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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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News

Trump Won’t Commit to Accepting Election Results if He Doesn’t Win State He Falsely Claims He Won

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May 2, 2024

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Falsely claiming he won the state of Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential election Donald Trump is now refusing to commit to accepting the 2024 results for the Badger State this November.

In an interview with Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Trump appeared to dance around the issue, declaring he would only accept the official results “if everything’s honest.”

“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results,” Trump told the paper’s Alison Dirr and Molly Beck in an interview Wednesday. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”

“But if everything’s honest, which we anticipate it will be — a lot of changes have been made over the last few years — but if everything’s honest, I will absolutely accept the results,” he said.

The Journal Sentinel reports Trump “offered similar conditions when asked the same question by news outlets in 2016 and 2020.”

READ MORE: ‘No Place for Antisemitism’: Biden Denounces Violent Campus Protests, Hate Speech and Racism

“I’d be doing a disservice to the country if I said otherwise,” he said.

In that interview Trump once again falsely claimed he won Wisconsin in 2020, a state President Joe Biden actually won by more than 20,000 votes.

“If you go back and look at all of the things that had been found out, it showed that I won the election in Wisconsin,” Trump told the newspaper. “It also showed I won the election in other locations.”

Trump’s “Big Lie,” that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him, along with his support for the January 6, 2021 insurrection, have been central to his 2024 campaign.

“Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the last presidential election in Wisconsin and his new comments placing conditions on when he would accept the results of the next election come as Republicans are seeking to persuade GOP voters to restore their trust in the state’s system of elections and embrace absentee voting,” the Journal Sentinel reported. “There’s no evidence to support that Wisconsin’s election was tainted by cheating or fraud in 2020. The results have been confirmed by recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties that Trump paid for, court rulings, a nonpartisan state audit and a study by the conservative legal firm Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty, among other analyses.”

READ MORE: Noem Insists 14 Month Old Dog She Shot Was ‘Not a Puppy’ Sparking New Backlash

In October of 2016, weeks before Election Day, during the final presidential debate, Trump was asked if he would make the commitment “that you will absolutely accept the results of this election?”

“I will look at it at the time,” Trump replied. “I’m not looking at anything now, I’ll look at it at the time.”

He then went on to sow doubt about the credibility of the election.

Trump’s refusal to accept election results stretches back more than a decade, even before he ran for president.

After he refused to accept his loss in 2020, ABC News reported “Trump has longstanding history of calling elections ‘rigged’ if he doesn’t like the results.”

“On election night in 2012, when President Barack Obama was reelected, Trump said that the election was a ‘total sham’ and a ‘travesty,’ while also making the claim that the United States is ‘not a democracy’ after Obama secured his victory.

“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!” Trump wrote on Twitter

One month later, in December of 2012, Trump tweeted, “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.” Ironically, four years later he became president after losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, but winning the Electoral College.

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Antisemitism Is Wrong, But’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Pilloried for Promoting Antisemitic Claim

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‘No Place for Antisemitism’: Biden Denounces Violent Campus Protests, Hate Speech and Racism

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6 hours ago

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May 2, 2024

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President Joe Biden made rare, unscheduled remarks from the White House Thursday morning, denouncing the recent violent protests on college campuses, and telling Americans there is “no place” for antisemitism anywhere across the nation. He also denounced “hate speech” and “racism,” while declaring his support for the right to peacefully protest.

“There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students,” President Biden declared. “There is no place for hate speech, or violence of any kind, whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It’s simply wrong. There’s no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong. It’s un-American.”

“Violent protest is not protected,” Biden said strongly. “Peaceful protest is.”

Stressing “the right to free speech,” and the people’s right “to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard,” President Biden also declared the importance of “the rule of law.”

READ MORE: Noem Insists 14 Month Old Dog She Shot Was ‘Not a Puppy’ Sparking New Backlash

“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” the President also said, praising the ideal of peaceful protests, which he said are in the “best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues.”

“But,” he added, “neither are we a lawless country. We are a civil society and order must prevail.”

America is a “big, diverse, free thinking and freedom-loving nation,” Biden said, denouncing those “who rush in to score political points.”

“This isn’t a moment for politics, it’s a moment for clarity.”

“It’s against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations. None of this is a peaceful protest,” he warned. “Threatening people, intimidating people. instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Dissent is essential to democracy but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish a semester and their college education.”

