Though he was once the most powerful member of the House of Representatives, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) probably won’t ever be invited to teach a class on American history.
A tweet McCarthy posted Sunday has come under criticism for being utterly ignorant of warfare and the ulterior motives of U.S. foreign policy.
The posting, which included a video, claims, “In every single war that America has fought, we have never asked for land afterward — except for enough to bury the Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice for freedom.”
Think for one moment. In every single war that America has fought, we have never asked for land afterward—except for enough to bury the Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. pic.twitter.com/XbReeVvWPX
Of course, as almost anyone who has taken the most rudimentary course in history knows, McCarthy’s claim is complete bullshit.
As a matter of fact, McCarthy’s own California congressional district wouldn’t exist if Mexico hadn’t turned over that land to the United States at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848.
That set off a wave of mockery and history lessons aimed directly at the California Republican.
This guy represents California in Congress — one of 9 current states whose territory the US won in part or whole during the Mexican War of 1848. Then there is the Spanish American War that saw the US take Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Otherwise solid history. https://t.co/2dGwsIp8gT
What's really amazing about this transparent lie is that he was so confident about it, he shared this clip himself. That's how far down the rabbit hole too many of us are when it comes to a kind of phony patriotism built upon myth and distortion. https://t.co/sZah1BOcYV
Think of all the wisdom from this man we’d be deprived of if his home state of California had never spontaneously risen from the sea and attached itself to the United States https://t.co/1GL8Rbohna
If you don’t even know how your home state became a state you should have ZERO say in how teachers teach history. Let alone be a member of congress. https://t.co/aZ99rVlwYH
This is complete ignorance. Nearly half of our land mass was seized after the Mexican War and we took the Philippines and Puerto Rico after the Spanish American war. https://t.co/7JwJOTZDOE
Back when he was still president, Donald Trump met several times with then-German chancellor Angela Merkel, and on one occasion she told him the only person who drew crowds as big as the Donald was former German dictator Adolf Hitler.
The comment wasn’t meant as a compliment, according to a new book from Jonathan Karl, but Trump took it that way nonetheless.
Karl’s book, Tired of Winning, will be released later this evening, and he was also a guest on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” today, telling host Nicolle Wallace:
“One prominent member of Congress — a Trump ally — told me that the president, on two separate occasions, claimed [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel had complimented him on the large crowds he attracted when he spoke. ‘She told me that she was amazed at the size of the crowds that came to see me speak,’ Trump told the Republican Congressman.
“She said she could never get crowds like that. In fact, she told me that there was only one other political leader who ever got crowds as big as mine.”
“Only one! In history! The Republican congressman couldn’t believe the insinuation was lost on Trump. ‘And I’m thinking,’ he told me while recounting his interaction with Trump, ‘you know who she’s talking about, right?'”
Karl added:
“But he’s recounting the story that the chancellor of Germany, telling him only one person can get crowds like yours. It’s obvious what she’s trying to talk to him — and Trump is bragging about the crowds. So, you know, I mean, this ally felt that Trump enjoyed the idea of being compared to Adolf Hitler, at least the aspect of him attracting all those huge crowds.”
Citing a speech Trump made over the weekend in which he referred to his enemies as “vermin” (the very same word used by Hitler on more than one occasion to describe Jews), Karl noted:
“They are embracing this idea that they are out to get retribution against the deep state, against the communists, the radicals, the vermin. They are embracing this idea. The amount of pushback is remarkably little.”
Trump thinks any “big, strong” leader is impressive, Karl explained, because that’s how he envisions himself.
“This is why he actually was praising Hezbollah recently for being smart, but he talks about his praise for Kim Jong-Un, for Putin. He wants to emulate these people. I’m not saying that Donald Trump is a Nazi. But there is this infatuation that he has, and he affects his language.”
“That’s when you were talking about rooting out the vermin. Even the phrase ‘the enemy of the people,’ which he used to describe the press, is something that is drawn from Nazi Germany. It’s also drawn from Stalin. This is a dictator’s phrase. It’s one that he eagerly embraced. Does he know the history of it? I don’t know, but the parallel is clear.”
While he loves to claim that millions of Americans wanted him to win a second term in office, it appears that history will not be kind to failed, one-term former President Donald Trump, who has debuted on C-SPAN’s 2021 Survey of Presidential Leadership in 41st place, which places him among the five worst presidents in U.S. history.
Politico reports that the survey is conducted annually among a collection of historians, and those historians do not think much of Trump:
“This survey marks Trump’s first appearance on the list, on which the one-term president placed higher than only three other presidents: Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson and the perpetually last-ranked James Buchanan.”
The ratings are based on 10 qualities of presidential leadership;
Public Persuasion
Crisis Leadership
Economic Management
Moral Authority
International Relations
Administrative Skill
Relations with Congress
Vision/Setting an Agenda
Pursued Equal Justice for All
Performance Within the Context of the Times
When it comes to administrative skills, Trump ranked dead last among his predecessors in American history. He also ranks last when it comes to moral authority.
The reasons for Trump’s low rating are almost too numerous to mention, but presidential historian Douglas Brinkley suggested it had a lot to do with the 2021 impeachment, which made Trump the only president in history to be impeached twice:
“This year, people compared which is worse: Watergate or the Trump impeachment? The word ‘impeachment’ probably cost Nixon a few spots downward this year, and maybe Clinton too.”
In what will no doubt be especially galling to Trump, Barack Obama moved into the top 10.
The top 5 presidents, according to historians, are Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Lincoln has been ranked first since the survey began in 2000.
In time, as it becomes clearer just how incompetent and fundamentally evil Trump was during his term in office, it’s safe to predict he will be seen s the worst president in the long history of the United States. If he’s indicted, that spot is virtually guaranteed.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is the dumbest member of Congress. After all, she had to take the GED high school equivalency exam multiple times before she finally managed to pass it.
On Tuesday, Boebert once again proved her stupidity during a discussion with right-wing agitator Charlie Kirk on his podcast.
The topic was guns and the Second Amendment, which led Kirk to comment, “So Lauren, we’re seeing the gun grabbers going into full gear. Let’s just play a couple pieces of tape here. Um, let’s go to, I haven’t even heard this one yet, Joe Scarborough.”
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough:
“They talk about a freedom that they’ve made up in their own twisted heads because they’ve been, they’ve been whipped into a paranoid frenzy by the NRA for 25 years. You know, now they’re claiming the Second Amendment protects things it just doesn’t protect.”
That led Kirk to ask the Colorado Republican, “Lauren, did we just invent this out of thin air because of a quote, ‘paranoid frenzy?’ Your response.”
Boebert replied:
“Right. This made-up freedom. Uh, I don’t think that defending, uh, one’s life is a made-up freedom. Um, it, it’s right there, um, in the preamble, we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, um, or personal property, whichever rendition or whatever version you want to, uh, go by. Um, but also this is an assault on cops are, are you kidding me?”
Lauren Boebert falsely claimed a “version” of the Declaration of Independence’s preamble declares “personal property” rights:
“It’s right there in the preamble, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness or personal property …whatever version you want to go by.” pic.twitter.com/3ca3eRAkjW
The right to personal property? That’s nowhere in the Declaration of Independence, which it seems Boebert was attempting (and failing) to quote.
Here are the “inalienable rights” cited in the preamble to the Declaration:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Twitter users gave Boebert an “F” for her version of the preamble.
So now there is an "Alternate" Declaration of Independence? Does she think that's where the 2nd Amendment is?
I’m laughing! There is no “personal property” in the Declaration of Independence preamble. The ideas in the preamble – all men are equal, right to life and pursuit of happiness. This means that racism is wrong, right to life means, schools should be safe from gun violence!
Without even having to mention his name, President Joe Biden excoriated Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis during a speech he gave Sunday during a visit to Selma, Alabama to commemorate “Bloody Sunday.”
Speaking to black leaders, the president brought up that some in the GOP want to ban the teaching of civil rights and black history, including learning about Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Some, like DeSantis, even want to censor books from appearing in libraries because they might make some white children feel uncomfortable.
“History matters. I am here as your president. The truth matters. And I understand the other team is trying to hide the truth. No matter how hard some people try, we can’t just choose to learn what we want to know, and not what we should know. We should learn everything. The good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation. And everyone should know the truth of Selma.”
The president then reflected on “Bloody Sunday,” which took place in 1965.
“Six hundred believers put faith in action to march across that bridge named after the grand dragon of the KKK. They were on their way to the state capital of Montgomery to claim their fundamental right to vote lain in the bedrock of our Constitution, but stolen by hate and harbored in too many hearts.”
Biden concluded his remarks with a powerful reminder of his thoughts on the brave men and women who marched at Selma and what they had to endure:
“With unflinching courage, foot soldiers marched for justice, marched through the valley of the shadow of death and they feared no evil. The forces of hate can conspire to demise, but they endured. They forced the country to confront the hard truths, and the act to keep the promise of America alive. I was just student up north in the Civil Rights movement. I remember feeling how guilty I was I wasn’t here. How could we all be up there and you’re going through what you went through? Looking at those — I can still picture, I can still picture the troopers with their batons and wands and whips.”
It should be interesting to see if Gov. DeSantis responds to the president’s remarks. If he does, and doubles down on his state’s bans, he can kiss the vote of almost every black person in this country goodbye.
