Welcome to the 699th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we’ll be taking a look at the current U.S. House Representative from Texas’ 22nd Congressional District, Pete Olson, who has been in office now since 2008, and prior to that he spent a decade serving as aide to Texas Senator Phil Gramm for four years, and then as Texas Senator John Cornyn’s chief of staff from 2002-2007. Olson most recently won in the 2016 elections with just shy of 60% of the vote, And yes, he’s a Republican Texas Congressman, so obviously Rep. Olson’s going to have a long voting record that shows he’s anti-immigrant, anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ (Olson was actually the sponsor of the anti-transgender “Civil Rights Uniformity Act” that would have defined citizens by the gender of their birth), pro-gun, and the whole myriad of extremist ideas that come with it. What sets him apart from the rest, though?
Well, our hands-down greatest WTF from Pete Olson is easily that during the 2016 presidential campaign, Olson was chatting on the radio with conservative talk show host Sam Malone, and straight up started theorizing that when Bill Clinton met Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the airport tarmac, the former president “must have threatened to kill her like the Clintons did to Vince Foster” to gain her loyalty and get FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Hillary’s e-mails. If you think that we’re making out of context accusations, listen to the audio yourself:
“I guarantee you, they had a conversation and he basically said, ‘Mrs. Lynch, call your attack dog off. We have killed people. We killed Vince Foster, we destroyed Webb Hubbell, we will destroy you’.”
Alright, so… first up, the Clintons didn’t kill Vince Foster, that was a suicide, and Foster’s family REPEATEDLY keep telling Republicans to stop spreading conspiracy theories about his death, because that’s just f***ed up. Second… that would be some brazen and stupid obstruction of justice attempts, and if there’s something Bill Clinton knows about, it’s having to endure bulls*** investigations without doing anything that gets you charged with obstruction of justice. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sat down with investigators during the Lewinsky debacle, or stopped the Starr investigation from looking into his taxes… etc.
Anyway, Pete Olson is a conspiracy spreading moron. This wouldn’t be a one-off, as Olson also “misspoke” during a speech in August of 2018 in front of the India House in Houston, when he claimed that the 9/11 hijackers were Pakistani in origin. Because, y’know, there’s not enough tensions between India and Pakistan, so let’s just start telling Indians that the Pakistanis did 9/11. Nice one, Pete.
Back in November of 2013, though, Pete Olson was also one of 19 Republicans in Congress who were calling for the impeachment of Eric Holder for not enforcing laws related to the Defense of Marriage Act. Now, it is the Attorney General’s duty to enforce the laws in our country, however, we’ve got to side with holder on this, because the Defense of Marriage Act was overturned by the Supreme Court about four or five months prior to Olson and company’s little tantrums. (Spoiler Alert: Holder didn’t get impeached.)
Rounding things out, yes, Pete Olson is a climate change denier, citing that it’s obviously not man made because “our climate has been changing since God created Earth”. You see? That’s scientific, when you mention an invisible man in a sky to back up the science.
But by all means, take a look at his decade-long voting record during his career in Congress to get an idea of how bad he is:
- January 9th, 2009: Olson votes against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
- April 29th, 2009: Pete Olson votes against the Hate Crimes Expansion that would provide protections to LGBT citizens.
- July 31st, 2009: Olson votes against the widely successful “Cash for Clunkers” program that helped save the American auto industry.
- June 30th, 2010: After Wall Street bankers taking unnecessary risks nearly imploded the global economy in 2007, legislation finally comes forward to prevent the same behaviors from being permitted in the future. The signature piece of legislation to prevent another financial meltdown was Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, which Pete Olson voted against.
- December 8th, 2010: Rep. Olson votes against the DREAM Act.
- December 15th, 2010: Olson votes against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.
- December 22nd, 2010: Pete Olson is one of 60 people who voted against the Zadroga Act to provide healthcare for First Responders of 9/11.
- January 5th, 2011: Rep. Olson votes the first attempt by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He has voted for almost every attempt to do so since.
- February 18th, 2011: Pete Olson votes to defund Planned Parenthood. This on the very same day his “smaller government principles” compelled him to vote to continue funding taxpayer dollars towards NASCAR sponsorships.
- March 17th, 2011: Rep. Olson votes to cut funding to National Public Radio.