READ MORE: ‘Antisemitism Is Wrong, But’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Pilloried for Promoting Antisemitic Claim

“Look. It’s basically a matter of fairness. It’s a matter of what’s right. There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.”

“I understand people have strong feelings and deep convictions in America. We respect the right and protect the right for them to express that. But it doesn’t mean anything goes. It needs to be done without violence. Without destruction, without hate, and within the law. And I’ll make no mistake. As President, I will always defend free speech. And I will always be just as strong standing up for the rule of law. That’s my responsibility to you the American people. My obligation to the Constitution.”

The President also responded to reporters’ questions, including saying he saw no need to call up the National Guard.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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Noem Insists 14 Month Old Dog She Shot Was ‘Not a Puppy’ Sparking New Backlash

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May 2, 2024

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Embattled South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem, under fire the past week after an excerpt from her new book revealed her boasting about shooting to death her 14-month old puppy she “hated,” has repeatedly defended her actions as proof she can do hard things that need to be done.

Governor Noem, who has been considered a leading contender to become Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, appeared on Fox News Wednesday night and blamed the “fake news” for publishing excerpts from her book, which she has not claimed were inaccurate.

She also insisted the 14-month old wirehaired pointer named Cricket was “not a puppy,” appearing to suggest that made the killing justified, as she again promoted her book so Americans can “find out the truth.”

“Well, Sean, you know how the fake news works,” Noem told Hannity (video below). “They leave out some or most of the facts of a story. They put the worst spin on it, and that’s what’s happened in this case. I hope people really do buy this book and they find out the truth of this story, because the truth of this story is that this was a working dog, and it was not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous. It had come to us from a family who found her way too aggressive. We were her second chance and she was, the day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock that were a part of our neighbors, she attacked me and it was a hard decision.”

READ MORE: ‘Antisemitism Is Wrong, But’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Pilloried for Promoting Antisemitic Claim

“The reason it’s in the book is because this book is filled with tough, challenging decisions that I’ve had to make throughout my life,” she added.

Noem’s dog shooting, which she recently said took place 20 years ago, has been strongly criticized by the left and right.

Earlier this week two people close to Donald Trump, his former Senior White House Counselor Steve Bannon, and his son, Donald Trump Jr., “questioned Noem’s judgement Monday on Donald Trump Jr.’s show ‘Triggered,'” USA Today reported, noting also that “both men laughed” about it.

“Bannon called Noem ‘a little too based,’ using a slang term popular on the right to describe someone who, among other qualities, speaks and acts without fear of being politically correct, and Trump Jr. said shooting the dog ‘was not ideal.'”

The Guardian, which broke the news of Noem’s dog shooting last week, reported Tuesday “apparently even [ex-president Donald] Trump sees the bad optics in having a ‘puppy killer’ as a running mate.”

RELATED: ‘Let’s Get a Warrant for Her Backyard’: Noem ‘Done Politically’ Right Wing Pundits Say

Meanwhile, criticism, which had been subsiding over the past few days, returned after Noem’s remarks on Fox News.

“She honestly think boasting about killing a dog who was too happy makes her tough,” observed former Lincoln Project executive director Fred Wellman. “I have served with women in combat. They endured horrible conditions. Got blown up. They were tough. Her two examples of tough are killing animals and keeping her state open as hundreds of thousands died. That’s not tough. That’s psycho.”

Calling Noem “broken,” former Republican and former U.S. Congressman Denver Riggleman said: “She wrote the book. She allowed those words to be published. Her ghost writer seems to have despised her. Exposed her. And Kristi liked it… thought it was ‘cool’.”

Democratic U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr., responding to video of Noem on Fox News, commented: “Here’s donald trump’s leading contender to be vice president defending her butchering a puppy and hawking her crummy book on rightwing propaganda tv. This is the republican party.”

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold offered this criticism:

Jared Ryan Sears, who writes “The Pragmatic Humanist” at Substack, said, “Yes, the issue is the debate on whether or not a 14 month old dog should be called a puppy and not the fact that you murdered it because you refused to train it and could not think of any other possible solution than shooting a young dog in a gravel pit.”

“Keep hawking that book,” he added.

Watch Noem’s remarks below or at this link.

RELATED: Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

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