On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Texas’ 1st District, Louie Gohmert, the most insane member of Congress, hands down. 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 first 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 and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act “criminalizes the Bible”. Louie 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 Louie 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 through our 2016 update, where Gohmert went on Tony Perkins’ “Washington Watch” show, and called 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). Gohmert, still obsessed with his “gay island” argument against gay marriage, spoke at Liberty University to ask for taxpayer dollars to perform a 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.)
Rep. Gohmert against went on the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch” show, and talked 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”, and a month later went back on the show to promote a conspiracy theory that President Obama is deliberately allowing Muslim refugees into our country, or as he 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. After ten U.S. sailors were detained overnight by the Iranian government after their patrol boat became adrift and wandered into Iranian waters, Louie Gohmert, reflexively immediately called for a bombing campaign to begin against Iran… while Sec. of State John Kerry got Iran to release the sailors in under 24 hours. Gohmert also has started turning up on Breitbart News, to say the only Hillary Clinton agrees with President Obama’s policies is because she’s being extorted to in order to avoid indictment over Benghazi or praise Donald Trump for telling off Pope Francis, showing his own 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). Louie Gohmert accused President Obama and European leaders of playing “Twiddlywinks” with radical Islamists, which isn’t a thing. (He meant Tiddlywinks.) On yet another episode of “Washington Watch”, Gohmert argued against transgendered people being allowed to use the bathroom of the gender they identify as in a really, really creepy way, admitting that when he was in junior high, he would have used the loophole to peep on girls in the locker room and bathrooms. By May 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. A month later, Gohmert was back on a transphobic bigotry, claiming that if veterans are allowed to get sex changes at VA Hospitals, it would increase veteran suicides by twenty times the current amount.
On 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.)
And so, we have another year to show you the “Adventures of Gohmert” as the spirochetes continue burrowing through his brain tissue:
- September 9th, 2016: Louie Gohmert talks at the Voter Values Summit, where he claims Hillary Clinton is “mentally impaired”, saying her “brain is in a blender”, as proved by her “unchristian” for “mocking someone who is special needs”. (On that last part… it’s unclear what incident Gohmert is referring to, but he of course did not mention how Donald Trump actually DID mock a disabled reporter.)
Later in the same speech, Gohmert would claim that he was correct when he predicted the Matthew Shephard Hate Crimes Act would lead to the persecution of Christians (it didn’t).
- September 21st, 2016: Rep. Gohmert calls into conservative radio talk show host Howie Carr, to claim that the Obama administration ordered an airstike to kill Al Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Alaki to cover up “all the different people he worked with within the administration” in his latest paranoid rant about secret Muslims within the American government.
- September 30th, 2016: Louie Gohmert goes on “Washington Watch” with Tony Perkins to claim that stories of illegal immigrants voting are true (they aren’t) and that Democrats rely on the votes of “felons” and “people that can’t speak English”.
- October 10th, 2016: Rep. Gohmert goes on the radio program of fellow CSGOPOTD Janet Porter, and tries claiming that same-sex marriage was what brought about Noah’s Flood in the Bible.
- October 11th, 2016: Gohmert guest hosts for Janet Porter, and while talking on the phone with a transgendered man, proceeds to tell him how “child abuse universally turns boys gay” (it doesn’t).
- November 30th, 2016: Rep. Gohmert, in a radio interview, rejoices over the victory by Donald Trump, claiming it was saving Christians from the brink, saying “When I said we were on the brink… We were on the brink of devastation, we were on the brink of losing freedoms, we were on the brink of Christians being persecuted like had never happened in the history of this country.”
- February 16th, 2017: Gohmert votes for HJR 69, to make it legal for hunters on wildlife reserves to kill several species of hibernating bears or wolves while they’re sleeping.
- March 16th, 2017: Louie Gohmert 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. Gohmert votes for SJ Res 34, which allowed internet providers to sell the data information of their customers’ internet usage to businesses.
- April 25th, 2017: Louie Gohmert again goes on Breitbart News, this time to discuss Donald Trump’s first 100 Days in office, and gives the insane assessment that Trump “has the chance to be one of our nation’s best presidents when it comes to foreign policy because he’s being portrayed as being a little bit crazy—those are the people that always do the best on foreign policy.” (If that was true, Gohmert would make a hell of a Secretary of State.)
- May 4th, 2017: Gohmert votes for the House GOP’s healthcare plan, that would kick roughly 24 million people off their health insurance plans, allow up to 28,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, and would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions which would include such medical conditions as pregnancy (current or past), postpartum depression, or prior sexual assault. Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Gohmert would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. He and his Republican compatriots threw themselves a beer bash to celebrate taking away healthcare from millions and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
- June 8th, 2017: Louie Gohmert 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.
