The ‘Big Lie’ and bigger liars
I keep hearing Republicans are going to annihilate Democrats come November.
Will they?
First, there are lots of Republican candidates who’re still clinging to Donald Trump’s “Big Lie.”
If you still don’t know what Trump’s “Big Lie” is, I can’t help you.
Let’s just say it has something to do with basic arithmetic.
The “Big Lie” makes 74,216,154 votes more than 81,268,924 votes.
Or that 232 electoral votes are more than 306.
It makes your average third-grader better equipped with basic math than a Pennsylvania state senator, who aspires to occupy the state’s governor’s mansion after November.
Doug Mastriano, though, is certainly not the only Republican running for office these days who is still clinging fast to “The Big Lie.”
There are dozens of them arrayed across the country.
“Vote for me. I will always make sure I’ll tell you the truth,” they’ll announce. Then they’ll tell the biggest of the “Big Lies,” about Trump “winning” the 2020 presidential election, while they try to convince you that the midterm elections are really about the future.
That’s the twisted logic of more than a hundred Republican candidates for Congress, statehouses, and governorships.
And when they aren’t twisting themselves into human pretzels about their truth-telling inclinations, they’re becoming walking-talking self-contradictions.
Take Glenn Thompson.
He’s the Republican serving the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania in Congress.
Thompson has a lotta nerve.
He was one of 147 Republicans in the U.S. House to vote against the “Respect for Marriage Act,” which would require the U.S. federal government to recognize same-sex marriages in the United States. (The measure easily passed the House by a vote of 267-157)
Thompson’s no vote may have gone unnoticed if it hadn’t been for what took place three days later.
That day, he went to his gay son’s wedding.
So, he voted against gay marriage. Yet, he still solidified his support for gay marriage, when it involved his own son?
That’s the very definition of hypocrisy.
And, by the way, since the bill also has a provision to solidify federal support for interracial marriages, it’s as if Thompson voted against that too.
At least Thompson didn’t cause a spectacle of himself the way Florida’s all-around Republican attack poodle Matt Gaetz has.
Gaetz was one of only 20 members of the House of Representatives to vote against reauthorizing the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act.
The law was designed to give protection to undocumented immigrants who’ve become victims of violence and trafficking.
It was first passed into law in 2000. It’s been reauthorized by presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump.
It was reauthorized again last Tuesday, with 401 Republicans and Democrats voting in the affirmative. But not Gaetz, and some of his fellow Republican Trump devotees.
Lauren Boebert (Colorado), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia), and Mo Brooks (Alabama) were among them.
But it was Gaetz’s objection that proved to be the most notable of the bunch.
Last year, Gaetz, himself, was placed under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department, accused of engaging in sex trafficking with a 17-year-old.
The results of that investigation haven’t been released.
But you’d think that under that kind of scrutiny, he’d come out in support of protections against sex trafficking.
Instead, he’s sounding off about abortions. And a foul sound at that.
“I’m very pro-life,” he recently said. “I make no apology for it, and I’m grateful that Roe (v. Wade) has been overturned and that Dobbs is now the jurisprudence on abortion.”
At this point, he was on reasonably firm ground. But Gaetz has a way of, well, going way overboard.
“I find these people who got out and in these pro-abortion pro-murder rallies odious, and just like, ugly on the inside and out. And I make no apology for that,” he said.
He could have stopped there. But he didn’t.
He was asked, “Is it safe to say that based on your comments, you’re suggesting that these women at these abortion rallies are ugly and overweight?”
“Yes,” Gaetz replied.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 40-year TV news and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.