Missouri senator says he would torch ‘woke pornographic books’ after false claims of book burning at GOP event
Missouri state senator Bob Onder said on Monday that he would “torch the ‘woke pornographic books’ after false claims of a book burning at a GOP event earlier this month. The event, held on June 5, was organized by a Republican group in St. Charles, Missouri, and included a reading from a chapter of President Donald Trump’s book, Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America. Onder, who spoke at the event, had previously been accused of condoning the burning of books. In a statement released on June 14, Onder denied these accusations and condemned book burning as “incompatible with our values and constitutionally-protected right to free speech.” He then went on to say that while he does not condone book burning, he does “believe that every community has the right to decide what values their libraries should promote, which often means removing certain books from circulation.” He also noted that he “would not have had a problem torching the ‘woke pornographic books’—a reference to books like Heather Has Two Mommies — if those examples of ‘literature’ had been brought to [the] event.”