Irina Vilariño is a birther so extreme she’s posted a video edited to make former President Obama appear to admit to having been born in Kenya. Republicans are just proud Vilariño is running for Congress so they can brag about their diversity.
National Republican Congressional Committee recruitment chair Susan Brooks recently highlighted Vilariño as one of five (five!) women running as Republicans, with Brooks mentioning her both to the media and in a closed-door Republican meeting. “It’s important that we, as a conference, do a better job of looking like America, and better representing the very diverse country that we have, Brooks told Roll Call, citing Vilariño as an example. That’s after Vilariño tweeted the fake video edited to make Obama say that “It’s true, I’m not an American. I wasn’t born in Hawaii, I wasn’t born in the United States of America. I come from Kenya.”
It’s also after Vilariño promoted claims, made by a QAnon follower, that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was an alcoholic who “had 64 sexual partners between 11th grade thru college” and after she went on CNN to say “There was no intercourse. There was maybe a touch. Really? Thirty-six years later, she’s still stuck on that?”
Asked by TPM about the Obama video, Vilariño said that “It was a very interesting video of the president in his own words,” ignoring the fact that it is not Obama’s own words.
Vilariño is running against Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat who defeated Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo. The district may not end up being a Republican target, but for now, Republicans like having a Cuban-American woman to help pretend they care about diversity too much to worry about her birther lies or her QAnon-influenced attacks on a sexual assault survivor.