- September 15th, 2012: Rep. Olson votes for the “No More Solyndras Act”.
- September 21st, 2012: Olson votes for the “Stop the War on Coal Act”.
- January 15th, 2013: Pete Olson votes against Disaster Relief Funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
- June 19th, 2013: Pete Olson votes against restoring $20.5 billion towards the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.
- September 30th, 2013: Rep. Olson votes for the 2013 Government Shutdown.
- Feb 26th, 2014: Pete Olson goes “all in” on the faux-scandal surrounding the IRS researching SuperPACs by co-sponsoring and voting for the “Stop the Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act”.
- July 10th, 2014: Olson votes for House Amendment 1040, to prevent the implementation of the dreaded United Nations Agenda 21 Treaty, that in spite of just being recommended climate change guidelines, have many conspiracy theorists within the extreme right convinced it’s a plot for global domination.
- January 22nd, 2015: Pete Olson votes for HR 7, an anti-abortion bill that makes even some Republicans pause before voting for it because of its language that tries to define the conditions for what “rape” is, in it.
- February 3rd, 2015: Rep. Olson votes for the 60th Republican attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act. This in spite of the fact that the law is not just working, but better than experts predicted.
- September 11th, 2015: Olson votes against the United States’ nuclear treaty with Iran.
- September 18th, 2015: Rep. Olson 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 were repeatedly debunked by investigators.
- November 19th, 2015: Olson 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.
- February 2nd, 2016: Pete Olson votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
- March 16th, 2017: Pete Olson votes for HR 1181, which would allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to continue to own firearms, and not have them taken away without a judge’s written order.
- March 28th, 2017: Rep. Olson votes for SJ Res 34, which allowed internet providers to sell the data information of their customers’ internet usage to businesses.
- May 4th, 2017: Olson votes for the GOP’s healthcare plan, that would allow 24,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions, and would treat pregnancy, postpartum depression, and sexual assault as “pre-existing conditions”. Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Olson would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
- June 7th, 2017: Olson sponsors anti-transgender bill, the “Civil Rights Uniformity Act” that would have defined citizens by the gender of their birth, and attempted to undo many of the protects set forth for transgender Americans during the Obama administration.
- June 8th, 2017: Pete Olson votes for HR 10, the GOP’s attempt to repeal Dodd-Frank financial reform, because what the country really needs is to allow the big banks to make the same mistakes that imploded the economy only a decade earlier.
- October 3rd, 2017: Olson votes for HR 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would try to create an unconstitutional ban abortion at 20 weeks (even though medical science tells us fetuses do not have the capability to feel pain until 29 weeks).
- December 19th, 2017: Pete Olson votes for HR 1, the GOP’s $1.7 trillion tax cut to benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations permanently that coincidentally also removes the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and kicks 13 million people off their health insurance.
- February 18th, 2018: Rep. Olson and his fellow Republicans decide that poor big businesses are suffering too much at the hands of the Americans with Disabilities Act too much, and vote for HR 620, which would strip most of the civil rights protections guaranteed by it.
Texas’ 22nd Congressional District, representing the Houston suburbs, has had a shift in its partisan makeup over the past decade, from a +15 Republican advantage when Olson was first elected in 2008, to now, a slightly more manageable +10 that could put it in play in 2018. And the candidate challenging Pete Olson is Democrat Sri Preston Kulkarni, a former State Department diplomat first brought into the Foreign Service by Secretary of State Colin Powell during the Bush administration, and who resigned along with so many other diplomats once the Trump regime came to power. His family history is… he’s the son of an Indian immigrant, and his mother’s family line traces back to a guy you may have heard of in Texas history named Sam Houston. Kulkarni has Olson scared, and there may be an upset in the works here in 2018, when a seat that hasn’t been blue since Tom DeLay resigned from it in disgrace and it flipped for one term in ’06 flips yet again.
One Year Ago, October 16th, 2017: Bill Nojay (NY)
One Year Ago, October 16th, 2016: Gordon Klingenschmitt (CO)… 2016 Update
Two Years Ago, October 16th, 2015: Gordon Klingenschmitt (CO)… 2015 Update
Three Years Ago, October 16th, 2014: Gordon Klingenschmitt (CO)… Original Profile