On this date, in both 2014, as well as in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted its profile of Louie Gohmert, who remains our all-time leader in sheer insanity (although Donald Trump is starting to nip at his heels). We honestly have difficulty in keeping up with Gohmert’s antics, because every time he steps in front of a microphone (which is often) he gibbers out the sorts of incomprehensible, illogical statements that we believe can only be explained by him being medically diagnosed with a case of neurosyphilis (and we’re not joking, we think he needs a doctor).
Just SOME of the myriad of deranged things we’ve covered that Gohmert has said in our column about him included the time he blamed the victims of the Aurora, Colorado mass shooting to task for not packing heat and shooting back in a crowded, dark theater with people scrambling for cover, and a shooter clad from head to toe in protective body armor that only a shot to the face would have taken him down, and for not believing in God enough. Or there was the time Gohmert invented the ludicrous “terror babies” conspiracy (including his meltdown when Anderson Cooper fact-checked him for it on CNN), or when he tried linking the overthrow of the Libyan government to Obamacare. We noted his bizarre alliance with Michelle Bachmann and how both made Islamophobic attacks on the State Dept.’s Huma Abedin, even going as far as to call John McCain “numbnuts” for defending her from their attacks. There was the time Gohmert accused President Obama of trying to start up a new Ottoman Empire, or the many times he’s claimed President Obama is in league with the Muslim Brotherhood. We mentioned how Gohmert has claimed Obama’s Jobs plan was to funnel jobs to gays at the cost of traditional marriage, or how he compared homosexuality to beastiality and Hitler on the floor of the House. Gohmert once called to eliminate the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office because the CBO reported that extending the Bush tax cuts would increase the federal deficit, and once lost it in a House hearing and, outraged, screamed at Attorney General Eric Holder to “not cast aspersions on his asparagus” (whatever that means). We mentioned Gohmert claiming our immigration crisis was worse than any “Republican War on Women” because illegal immigrants had snuck across the border and committed six hundred thousand (note: not six, not six hundred, not six thousand… SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND) sexual assaults against American women.
Our 2015 update on Gohmert included the time he went on FOX Business Channel and claimed President Obama sent three thousand troops to Liberia not to help stop the spread of Ebola Virus, but to get infected and bring it home to infect the entire country. Alternatively, Gohmert later claimed terrorists would weaponize Ebola (which is not a plausible bioterror weapon, at all), or try and explain why President Obama is actually a secret Muslim, or how he blackmailed General Petraeus into remaining silent about “what really happened in Benghazi”. He went on WorldNetDaily’s radio program and warned that ISIS was waiting right across the U.S./Mexico border (they’re not). Gohmert spent a lot of time in 2015 panicking about gay people, including their participation in our military citing the failures of ancient Greek armies because their troops would just “sit around giving massages to each other”, that “gays are persecuting Christians all across America”, or lie and say that the Matthew Shephard nd James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act “criminalizes the Bible”. Louis Gohmert also admitted to meeting with military leaders to ask them about concerns he had regarding the Jade Helm 15 exercises, as a potential takeover of Texas by the Obama administration (even though Texas is already part of our sovereign nation, so a takeover isn’t needed). But perhaps our favorite sound bite of 2015 from Louis Gohmert was when he called for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justices Kagan and Sotomayor for their rulings on same sex marriage, going on to point out how gay marriage is wrong because he read a study about what happens when you put four heterosexual couples or four gay couples on an island together, and in the latter instance, they die out. The Gohmert “gay island” theory has been something he’s demonstrated as “proof” as to why same sex marriage shouldn’t happen repeatedly, as if it’s irrefutable proof.
The Gohmerting continued in the past calendar year:
- September 11th, 2015: Gohmert votes against the United States’ nuclear treaty with Iran.
- September 18th, 2015: Rep. Gohmert votes for a bill with most House Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood, based on highly edited “sting” videos submitted by a Pro-Life advocacy group that have been repeatedly debunked by investigators.
- September 24th, 2015: Louie Gohmert goes to hang out again with Tony Perkins, the leader of the anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council, and on his television program, Gohmert calls for the U.S. Senate to block the nomination of Eric Fanning, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of the Army, because Fanning is gay, and if he was in charge of our army, it would make Muslim countries think America approves of child sex abuse (yes, Gohmert’s still that much of a bigot).
- November 1st, 2015: Gohmert, still obsessed with his “gay island” argument against gay marriage, is speaking before Liberty University when he actually says he would like to use taxpayer dollars to perform a gay island versus straight island study to prove him correct, where four straight couples and four gay couples were put on islands to see which would thrive and which wouldn’t. (We keep telling you he’s f'n bonkers, and if you’re not getting it yet, we don’t know what it will take.)
