Mike Pence: 'Smoking doesn't kill,' and other thigh-slappers

A gaggle of conservative science-challenged politicians. Mike Pence is standing to the left and just behind Mitch Daniels at a FEMA news conference in 2009

While Con Man Don Trump is an agile ideological chameleon, able to change his views on a dime and deny they were ever any different in the same breath, his vice presidential pick Mike Pence is just a good ole-fashioned ignoramus when it comes to science:

Right around the time Pence declared global warming a myth, he insisted smoking wasn’t harmful, according to this quote ThinkProgress dug up from his 2000 campaign website:

“Time for a quick reality check. Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill. In fact, 2 out of every three smokers does not die from a smoking related illness and 9 out of ten smokers do not contract lung cancer.”

In the same linked article, Pence states he does “believe in” evolution, the theistic version anyway, which is fine by most science educators and biologists. What he actually said was a bit more ambiguous and clearly intended to evade: “I believe with all my heart that God created the heavens and the earth, the seas and all that’s in them. How he did that I’ll ask him about some day.”

But holy hot sauce! How about that fine—nay, impressive—mastery of statistics there regarding smoking?

Using this same reasoning, there’s no need to ever worry about terrorist attacks again. Because thousands of Bastille Day revelers survived the Nice attack completely unscathed! And since way more than two out of three people working in the World Trade Center survived 9/11 without a scratch? Well then according to Pence, we can’t really say that al-Qaida kills.