The tightness of Senate races across the country and the stress being felt by Republicans like Texas’ Sen. John Cornyn has led to some predictably low-moral dirty tricking on the part of said senator. On Wednesday, probably feeling a touch sensitive after being exposed as a whiny lying toad of a shill during the first day of hearings for Supreme Court anti-choice nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Cornyn decided to retweet out an image showing Sens. Cory Booker, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Richard Blumenthal in close conversation during a Senate Committee hearing. None of these men were wearing masks in this damning photo.
Cornyn accompanied this retweet with his version of snark, writing: “Masks?” The implication of course being that these Democratic officials are not practicing what they preach, as opposed to the political party holding hearings after more than half of the chamber was exposed to a known COVID-19 superspreader. The problem is the image in question, showing three maskless Democratic senators in close conference is from … 2018. Very quickly people pointed this bit of truly reprehensible misinformation out to the terrible politician.
If you want to help send Sen. John Cornyn into retirement in the next couple of weeks, head on over and donate what you can to his opponent, MJ Hegar.
In recent weeks, Cornyn, feeling the heat from Democratic challenger MJ Hegar, has been lying his face off, campaigning on things he has in fact done the opposite of during his time in office. Like the rest of his party, he has continuously lied about the effect his support for repealing the Affordable Care Act without having any replacement plan would have on millions of Americans. After not supporting and helping separate immigrant families, with no single path-to-naturalization offered, Cornyn came out with his pants on fire, telling people he has secretly been helping immigrant youth behind the scenes this whole time.
My colleague Gabe Ortiz made sure to give Cornyn a visual aid that even he could understand.
Of course, there were theories on why someone in such an important position of responsibility would make such an ill-informed statement into the public sphere—during an actual global pandemic.
As someone pointed out, this image is in fact from the last time the Republican Party shoved a shitty, morally dubious person into the highest court in our country.
And others made sure not to mince words.
And of course others reminded Cornyn that he still has opportunities for gainful employment even if he loses his job of misinforming the public in November.
There is also the obvious hypocrisy of any Republican official pretending to care at all about public health standards. Especially if they’re from fossil fuel-soaked Texas.
Cornyn, for his part, simply retweeted PBS News correspondent Lisa Desjardins and wrote: “Thanks for clarifying.” But you know what Johnny didn’t do? He didn’t take down his libelous tweet. He didn’t take it down because Cornyn is a bad person, desperate for the death cult of Trump’s base to save him in the next couple of weeks.