- November 2nd, 2015: Rep. Gohmert again goes on the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch” show, where he talks openly of impeaching President Obama and IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, before falsely claiming that under the Obama administration, the American government has accused the Israeli government of “terrorism” and “war crimes”.
- November 19th, 2015: Gohmert votes for the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, reacting to the terror attacks in Paris by jihadists from France and Belgium by trying to create greater restrictions to keep out Syrian refugees, of whom exactly zero were involved in those attacks.
- December 3rd, 2015: Rep. Gohmert is guest-hosting the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch” program, and comes up with the paranoid conspiracy theory that President Obama is deliberately allowing Muslim refugees into our country, or as Gohmert calls it, “importing terrorists”, so that they will attack citizens, and it will justify gun control laws being put into place to prevent the terrorists or anyone else from having them.
- January 12th, 2016: After their boat became adrift and wandered into Iranian waters, ten U.S. sailors were detained overnight by the Iranian government, and by a few simple phone calls between Secretary of State John Kerry and the Iranian government, the matter was deemed accidental, and Iran promised to release the sailors the next day. And the Iranians did. Because cooler heads can prevail. But don’t tell that to Louie Gohmert, who reflexively immediately called for a bombing campaign to begin against Iran.
- January 24th, 2016: Gohmert goes on Breitbart News, and says that the only reason Hillary Clinton agrees with President Obama’s policies is because she’s being extorted to in order to avoid indictment over Benghazi.
- February 2nd, 2016: Louie Gohmert votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
- February 25th, 2016: Gohmert goes on Breitbart News again to speak to Steven Bannon (before he joined the Trump campaign), where he praises Donald Trump for telling off Pope Francis, and showing his distaste for the pontiff because he called for action against climate change. And, as Gohmert went on to explain, he can prove climate change is a myth because historic accounts from Leif Erickson talking about farming prove it used to be warmer in Greenland during the Viking Age (that doesn’t disprove it).
- March 23rd, 2016: Louie Gohmert calls for the impeachment of President Obama if he closes the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He also accused Obama and European leaders of playing “Twiddlywinks” with radical Islamists, which isn’t a thing. (He meant Tiddlywinks.)
- April 8th, 2016: Gohmert meets again on Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council and argues against transgendered people being allowed to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as in a really, really creepy way. Gohmert admits that when he was in junior high, he would have used the loophole to peep on girls in the locker room and bathrooms.
- May 19th, 2016: Rep. Gohmert votes against House Amendment 1079, which would have prohibited the use of federal funds for discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
- May 26th, 2016: Louie Gohmert hits his weirdest level of the year, where he takes to the floor of the House to take his “gay island” theory to the next level, saying that pushing for LGBT rights is wrong, because we can never have successful gay space colonies in the future. He then went on to cite the works of an End Times preacher who claims events like 9/11 have happened, because God is punishing America for gay marriage. Full-on Gohmerting.
- June 10th, 2016: Gohmert goes on a transphobic rant, claiming that if veterans are allowed to get sex changes at VA Hospitals, it would increase veteran suicides by twenty times the current amount.
- June 22nd, 2016: After the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history claims the lives of fifty people in Orlando at the Pulse Night Club, House Democrats call for votes on common sense gun control, and when all such bills are blocked from coming to the floor, civil rights legend and Congressman John Lewis leads a sit-in on the House floor. At one point during this moving display, who busts in but Louie Gohmert, ranting and raving while yelling “RADICAL ISLAM!” at the Democrats. (As it turns out, the shooter’s actual motivation is later narrowed down to have been anti-gay rage because he himself was a closeted homosexual.)
Normally, it’s the combined voting record of a politician WITH one or two insane quotes that earns them a place at CSGOPOTD… but Louie Gohmert goes above and beyond, and somehow remains in office, don’t ask us how. He is now up for re-election to his seventh, yes SEVENTH term in office after surviving a primary challenge from in 2016. Texas’ 1st Congressional District has a +24 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index so it seems pretty unlikely he’ll be supplanted by Democrat Shirley McKellar (too bad, really)… meaning it’s almost a guarantee that he’ll remain in Congress and appear on cable news to babble on about conspiracy theories for another two years, while inexplicably running for Speaker of the House like no one else can plainly see how insane he is.
At least he gives us something to write about, and remains our all-time champ of kookiness.