country.”

Jayapal herself issued a strongly worded response, warning of the dangers of normalizing violent rhetoric. “Two days ago, an elected member of the Arizona State House of Representatives called for me and those who advocate for nonviolent resistance training to be ‘tried, convicted and hanged,’” she said. “This is appalling, unacceptable, and dangerous from anyone, but particularly from an elected official. It is a call to violence designed to suppress nonviolent democratic organizing against authoritarianism and further polarize the American public for political gain.”

She emphasized that her trainings—which have engaged more than 15,000 people nationwide—are rooted in the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. “They give people a voice and a means to effect change without resorting to the exact sort of violent escalation that Representative Gillette is calling for,” Jayapal said. “We simply cannot normalize this violent political speech. All political leaders, of all parties, should denounce this and embrace one another as equals, deserving of care and respect.”