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
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.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) thought he’d try and rewrite the history of his party on Tuesday, but he immediately got smacked down by the facts about the GOP which are written in bigotry and hatred.
During a debate on whether or not to eliminate the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, McConnell said the procedure — through which one senator can bring all business in the upper chamber to a screeching halt — had not been used in the past (by Republicans) to delay passage of civil rights legislation in the 1950s:
“It has no racial history at all. None. There’s no dispute among historians about that.”
Mitch McConnell defends the Senate filibuster: "It has no racial history at all. None. There's no dispute among historians about that." pic.twitter.com/lR0drfNuQi
That’s a lie, and McConnell said it knowing damn well it was a lie.
History shows that the longest filibuster ever held in the Senate was made by the blatantly racist GOP Sen. Strom Thurmond in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, speaking continuously for 24 hours and 15 minutes to prevent black Americans from having the same rights as whites.
Steven S. Smith, a political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, explained the use of the filibuster by Republicans during the bad old days:
“The histories of the filibuster, civil and voting rights, and race in America are intertwined.”
How racist is the history of the Senate filibuster? It was once used to block anti-lynching bills. That is the shameful past of the procedure McConnell tried to paper over.
Fortunately, however, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance of Alabama was quick to counter McConnell, noting:
South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond's 24 hour & 18 minute filibuster of the Voting Rights Act of 1957, the longest 1-person filibuster in history, begs to differ. And I've got more. https://t.co/6UUVki9g7c
When he started getting criticism, McConnell’s office tried to walk back what he’d said:
A partial walk-back from McConnell's office, which says he was referring to the *origins* of the filibuster.
The *use* of the filibuster, of course, has an extensive and well-documented racial history over generations (though it's now used on everything). https://t.co/1LQZtYPWNe
For those who aren’t familiar with the full history of the Republican Party, it was once the Party of Lincoln. But then Richard Nixon was elected, followed by Ronald Reagan (who railed against “welfare queens” in a blatant attack on African-American women), and later was the party of choice for Donald Trump, who called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and suggested that anyone who dared to protest was a hoodlum or an “animal.” The GOP has become the party of bigotry and racial hatred. And the filibuster is part of that legacy, despite what McConnell or any other revisionist historian tries to assert.
How can you tell when someone is a racist? When they deny their own past, their support of bigots, and their cozy relationship with neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and white separatists.
Nice try, Mitch, but you’re just as full of shit as ever. And you’re also a terrible liar.