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.