Reporting From Alaska

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Alaska news organizations ignore Dunleavy's unhinged Texas rant

Teleprompter Dunleavy delivered the State of the State address and Alaska news organizations covered it in some detail, as they should.

But the unhinged rant that Unplugged Dunleavy gave on Jan. 13 to the right-wing Texas Public Policy Foundation has received no news coverage, a mistake that should be corrected.

I thought at first, and wrote this, that Dunleavy’s Texas remarks were a tuneup for his State of the State address, at least the obligatory “federal overreach” whine-a-thon. But the two appearances were so different that the contrast deserves to be reported in Alaska.

I think it was the real Dunleavy who spoke his mind to his Texas audience, while the Dunleavy who spoke to Alaskans last week was the politically modified version—stiffly delivering a speech in which he attempted to give no ammunition to his political opponents. It was written by his handlers to help keep the recall at bay.

In his Texas comments, Dunleavy spoke from the heart. If you want to know what he really believes, watch it for yourself here.

He claimed that the Biden administration, environmental groups, anti-development groups and others are conspiring to destroy Alaska. Even some oil giants want to “disengage” from Alaska.

“So essentially what we have going on here is an attempt to destroy a state within the federal system, to turn it into nothing more than a national park,” Dunleavy said.

Once they succeed in destroying Alaska, they will try to destroy other states.

“They’ve decided to make Alaska the target, they’ve decided to make the Arctic the target,” said Dunleavy.

”Once there’s a success there and this state ceases to be a state and goes into receivership under the feds and becomes a big park, they’re gonna find something beautiful about Texas, that Texans are really doing wrong, and that they need to be, they need to be reeducated as to how to do things the right way,” he said.

“This is a committed movement that almost resembles a religious zealots,” he said.

He claimed that Alaskans didn’t pay enough attention over the years.

“That allowed these groups and this movement and this mindset to gain some momentum. And lo and behold we wake up on Nov. 3 and then Jan. 6 and it’s a whole new world,” he said.

I’m not sure what he meant by the last line and whether he is a believer in the Trump lie that the election was stolen. He probably is. It would be in keeping with the rest of his Texas State of the State rant.

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