Palm Beach County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay is so arrogant that she presumes to lecture others about the danger of threats when her nineteen-year-old daughter called for the assassination of Governor Ron DeSantis on Twitter.
I can’t even get my mind around the level of hypocrisy, entitlement, self-importance, and arrogance it takes to send an email as McKinlay sent me. From a .gov address, no less.
McKinlay emailed me over my post about the PBA revoking its endorsement of Angelique Contreras for the school board.
Around a year ago, an elected official had the police visit Contreras in her home because of a harmless remark on Facebook about dumping masks or garbage on a County Commissioner’s lawn.
School Board candidate Angelique Contreras responds to revoked endorsement
McKinlay’s email to me:
Jack,
Please tell me what “scared” Commissioner was sitting in the PBSO patrol car you refer to in your article. I’m genuinely curious.
It should be noted that any perceived threat against an elected official is referred to law enforcement for review. It’s difficult to determine a “joke” vs a “threat”. And a threat against an elected official is an escalated charge, making it a felony. No one is immune from law enforcement checking these things out in an effort to keep everyone safe.
Melissa
These are tweets McKinlay’s nineteen-year-old daughter sent.
          
Ms. “No one is immune from law enforcement” McKinlay had this to say on Facebook when her daughter made much more serious threats.
I spoke to highly-placed law enforcement officials in Palm Beach County today, and there isn’t a law that requires the police to check out minor threats made to elected officials or anyone else. The resources don’t exist to do it, and what happened to Contreras had to have been directed by an elected official.
It’s also worth noting that a nineteen-year-old is not a child. Nineteen-year-olds stormed the beaches of Normandy. Stop with the “just a child” routine.
That does not mean I think anything much should have happened to McKinlay’s daughter. Young people make intemperate and extreme remarks to get attention.
But McKinlay is okay with keeping her daughter’s call to assassinate the governor private and not involving law enforcement, but a suburban mother of three who participates in a social media joke about throwing trash on someone’s lawn is somehow an existential threat to safety.
The Palm Beach Post wrote: Critics attack Palm Beach County commissioner over daughter’s anti-DeSantis posting
Lake Worth resident Joey Soto said a Lantana woman faces charges for a Nov. 12 tweet threatening DeSantis and Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott.
“Why isn’t your daughter having the same fate? Is it because you’re sitting behind that plexiglass right now, ma’am?” Soto said. “That is definitely bad parenting.”
Visit the Palm Beach Post site. You’ll see a photo of Angelique Contreras criticizing McKinlay for her daughter’s threat to DeSantis in Nov. of 2020, way before the police visited Contreras’Â home for the garbage remark. That’s worth noting, is all I’m saying.
McKinlay must have taken that criticism to heart because now, as you can tell from her email, she’s a strict law and order kinda gal these days.
Some of my readers blame the police for visiting the Contreras’ home. That’s a mistake. Police departments are organized along para-military lines, and the police are subject to following legal orders given by elected officials. Given the circumstances, the police who visited the Contreras home were polite and professional.
The fact that the police were there is the fault of our petty elected officials, who think the police are their private army and that the laws don’t apply to them.
The law is meant only for us peasants and peons and not for them.
Yesterday, I considered this entire issue finished. I wrote about the PBA revoking the Contreras endorsement, and there wasn’t anything else to say.
It was McKinlay who opened this Pandora’s Box with her email.
The arrogance of elected officials like McKinlay has significantly contributed to the American people losing faith in our institutions. Great institutions cannot be run by small-minded individuals and remain great.
McKinlay will be term-limited out of office this November.
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