- June 13th, 2017: Gohmert, in a speech in front of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, begins tarnishing the image of former FBI Director and Special Counsel Robert Mueller, outraged that Mueller had removed anti-Islamic reading materials from the FBI’s training headquarters during his tenure and thus, “He did a lot of damage and a lot of Americans are dead as a result of the purging of their training materials.” Gohmert also began trying to link Robert Mueller to the Council of American-Islamic Relations and, of course, then to his actual favorite bogeyman, the Muslim Brotherhood.
- July 14th, 2017: Rep. Gohmert joins Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and Congressman Steve King to take turns running to the microphone on the floor of the House to turn a discussion of the renewal of the National Defense Authorization Act into a rant against the transgendered, rambling about the seventeenth century battles between Austria and the Ottoman Empire, the latter of whom would castrate their troops to their disadvantage:
”Some people, they think we exaggerate, but my very good friend from Iowa and I have stood there on the mountaintop in Vienna where western civilization stood there in the gap and it was all at risk…If Vienna fell, then the rest of Europe would fall…and there’s a good chance we’re not even here in this fashion today…Perhaps we are headed into a new period of the dark ages and that Polish prince comes down and puts cannons in those mountains and nobody in two years seeking a sex-change operation and change reassignment, as they call it, could possibly help it…I can assure my friends here in the House that there was nobody who was out there defending western civilization who had undergone a sex-change operation in the previous two years. When it’s advertised that the United States Congress is in favor of taking men and surgically making them into women with the money that they would use to protect the nation otherwise, or taking women and doing surgery to make them men, the United States Congress would rather spend that money on that surgery than defeating radical Islam, then it is an advertising bonanza for the radical Islamists because my Muslim friends tell me, the recruits, you’re right, if that’s how stupid they are, this society has no right to remain on the earth. We need to take them out. They are too stupid.”
- August 21st, 2017: Louie Gohmert, on Fox News, claims that the terror attack carried out in Charlottesville by white supremacists was somehow a false flag operation set up by President Obama, and that both people posing as KKK members and Black Lives Matter supporters were brought in off the same buses.
- October 3rd, 2017: Gohmert 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: Louie Gohmert 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: Gohmert 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.
- April 26th, 2018: Gohmert publishes a 48 page press release that does nothing but outright slander Special Counsel Robert Mueller for his work in investigating the links between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“What I have accumulated here is absolutely shocking upon the realization that Mueller’s disreputable, twisted history speaks to the character of the man placed in a position to attempt to legalize a coup against a lawfully elected President.”
- July 3rd, 2018: On Fox News, a paranoid Gohmert claims he’s “being monitored by the Justice Department”.
- July 9th, 2018: As controversy swirls around Congressman Jim Jordan, who is believed to have kept silence about wrestlers in the Ohio State wrestling program being sexually abused while he coached there, Gohmert defended the sexual assaults because “they were adults”.
- July 12th, 2018: As FBI Agent Peter Strzok takes the witness stand in front of Congress, Louie Gohmert goes f***ing bonkers, and accuses Strzok of lying before Congress, and then starts taking cheap shots and asking him how many times he had lied to his wife, prompting Democratic members of the hearing to ask Gohmert to “go take his medication”. (We’re assuming it’s for that neurosyphilis we’re betting he has.)
- July 17th, 2018: With several tech agencies testifying before Congress about how Russian influence campaigns online manipulated the 2016 election, Louie Gohmert began harassing the representative appearing from YouTube to scream at them, apparently upset that they were singling out Russia for condemnation, and therefore, only helping Democrats (yes, Gohmert is bats*** insane).
Louie Gohmert possesses levels of madness usually reserved for people who witness the Old Ones in Lovecraft novels. We have no idea how such a ludicrous bigot never even gets a real primary challenge, because even in a conservative district, any sane person should be able to primary him. Why the GOP has continued to enable him for a decade and a half, we can’t say. But we do wish they’d stop, especially now that he’s embracing the Alt-Right.
Texas’ 1st Congressional District has a +24 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index and in November, Gohmert faces off against Democrat Shirley MacKellar for the second election cycle in a row, trying to win his eighth term in office. If there’s anything aggravating about American politics right now, it’s that a pea-brained, gibbering stooge like Louie Gohmert could be elected seven times, and is likely to make it EIGHT this fall. Like, think about that. As easy as it is to demonstrate that the little hamster in the wheel in Gohmert’s skull is tripping over itself, high on bath salts, people keep sending him to Washington, again, and again, and again, even though every year, he gets a little worse..
Just… come on Southeast Texas. Just stop the madness. And start with stopping Louie Gohmert.
