Former U.S. Army Ranger and CIA contractor Kris Paronto on Sunday said he wanted to “choke” former President Obama after comments he made during a campaign speech about the 2012 Benghazi attacks.
Paronto, who was a security contractor and a member of a team that responded to the attacks, tore into the former president over the content of his Friday speech in Illinois.
While making an appearance on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends,” Paronto said that Obama’s comments calling “Benghazi a wild conspiracy” were “disgusting” and made him want to “choke him.”
{mosads}“It’s disgusting,” Paronto said. “It just raises the bile inside of me. I had a hard time just watching the speeches. 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.”
“I wish I had that man sitting in front of me right now without his Secret Service,” he added later in the interview.
Host Pete Hegseth warned Paronto against the comments, saying: “Well, be careful with that, because he’s a former president.”
“Yeah, I know,” Paronto responded. “But it doesn’t get yourself away from saying comments when my friends died in front of me.”
Obama gave a series of campaign speeches over the weekend as he hits the trail ahead of critical midterm elections, tearing into the Republican party and President Trump in his harshest comments since leaving office.
He said during his remarks Friday in Illinois that the Republican investigation into the Benghazi attacks was politically motivated, and referenced “wild conspiracy theories” surrounding the topic.
Paronto also said Sunday that his Twitter account had been suspended, which he claimed came after a back-and-forth with a liberal group on the platform that was unrelated to his comments on Fox News.