Over pulled pork and ribs
The Republican congressmen Louis Gohmert and Paul Gosar adopted such extreme, conspiracy-tinged positions, even before the US Capitol attack, that a fellow member of the rightwing Freedom Caucus thought they “may have had serious cognitive issues”.
To be fair, lots of us think everyone in the “Freedom Caucus” has serious cognitive issues.
Denver Riggleman, once a US representative from Virginia, reports his impression of his former colleagues from Texas and Arizona in a new book.
…
Describing his own spell in Congress, between 2019 and 2021, Riggleman says he joined the hardline Freedom Caucus as a way to allay concerns among conservatives that he was insufficiently loyal to Trump.
It’s strange that loyalty to Trump would be the filter. It’s like enforcing loyalty to Bozo the Clown. You’d think they’d want an iron-jawed military type strongman, not a spongy gilded orange-tinted guy who can barely walk.
Riggleman says Gosar and Gohmert “seemed to be joined at the brain stem when it came to their eagerness to believe wild, dramatic fantasies about Democrats, the media and big tech.
“I came to believe Gosar and Gohmert may have had serious cognitive issues.”
Riggleman also calls Gosar “a blatant white supremacist”, describing him and the Iowa Republican Steve King “making a case for white supremacy over pulled pork and ribs”.
“It was unbelievable,” Riggleman writes. “I had always bristled when I’d hear Democrats dismiss Republicans as ‘racists’. To me, it seemed like an easy insult that dodged policy discussions. Now, here I was behind the curtain, seeing that some of my colleagues really seemed to hold these awful views.”
It turns out racism is real.
Most of the Republicans I know have racist views; some of them hide it better than others. Also, a not insignificant number of Democrats I know have racist views. They usually hide it slightly better, but it sneaks out eventually. Those Dems also often hold misogynistic views, also slightly hidden under “feminist” rhetoric.
Well where the hell had he been? Did he think they’d been kidding all along?
I generally say “I’m shocked, shocked” several times a day. Most useful catchphrase of all time.