Diehl Presses Attack on Warren at ‘Bern’ Rotary, Calls For Apology

By Matt McDonald | October 24, 2018, 23:13 EDT

Whitman State Rep. Geoff Diehl at his U.S. Senate campaign kickoff August 1, 2017. (Evan Lips — NewBostonPost)

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren doesn’t know Cape Cod well enough even to pronounce a prominent local place name correctly, Republican challenger Geoff Diehl said.

“Maybe if she paid more attention to the Cape and the South Coast area, she would know how to pronounce Bourne,” Diehl said during a rally Wednesday afternoon at the Bourne Rotary, which is just south of the Cape Cod Canal, according to a written statement released by his campaign.

Warren called the Cape town “Bern” during a televised debate with Diehl on Friday night. She correctly pronounced the town’s name during a debate with Diehl on Sunday.

Both times Warren criticized Diehl for attending a rally in April at the Bourne Rotary sponsored by an organization called Act for America, which she noted the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as an anti-Muslim hate group.

Diehl disputed that characterization Wednesday. He also noted that the rally he attended April 22 was called Back the Blue, and was organized to show support for police 10 days after the fatal shooting of Yarmouth police officer Sean Gannon by a career criminal he was trying to arrest.

Diehl called for Warren to apologize to people who attended the rally six months ago.

“Today I am surrounded by many of the same good people who came out for the Back the Blue rally last April. The rally was in support of our law enforcement.  I know that is a foreign idea to our senator, but that doesn’t give her the right to call these people racist. Senator Warren owes them, along with our law enforcement community, an apology,” said Diehl, according to his campaign.

A spokesman for Warren could not immediately be reached for comment.

Diehl touted an endorsement by the Massachusetts Coalition of Police, a police union. Diehl has been racking up police union endorsements, many spurred by Warren’s comments in Louisiana on August 3 that the American criminal justice system is “racist … front to back.”

Warren has subsequently sought to soften those remarks, but has not backed off the core claim that criminal justice system treats African-Americans badly because of their race.