A truly creepy and awkward moment occurred during a town hall in Bethlehem, PA when a left-wing activist asked Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) if his daughter had been kidnapped.
Toomey was a holding a town hall on August 31 when a man identified as Simon Radecki suddenly asked Toomey a rather disturbing question.
“We’ve been here for a while,” Radecki said. “You probably haven’t seen the news. Can you confirm whether or not your daughter Bridget has been kidnapped?”
There was an eerie, frightening silence that ensued with Toomey simply responding with an “uhhhhh” for about four seconds, before Radecki said, “The reason I ask is because that’s the reality of families that suffer deportation…”
A visibly irked Toomey then promptly dismissed the question as “ridiculous”; Radecki was escorted out of the town hall and is now likely to face charges of disorderly conduct.
Radecki later said his “only regret right now honestly is that the focus has been on me and the question I asked. And the substance of the conversation has taken a sort of back seat.” Radecki, who has worked for an array of left-wing organizations and on Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) re-election campaign, is apparently so ideologically driven that it is of no concern to him how frightening his question was: (H/T: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
“If you were in the room, it was one of the scariest things that I have ever been a part of,” said PBS39 CEO Tim Fallon. Even after Mr. Radecki attempted to explain his query, Mr. Fallon said, “All I was processing was ‘Oh, my God, what has happened?’ … It was perceived as a threat by myself [and] folks I have had interactions with.”
“Asking questions that are based upon kidnapping a child is not only reprehensible, but it is inherently threatening,” said Steve Kelly, a spokesman for Mr. Toomey.
The Bethlehem police are the ones who appear ready to level charges against Radecki, although it seems unlikely that they would hold up in court.
The uncomfortable clip can be seen below. PBS39 was able to cut out the audio of Radecki asking the question before it was broadcast: