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This Week In Crazy: Meet The Hillary Shoe Truthers, And The Rest Of The Worst Of The Right

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Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:

5. Bryan Fischer

And Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I say to you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” “Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” —Matthew 19

As a self-styled leader of the religious right, American Family Association mouthpiece Bryan Fischer is certainly familiar with that passage from the Bible. But during the Tuesday’s tax-day edition of his radio show, Fischer proposed an addendum: What if the rich man enters with a ticker-tape parade?

//www.youtube.com/embed/od1abwBWk3s

“The top 1 percent are funding 30 percent of the government!” Fischer raged. “So, rather than the poor, the low income and the middle class being resentful of these people, they should be kissing the ground on which they walk!”

“Who’s paying for the EBT cards? Who’s paying for food stamps? Who’s paying for the women and infant children program? Who’s paying for subsidized housing? Who’s paying for Medicaid? It is the top 1 percent,” he added. “So, they ought to be given ticker-tape parades once a week in all of our major cities to thank them for funding welfare for everybody.”

If Ken Langone ever abandons Chris Christie, maybe he should try to draft Fischer into the 2016 presidential race. After all, they share an obsession with the 1 percent — and the Nazis.

4. Phyllis Schlafly

schafly

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

After their high-profile struggle to reconcile Equal Pay Day with opposing the Paycheck Fairness Act, Republicans began redoubling their efforts to sell women on the GOP.

And as usual when Republicans are trying to attract new voters, Phyllis Schlafly is here to screw things up.

In a Tuesday op-ed for the Christian Post, Schlafly took it upon herself to lay out the anti-feminist case for the gender pay gap. In short: Women should be happy to make less money, because it will help them find a husband.

While women prefer to HAVE a higher-earning partner, men generally prefer to BE the higher-earning partner in a relationship. This simple but profound difference between the sexes has powerful consequences for the so-called pay gap.

Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate.

Obviously, I’m not saying women won’t date or marry a lower-earning men, only that they probably prefer not to. If a higher-earning man is not available, many women are more likely not to marry at all.

Schlafly later added that “The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.”

Meanwhile, somewhere in Washington D.C., Reince Priebus is presumably sobbing into a copy of his “Growth and Opportunity Project.“

3. “Blood Moon” Watchers

blood moon

 Photo via Wikimedia Commons

 

To say that Tuesday’s lunar eclipse upset some members of the far right would be a dramatic understatement.

Many people refer to the eclipse as a “blood moon,” because sunlight filtering through the Earth’s atmosphere gives the moon a red hue during the event. Pastor John Hagee’s reasoning is a bit different, however; he thinks that the blood moon represents the beginning of the End Times.

“I believe that the heavens are God’s billboard, that he has been sending signals to planet Earth, and we just haven’t been picking them up.” Hagee says. “God is literally screaming at the world, ‘I’m coming soon.’”

Hagee has dabbled in apocalyptic rhetoric before; he once claimed that God sent Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans because the city was planning a sinful “homosexual rally.”As for the latest sign of a vengeful God, you can conveniently learn more about the coming apocalypse by buying Hagee’s book!

While Pastor Hagee believes that the blood moon signals the end of days, Pastor Mark Blitz has an even crazier theory: The eclipse is just God giving the finger to Barack Obama.

Writing in WorldNetDaily (of course), Blitz explains:

Barack Obama quite recently, expressing his frustration that Republican members of Congress won’t give him what he wants, threatened arbitrary executive action, promising that he has a “pen and phone.”

But there are “flashing red warning lights” in the heavens that should command peoples’ attention right now, because the one behind those warnings, God, had “more than a pen and a phone in his hand,” according to the author of “Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs.”
…
“I believe the moons are like flashing red warning lights at a heavenly intersection saying to Israel as well as the nations they will be crossing heavenly red lines and if they do, they will understand as Pharaoh did on Passover night 3,500 years ago that the Creator backs up what He says.

“Like Pharaoh the leaders and pundits of today will realize when it comes to crossing the red lines of the Creator of the universe he has more than a pen and a phone in his hand.”

Look on the bright side: At least the religious right is (kind of) talking about science!

2. Ted Yoho

 yoho

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) earned plenty of attention this week for telling a black voter that the Civil Rights Act may be unconstitutional, but that may not have even been his craziest statement of the day.

After the controversial town hall meeting on Monday, ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes interviewed Yoho about climate change:

KEYES: Droughts and extreme weather have been on the rise here in Florida. Do you think that’s something that’s attributable to manmade climate change?
YOHO: No. I think it’s a natural occurrence. I think we need to be good stewards of the resources we have and we need to get better, which we have, through technology and innovation.
KEYES: Do you think scientists are right on climate change or are they off-base on it?
YOHO: I think there’s an agenda-driven science. I can read stuff that says that the information was skewed. It’s not right. I’m a guy that’s worked out in the weather since I was 16. I can tell there’s climate change. The cause? I’m not smart enough for that.

So Floridians can go ahead and forget about the extreme dangers that climate change poses to their state. Ted Yoho may not be smart enough to know why he’s been getting sweatier while he works out in the weather, but he’s certain that he knows more than 97 percent of climate scientists.

And after all, unskewing numbers never goes wrong for Republicans.

1. Shoe Truthers

shoe

 Image by Mike Licht via Flickr

 When a woman threw her shoe at former secretary of state Hillary Clinton during a speech last week, regular This Week In Crazy readers knew what would happen next: The Shoe Truthers are here.

First, there was Arthur Louis. Writing on the website of Fox News contributor Bernard Goldberg, Louis began by parroting Brian Kilmeade’s assertion that George W. Bush is a much better shoe-dodger than Clinton, who “ducks flying shoes like a girl.” He then gets to the meat of his point:

“There is a political axiom, I believe first posed by Euclid or Archimedes, that when Hillary does something, or when something happens to her, she has carefully calculated it beforehand,” he writes. “So it would not be stretching logic to suppose that Hillary arranged to have the shoe thrown at her. Remembering the Bush incident, she may have calculated that this would make her seem presidential.”

The stupidity didn’t stop there. Disgraced former presidential candidate and pizza magnate Herman Cain weighed in via Twitter:

And when there’s a stupid conspiracy theory about the Clintons, Rush Limbaugh is always on the case.

“I just do not attach much genuineness to them at all and I don’t know why anybody would be throwing a shoe at Hillary,” Limbaugh said. “Unless, maybe it’s an attempt to make the Benghazi people look like nuts and lunatics and wackos.”

http://mediamatters.org/embed/198882

That’s right: Hillary Clinton arranged to have a shoe thrown at her head to distract America from #Benghazi.

We have a long way to go until 2016.

Check out previous editions of This Week In Crazy here. Think we missed something? Let us know in the comments!

 

Image, top: Red shoe by Mike Licht via Flickr

A version of this article originally appeared in The National Memo and is republished here by permission.

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Trump Axes Catholic Charities Funding for Migrant Kids Amid Pope Feud: Report

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Amid President Donald Trump’s escalating feud with Pope Leo XIV, the Trump administration has canceled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities in Miami, Florida, to shelter and care for migrant children who enter the U.S. unaccompanied, a relationship that dates back to the 1960s, the Miami Herald reports.

“The U.S. government has abruptly decided to end more than 60 years of relationship with Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Miami,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski wrote, according to the Miami Herald. “The Archdiocese of Miami’s services for unaccompanied minors have been recognized for their excellence and have served as a model for other agencies throughout the country.”

Catholic Charities was contracted to operate a full-service child welfare program in the Miami-Dade area.

“Our track record in serving this vulnerable population is unmatched. Yet, the Archdiocese of Miami’s Catholic Charities’ services for unaccompanied minors has been stripped of funding and will be forced to shut down within three months,” Archbishop Wenski noted.

The Trump administration is citing a reduction in unaccompanied minors crossing the border, which the archdiocese acknowledges. But that population still exists, and it is unknown how many children will be uprooted and relocated, or where they will go.

The Department of Health and Human Services described the daily population of unaccompanied migrant children in the agency’s care as “significantly lower,” than it had been under the Biden administration.

Health and Human Services’ press secretary Emily G. Hillard suggested that the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s closure of unused facilities “continues efforts to stop illegal entry and the smuggling and trafficking of unaccompanied alien children.”

But Wenski called it “baffling that the U.S. government would shut down a program that it would be hard-pressed to replicate at the level of competence” shown by the church.

Describing being moved as “incredibly psychologically harmful” to the children, Robert Latham, associate director of the University of Miami Law School’s Children and Youth Law Clinic, “said any relocation to a new foster home or shelter likely would be traumatic for children who already have suffered uncertainty and loss.”

“For little kids, moving repeatedly creates bonding issues and destroys the sense of both self and community. They don’t know who they are and where they will be” from day to day, he said.

READ MORE: ‘Could Be Two, Could Be Three’: Trump Signals Readiness for New Supreme Court Picks

Last week, President Donald Trump took issue with the Pope’s call for peace.

“God does not bless any conflict,” Pope Leo wrote on social media. “Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs. Military action will not create space for freedom or times of #Peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.”

The Guardian called it a “rebuke” over the Iran war, and noted that while the Pope did not name names, his post criticized attempts to use religion to glorify the U.S. war in the Middle East.

Trump responded to the Pope’s remarks, saying that he had “nothing to apologize for,” and stated that the Pope was “wrong.”

The pope has continued his opposition to the Iran war.

On Tuesday, he wrote, “God’s heart is torn apart by wars, violence, injustice and lies. But our Father’s heart is not with the wicked, the arrogant, or the proud. God’s heart is with the little ones and the humble, and with them He builds up His Kingdom of love and peace day by day. Wherever there is love and service, God is there.”

Just days ago, Trump told reporters, “We don’t like a pope that’s gonna say that it’s okay to have a nuclear weapon. We don’t want a pope that says, crime is okay in our cities. I don’t like it. I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo. He’s a very liberal person, and he’s a man that doesn’t believe in stopping crime. He’s a man that doesn’t think that we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world.”

