Former CIA contractor Kris Paronto tells Fox News he’d like to “choke” Barack Obama about Benghazi comment
Those who oppose former President Barack Obama have questioned whether he was born in the United States, have compared his wife to a primate and, now, former CIA contractor Kris Paronto tells Fox News he’d like to “choke” the country’s first Black commander in chief.
In an interview with Fox’s Pete Hegseth, Paronto was explaining his unhappiness with Obama’s campaign speech Friday at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Paronto took issue with Obama’s comments suggesting that the Republican probe into the 2012 terror attacks at U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, was steered by partisan politics. In the speech, viewed as a kickoff to Obama’s campaign for Democrats in the midterm elections, Obama also charged Republicans with “wild conspiracy theories – like those surrounding Benghazi, or my birth certificate.”
Paronto called the former president’s comments “disgusting.” The former U.S. Army Ranger and private security contractor drew worldwide attention as part of the CIA security team during the Benghazi attack that left U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens dead.
“It just raises the bile inside of me,” Paronto said. “I had a hard time just watching the speech itself. I just wanted to see what he had to say. And when that came across, I just wanted to reach through the screen and just grab him – grab him and choke him.”
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Paronto also called Obama – ranked in a Pew Research poll released in July as the president Americans’ view as the best of their lifetimes – “just a complete disgrace” and he said, “It’s completely offensive and I wish I had that man sitting in front of me right now without his Secret Service.”
The U.S. Secret Service told People in a statement that it was aware of the comment. All living former presidents are entitled to receive Secret Service protection for the rest of their lives.
“While we do not confirm or comment on the absence or existence of specific investigations we can say that we investigate all threats against our protectees,” the U.S. Secret Service said.