Sen. Harry Reid amped up the rhetoric in the war of words over rancher Cliven Bundy's stand-off with the Buerau of Land Management over cattle grazing rights.
At a Thursday night event called "Hashtags & Headlines" hosted by the Las Vegas Journal-Review, Reid said those who came to Bundy's defense in last weekend's standoff in the Nevada desert should not be considered patriots.
"They’re nothing more than domestic terrorists," Reid said, "I repeat: what happened there was domestic terrorism."
"Clive Bundy does not recognize the United States," the Senate Majority leader said said. "The United States, he says, is a foreign government. He doesn’t pay his taxes. He doesn’t pay his fees. And he doesn’t follow the law. He continues to thumb his nose at authority."
The Journal-Review also reports that Reid claimed that Bundy's supporters purposely put women and children in harm's way during the stand-off:
According to Reid, some protesters said they had "children and women lined up because if anyone got hurt we wanted to make sure they got hurt first, because we want the federal government hurting women and children. … What if others tried the same thing?"