Trump also recently described the Pope as “Weak on Nuclear Weapons.”

READ MORE: ‘I Wasn’t That Involved’: Weakened Trump Tries to Rewrite History

 

Image via Reuters 

 

 

 

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‘Could Be Two, Could Be Three’: Trump Signals Readiness for New Supreme Court Picks

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President Donald Trump says he’s ready should any Supreme Court justice decide to retire.

Just one day after Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune announced he is “prepared” should Justice Samuel Alito, 76, announce he is retiring — despite the jurist having made no public suggestion he plans to — President Trump announced on Wednesday he is also “prepared” to replace Alito, or others.

“It could be two, could be three, could be one. I don’t know — I’m prepared to do it,” Trump told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo in an interview, according to The Hill.

The president, who placed three conservative justices on the Supreme Court during his first term, told Bartiromo that Justice Alito is “one of the great justices of all time.”

“Justice Alito is an unbelievable justice and a brilliant justice and he gets the country,” Trump continued. “He does what’s right for the country.”

Trump said he has a shortlist of nominees should any justice decide to retire, but he is unsure that would happen this year, The Hill noted.

READ MORE: ‘I Wasn’t That Involved’: Weakened Trump Tries to Rewrite History

But Trump also appeared to signal that perhaps retiring before the midterm elections might be wise.

Being on the nation’s highest court is “probably not easy to give up for people, you know, they reach a certain age,” he told Bartiromo. “Ginsburg could not do it.”

Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had been urged by the left to retire during President Barack Obama’s term, refused, and passed away while on the bench in 2020, handing Trump the right to nominate her replacement. He placed a conservative on the Court, further strengthening its conservative majority.

Justice Ginsburg, Trump told Bartiromo, “decided that she was going to live forever, and about two minutes after the election, she went out and I got to appoint somebody.”

“So, you know, you make the case that at a certain time you give it up… so that your ideology, your policies, your everything, would be of the kind that we like.”

U.S. News & World Report senior national political correspondent Olivier Knox commented on Trump’s remarks.

“I can’t decide if this is just organic chatter or if it’s a pressure campaign to get Alito to retire,” he wrote. “There’s been a LOT of this in the last couple of days. Thune, Grassley, etc.”

Indeed, the Washington Examiner’s David Sivak noted on Tuesday that Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley told him that “he’ll recommend to Trump that Mike Lee or Ted Cruz replace Samuel Alito, should he retire.”

“I hope he doesn’t retire,” Grassley said, “but if he does retire, I’m going to suggest that either Lee or Cruz be put on the Supreme Court.”

READ MORE: Voters in Military Towns Fear Trump Is ‘Bumbling’ US Into Another Iraq: Report

 

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‘I Wasn’t That Involved’: Weakened Trump Tries to Rewrite History

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Despite repeatedly endorsing Viktor Orbán, praising him as his “twin” in Europe, and dispatching Vice President JD Vance to Budapest to campaign for him, President Donald Trump now claims he had little to do with the far-right Christian nationalist prime minister’s reelection bid — which ended in a massive landslide defeat Sunday, ending 16 years of authoritarian rule.

“I wasn’t that involved in this one,” Trump said of Orbán’s failed reelection effort, telling ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that the Hungarian right-wing populist “was behind substantially,” while praising him as “a good man.”

Noting that Orbán is “a key figure in the global far-right movement and is also allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” The Daily Beast reports that Trump had been “insisting he wasn’t actively campaigning for him.”

Trump “had been posting on Truth Social before the election, urging people to vote for Orban, whom he has described as ‘a true friend,'” The Daily Beast reported. During his time in Hungary, Vice President Vance called the Hungarian leader a “wise and smart” man, while describing his authoritarian regime as a “model for the continent.”

READ MORE: Senate Republicans Are Prepared to Replace Alito — Before the Midterms: Report

But Trump’s support for the embattled Orbán has taken its toll. The Daily Beast describes him as “wounded” from his attempts to prop up the Hungarian illiberal nationalist ruler, and points to British think tank Chatham House, which suggested the White House’s “intervention” in Hungary “now looks more like a political own goal.”

Grégoire Roos, director of Chatham House’s Europe and Russia and Eurasia programs, noted that the Hungarian election “was monitored closely in the Oval Office,” and suggests there will be a cost.

“Several European far-right parties have already begun distancing themselves from Trump over his more erratic foreign-policy moves and this result may further accelerate a trend towards greater autonomy from MAGA. The question now is whether Washington adjusts its methods of influence in Europe or simply doubles down.”

For his part, Trump appears to have moved on.

ABC’s Karl reports that Trump told him he “likes” incoming Prime Minister Péter Magyar.

“I think the new man’s going to do a good job — he’s a good man,” Trump said. “I think he’s going to be good.”

READ MORE: Voters in Military Towns Fear Trump Is ‘Bumbling’ US Into Another Iraq: Report

 

Image via Reuters 

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