On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of the U.S. House Representative from South Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District, Joe Wilson, who made himself notorious back in 2009 at President Obama’s first State of the Union speech when he took the unprecedented act to disregard all decorum by standing up and screaming, “YOU LIE!” at the leader of the free world during a nationally televised speech. At least when Waldorf and Statler heckle on the Muppets, they make it funny. The GOP closed ranks, and only one member of the GOP voted to admonish him for it.
Perhaps that should come as little surprise, because he once expressed his disappointment that nobody in the Democratic Primary in 2008 addressed Obama’s birth certificate. That seems to also fall into a pattern, because Joe Wilson was also a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans while a state legislator, tried denying his former boss on Capitol Hill, Strom Thurmond, had ever had an affair with an African-American woman, calling it “unseemly” and a “smear” that anyone would do so (meanwhile, genetic tests proved it true).
In a debate about the soon-to-be Iraq War in 2002, Rep. Wilson denied that the United States supplied WMDs to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s to justify a need for force… and since voting to send our brave young men and women to fight in that conflict, Wilson has voted over a dozen times now against healthcare funding for veterans. He’s still using military conflicts to make irrational political points, though, as he claimed President Obama had only started airstrikes against ISIS because he wanted to distract Americans from Benghazi (where investigators found no administration wrongdoing), the IRS Scandal (where no malicious wrongdoing was found), and Obamacare (which is actually a positive thing). Which is to say, Rep. Wilson spends a lot of time jumping at shadows, as he also was highly suspicious of Planned Parenthood after watching the hoax videos produced by the Center for Medical Progress.
So, while Joe Wilson has a district tailor fit to keep electing conservatives, things were hardly copacetic down in South Carolina’s 2nd District. Rep. Wilson hosted a town hall back in April that, quite frankly, devolved into his constituents chanting “YOU LIE!” back at him, because he was feeding them some less-than-honest statements regarding the GOP’s attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. His district’s lean, though, remains at a +12, so Joe Wilson was re-elected to a tenth term in 2018 with 56% of the vote. This was in spite of the fact that Wilson was another of the GOP’s witless morons who was duped by Sasha Baron Cohen on “Who is America?” that year, having himself recorded on video endorsing the idea of arming toddlers, saying, “A 3-year-old cannot defend itself from an assault rifle by throwing a Hello Kitty pencil case at it”. He still insists he’s not a lunatic.
And in his tenth term, well… let’s just say Joe Wilson hasn’t changed much:
- January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Wilson voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
- February 28th, 2019: Wilson votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
- March 14th, 2019: Rep. Wilson votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
- April 4th, 2019: Joe Wilson is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
- May 17th, 2019: Wilson cannot even be bothered to vote against The Equality Act, which would have prevented discrimination towards Americans based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
- June 4th, 2019: Rep. Wilson votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
- July 16th, 2019: Joe Wilson votes against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
Joe Wilson is currently sweating profusely during the impeachment hearing, because he’s already been shown to have received campaign donations from the indicted Russian influencer Igor Fruman during the 2018 elections. As in “Lev and Igor”, the chucklef***s who were looking to aid Russia’s attempts to screw with Ukraine on behalf of Donald Trump. This could perhaps taint him enough going into 2020 to make him have to worry about getting an eleventh term in Congress.