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Tennessee Tea Party Audience Cheers for Deportation of 11-Year-Old Girl's Dad

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Hearkening back to the 2012 GOP primaries where audiences booed a gay soldier and cheered for the death penalty, Tea Partiers at a Scott Desjarlais town hall this week clapped for the deportation of an 11-year-old’s father.

Desjarlais, a Tennessee Republican, was taking questions from the audience when 11-year-old Josie Molina Macaraeg stepped up to the mike.  Josie’s father is in deportation proceedings, and Josie–in a trembling voice–asked the Congressman if there was anything she could do so that her dad could stay with her.

Unfortunately, Rep. Desjarlais–whose Twitter profile notes that he is a “proud father, family man and physician”–told Josie, “The answer remains the same, that we have laws and that we need to follow those laws, and that’s where we’re at.”

The Tea Party audience can be heard cheering and clapping for Josie’s dad’s deportation.  Watch the video below:

As a Daily Kos post this weekend pointed out, Desjarlais himself is apparently a real peach.  As Daily Kos cited from Raw Story:

Desjarlais is a former physician and anti-choice crusader who was fined $500 by the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners after it came to light that he had engaged in multiple extramarital affairs with female patients. When one woman became pregnant, the staunch anti-abortion conservative pressured her into terminating the pregnancy. Another patient charged that Desjarlais prescribed narcotic painkillers to her for recreational use and frequently smoked marijuana with her.

More from the Nashville City Paper

But court transcripts released the week after last November’s election revealed that he admitted under oath to eight affairs, encouraged a lover to get an abortion and used a gun to intimidate his first wife during an argument.

Clearly a family man through and through.