Man, does this strike close to home. The character you’re about to read about here could have been my congressman. I live in NV-03 and the Trump-endorsed Republican who ran against Susie Lee in 2020 is Daniel Rodimer, a former wrestler who also had a criminal past. But a criminal past is a badge of honor in today’s GOP, right? Isn’t that what we learned last month when five of the nine candidates in CO-04’s Republican primary raised their hands when asked, “have you ever been arrested?” Rodimer has been arrested, for assault at a Waffle House, but now he’s being investigated for a murder in a hotel on The Strip in October. Daily Beast:
Rodimer, 45, is accused of murdering 47-year-old Christopher Tapp during an altercation inside a hotel room at the Hilton Resorts World on the Las Vegas strip on Oct. 29, police announced Wednesday.
In a statement, police said Tapp, of Idaho, died at a Vegas hospital from “blunt force trauma to the head.” It said the incident was called in as an accident, but investigating detectives determined otherwise in the months that followed.
Rodimer, a former wrestler who performed under the name Dan Rodman in the WWE, lost his campaign to represent Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District in 2020 against Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV). After that, he reportedly moved to Texas to launch another failed bid to make it into Congress—where he was accused of using a phony Texas accent to try and win over voters.
On Wednesday night, lawyers for Rodimer confirmed to the Associated Press that he was “voluntarily surrendering to authorities and will post a court ordered bail. He intends on vigorously contesting the allegations and asks that the presumption of innocence guaranteed all Americans be respected,” they said. Lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.
This is the kind of character who literally could be representing me and all of my neighbors in Congress. This is who is running on the GOP ticket these days.
Rodimer’s criminal past includes an arrest in 2011, when he was charged with misdemeanor battery for throwing a man to the floor at a Waffle House in Naples, Florida, that was not far from his law school, Ave Maria University.
Witness statements reviewed by The Daily Beast revealed that Rodimer, who appeared to be drunk, explained at the scene that he loved to “fuck” people up. That statement came shortly after he threw the man who confronted him about harassing diners in the restaurant.
What was it I was saying earlier about rageaholism and Marjorie Taylor Greene? This is seriously getting scary. There is something deeply wrong with the Republican party when it starts to attract these kinds of unstable and antisocial people into its leadership ranks. The man’s not just a registered Republican, he ran for office on the Republican ticket. And Donald Trump, who was president at the time, endorsed him. This is not normal. There is a pattern here. These people aren’t running for public office to serve, they’re running to control and to take, and to lash back at society, not improve it. Rodimer is another member of the school of fish that swam into politics in the wake of Trump.
Before he left the Waffle House, Rodimer was said to have thrown down a business card with his name and face on it—a clue police later used to identify him for the attack—and then boasted about how much he liked “hurting people,” a police report said.
“As Dan was leaving the restaurant he was using profanity and stated how much he enjoys hurting people,” cops wrote.
And this information was readily available to Donald Trump. And he had no trouble endorsing this guy. After all, Trump could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue, right, so this guy slapping around another guy in a coffee shop is tame by comparison, no?
Rodimer likes to hurt people and he beat a guy’s head in last October. Yep. Just exactly the kind of character who is going to take me and my neighbors seriously when we talk about issues like rent control and federally subsidized cable and raising the level of education in this state. Because this guy cares. Thank God Rodimer didn’t get elected. Man, did we dodge a bullet that election. And that wasn’t the only one we dodged, both here in Nevada and in races throughout the country.
Once again, this is not about Republican v. Democrat this is about America v. Trump. We have got to suck the Trump venom out or MAGA-fied politicos are going to kill our country. The GOP knew Trump was a snake when they took him in and look at the kind of people he endorses?
He’s a perfect candidate for Trump’s version of the brownshirts he’ll authorize to drag folks out of their homes on the way to one of his camps. Don’t forget Hitler also arrested the ‘grumblers’…all those complaining about his third Reich. From what I read here, all of us would be on that list!
And damn proud to be on it.
Why stop at endorsing grifters, fraudsters, rapists, etc. I mean really, it’s nothing but a step if you think about it.
Trump** has been quoted as saying a leader has to kill people. I don’t think this was what he had in mind – but, still.
Many who bring up the ‘presumption of innocence’ in American jurisprudence don’t seem to understand that that is ONLY in a court of law. Otherwise, nobody would ever get arrested. It damned sure doesn’t apply to the court of public opinion. There, even if found not guilty in that courtroom, the facts still determine how the public feels.