This morning, a fake quote attributed to Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio made the rounds on Twitter, and the reason it got such crazy exposure that it was actually trending at number one across America for a while is this: Republicans now say crazy enough things that it is nearly impossible to discern truth from satire. It’s as though the GOP is attempting to put The Onion out of business.
GOP rallies around Trump 9/11 role. “While Obama and Biden were cowering in fear on Air Force 1, Mr. Trump was on the ground with first responders searching for survivors and pulling people to safety,” Jim Jordan says. “I remember seeing him on TV, running toward the danger.” pic.twitter.com/P7ol4wycoF
— Dan Lyons (@realdanlyons) July 29, 2019
Again, that’s not true — Jordan didn’t say it. The reason it’s funny is because that’s exactly the kind of thing Jordan would say, just a tiny bit crazier. It’s a totally false thing that’s not quite outside the realm of possibility for any given Trump acolyte to say.
There is one guy who lives on that border between reality and fiction, though, and that’s Rep. Matt Gaetz.
Gaetz has been shilling for Trump since he was elected in 2017, and has been a prominent promulgator of conspiracy theories about Obama, Hillary Clinton, the “Deep State,” and various other nonsense that circles the Republican world like so much water in the bowl.
This time, in an effort to support Trump’s ongoing racist attacks against legendary black icon Elijah Cummings, the Baltimore Representative who sits at the head of the House Oversight Committee, Gaetz tried spreading a lie that he just may have been too dumb to understand would be fact-checked immediately.
He is currently in Venice, Italy w Pelosi. https://t.co/7oKRay3YVG
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) July 27, 2019
Now, understand: That’s the tweet, not a screen capture of it, which means this moron still has it up, rather than deleting it. In fact, he took it further:
Honest question the media should ask @SpeakerPelosi & @RepCummings – Did you have a fake impeachment presser and then fly off to Venice?
cc: @juliegraceb @mkraju @DailyCaller @brookefoxnews @npfandos @jeremyherb— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) July 27, 2019
Dude. You KNOW we can check where people are, right? Elijah Cummings was definitely not in Venice while Trump was busy doing everything but calling him the n-word. But in case he couldn’t figure it out for himself, Nancy Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff was helpful:
.@RepCummings is not on the Pelosi CODEL marking the 400th Anniversary of the First Enslaved Africans Landing in America. US Army Africa HQ is in Italy. https://t.co/6O2GMiy1y7 https://t.co/pNqR0g3xYM
— Drew Hammill (@Drew_Hammill) July 27, 2019
Gaetz had been insinuating that Cummings traveled with Pelosi to Italy, but there are plenty of pictures of the entire delegation and Cummings is in none of them. Perhaps Gaetz was drinking again and mistook John Lewis for Cummings, since he’s the kind of guy who would do that.
Featured image via screen capture
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