Political Irony

The more you read about Jim Jordan, the worse he looks. You probably know that he was a founding member of the “Freedom Caucus”, which is the Republican group that is keeping the House of Representatives deadlocked. He was an attack dog for president Donald Trump, including being a key ally in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and he refused a subpoena from the congressional investigation into the Jan 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. But it gets worse.

Before he was a politician, he was a wrestling coach at Ohio State, and was mired in scandal. Over 100 former wrestlers have said that Jordan ignored rampant sexual abuse by a team doctor. Jordan claims he never saw or heard of any abuse, but an official investigation found that the abuse was an “open secret”, and that “coaches, trainers and other team physicians were fully aware of [the doctor’s] activities, and yet few seemed inclined to do anything to stop it”. The investigation also found that the doctor had sexually abused at least 177 students.

But even worse, Jordan is completely unqualified to be Speaker of the House, which is the person who decides which bills are brought to the floor for a vote. Jordan was elected to the House in 2006, and in all this time, Jordan has never drafted a bill that was signed into law. Not even when Trump was president. So he is still a jerk-off.

Even those things Jordan does do, he fails at. For example, he has been running an investigation against Hunter Biden (and his laptop) for 10 months, which has gone nowhere. A month ago, Jordan began an impeachment investigation against president Biden, and on the first day his “star witnesses” all admitted that there was not enough evidence for impeachment. If Jordan becomes the Speaker, what are the chances that he won’t be able to pass a budget and the government will have to shut down? That might just kill the Republican Party.

In addition, Jordan is very unpopular with his colleagues, and has been that way for a long time. For example, former Speaker of the House John Boehner described Jordan as a “legislative terrorist”. And now, as Jordan attempts to whip up votes to be speaker, he is doing it by browbeating House Republicans who are voting against him, making him even more unpopular.

On May 3, 2016, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), made the following prediction:

“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.”

As everyone probably already knows, Donald Trump was indicted again by a grand jury, this time regarding the insurrection that happened on January 6, 2021. Jack Smith held a very short press conference (under 3 minutes), where he summarized the four counts against the former president.

He also said that everyone should read the 45-page indictment. So I did, and he was right. It is an impressive document that will go down in history. I’m sure that by tomorrow, every pundit of every political stripe will publish their take on it, but this is one time it is worth seeing the real document. It is easy to read, clear, comprehensive, and convincing. It also includes quite a bit of evidence that even the politicians, members of the Trump administration, and others who strongly supported Trump told him that he was wrong, and yet he continued to lie and subvert the Constitution. He also purposely endangered people’s lives with his lies.

If Trump isn’t convicted and punished, then there is something terribly wrong with this country.

UPDATE: GOP politicians are starting to respond to the new indictment, and one of the popular responses seems to be to change the subject. For example, Speaker Kevin McCarthy accused the DOJ of using this new indictment against the former president to distract from the Republican House probes against Joe Biden and his son Hunter (what they like to call the “Biden Crime Family”). This, despite the fact that yesterday their star witness in their probe didn’t tell them anything illegal or even worth mentioning.

It actually looks like the opposite is true. The Republicans are trying to use their failing probes against Biden to distract from Trump’s actual crimes.

Joe Biden approves this message from Marjorie Taylor Greene.

UPDATE: Just to make things clear, MTG is now complaining that the Biden campaign took her words out of context. Well, of course they took her words out of context! Anyone who thinks that MTG has had a change of heart and is now supporting Biden is drinking the Krazy Kool-Aid! (Not that she isn’t famous for changing her heart on a dime, which recently got her booted from the Freedom Caucus!)

The whole point of the ad is that MTG is giving a fairly accurate account of Joe Biden’s accomplishments, investing in public infrastructure and environmental programs, and completing FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. This includes (in her words) programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, and labor unions. But she thinks what Biden is doing is a bad thing. MTG is railing against education, better medical care, solving urban problems and rural poverty, improving transportation, and (worst of all) Medicare and Medicaid. She also hates labor unions.

In context, what MTG said is that if you elect Republicans, they will work to destroy all of these things. In effect, she is stupidly saying the quiet part out loud.

It is a great ad.