SEPTEMBER 2021 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

Sorry this is arriving late, I was out of town.

1. Senator Ron Johnson. Even before the January 6 insurrection by supporters of former President Donald Trump, Senator Ron Johnson was pushing the Big Lie that Trump was somehow cheated out of a second term.

As chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Wisconsin Republican used the December 16 session to raise doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. In a lengthy, if largely fact-free, statement to the committee, he claimed that alleged irregularities could be grouped into three categories: “1) lax enforcement or violations of election laws and controls, 2) fraudulent votes and ballot stuffing, and 3) corruption of voting machines and software that might be programmed to add or switch votes.”

“In the time we had,” Johnson babbled, “it was impossible to fully identify and examine every allegation. But many of these irregularities raise legitimate concerns, and they do need to be taken seriously.”

That declaration was, of course, false. So outrageous was the senator’s hearing that The New York Times headlined its report, “The election is over, but Ron Johnson keeps promoting false claims of fraud.”

No surprise there. Johnson is the king of false claims—on everything from Covid-19 cures to tax-policy votes that invariably end up benefiting the senator and his campaign donors.

Johnson’s amplification of the Big Lie fostered the fantasy that the presidency was being stolen from Trump. Now, however, there’s reason to believe that Johnson’s been knowingly lying about the Big Lie.

On Sunday, when he spoke at a Republican event in Wisconsin with Lauren Windsor, a progressive activist who posed as a conservative and taped a conversation with Johnson, the senator said, “I think it’s probably true that Biden got maybe 7 million more popular votes. That’s the electoral reality. So to just say for sure that this was a stolen election, I don’t agree with that.”

Windsor is a self-described “progressive pugilist swamp-slayer” who has gained prominence over the past decade with multiple exposés of conservative hypocrisy, and, as executive producer of the political web show The Undercurrent, has distributed a tape of the conversation on social media. Johnson said during what he apparently thought was a private conversation, “There’s nothing obviously skewed about the results.” He even told Windsor that Trump lost because he had underperformed as compared to other Republicans. “If all the Republicans voted for Trump the way they voted for the Assembly candidates, he would have won,” said the senator. “He didn’t get 51,000 votes that other Republicans got, and that’s why he lost.”

Still, Johnson continues to peddle Trump’s Big Lie—even going so far as to support a bogus audit of the election results that has been promoted in recent weeks by Trump-aligned Wisconsin legislators. The audit will cost Wisconsin taxpayers $680,000.

Let us hope that Johnson’s big lie will follow him like stink on a skunk when he seeks a third term—should he decide to run.

2. Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) An attendee at a Republican event where Congressman Cawthorn was taking questions asked , “When are you gonna call us to Washington again?” and Cawthorn kinda sorta chuckled and faltered a little and then said,

“We are actively working on that one. We have a few plans in motion I can’t make public right now.” That’s it. That’s the context. Cawthorn, of course, claims he was quoted out of context.

Cawthorn also repeatedly described the people arrested for breaking down windows and doors at the U.S. Capitol, breaking into and stealing from the offices of key congressional leaders, and viciously assaulting the police officers who tried to defend the Capitol as “political prisoners” and “political hostages.”

“There are some criminal activities going on” in the federal government, Cawthorn claimed, because “when we are seeking answers, they are giving us the biggest runaround you possibly could imagine.” As a result, ”The big problem is we don’t actually know who all the political prisoners are, and so if we were actually to go and try to bust them out—and let me tell you, the reason why they have taken these political prisoners is they’re trying to make an example because they don’t want to see the mass protest going on in Washington,” Cawthorn said.

Well, if the “mass protest” involves a violent mob breaking into the Capitol to prevent the peaceful transition of power because they can’t admit their guy lost, then, no, the government does not want to see that going on.

“The things that we are wanting to fight for, it doesn’t matter if our votes don’t count,” Cawthorn also said. “Because, you know, if our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place—and it’s bloodshed.” The lies Cawthorn is spreading here about the 2020 election having been stolen have already led to bloodshed, and he’s trying to make it happen again.

But Cawthorn’s gonna Cawthorn. He’s a liar, sexual predator, and an anti-immigrant racist who took an early lead among first-term House members for most missed votes. The interesting question, as always, is what Republican leaders are going to do about him—or Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Lauren Boebert, or Paul Gosar, or Andy Biggs. And the answer is usually nothing. Kevin McCarthy is a pathetically weak “leader” who is following the far-far-far-right of his conference, the people who might as well go ahead and call themselves the troll caucus, ever further to the fringe. Because Kevin McCarthy wants to be speaker of the House, and he thinks he needs the die-hard Trump loyalists and the Q-curious and the not-so-subtly-racist and the violent-insurrectionist Republican base to get there.

Cawthorn, Greene, and a growing number of others are making sure it stays that way—and, because it was already there at the core, so-called leaders like McCarthy are along for the ride. Maybe Cawthorn’s suggestion that he’s getting ready to call for another January 6 will force McCarthy’s hand if the media pays enough attention. But either way, McCarthy’s capitulation to Cawthorn and his crew will continue.

3. Florida Council Member Fred Lowry. Top of Form

Yet another COVID-19 denier has been hospitalized with the novel coronavirus. According to The Daytona Beach News-Journal, Councilman Lowry, who promoted conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and mocked disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, is hospitalized after contracting the virus.

The last Volusia County meeting attended by Fred Lowry, the COVID-infected council member in question, was August 17. He has allegedly been battling infection since then. “He is in the hospital wrestling with COVID-19. It’s been about three weeks now,” Volusia County Chair Jeff Brower said on Tuesday.

Another chairman, Billie Wheeler, shared that Lowry texted her an update and is “pretty darned sick," The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported. According to Wheeler, Lowry was hospitalized Monday night after being treated with monoclonal antibodies last week. 

Lowry was infamous for his consistent spread of COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories, including one incident in which he refused to accept the pandemic was anything but a hoax. “We did not have a pandemic, folks. We were lied to,” Lowry said during a May 30 sermon at Deltona Lakes Baptist Church.

He also criticized and nicknamed Fauci “Dr. Falsey,” insisting that the top health official was a liar and sexual predator. "I did not mispronounce that. That's the way I wanted to say it," he said in various incidents according to the News-Journal.

Other conspiracy theories he promoted included misinformation about climate change, media coverage of hydroxychloroquine, and the absurd QAnon theory that liberals drink the blood of babies. To top it off, he of course also believes that the 2020 election was rigged.

Lowry is well-positioned for a Trump endorsement.

4. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy has been doing a lot of lying about the Jan. 6 commission, and his claim this month that the FBI supposedly concluded Donald Trump had "no involvement" in the Capitol riot is just the latest installment in his trail of ignominy.

In an appearance last week on local Bakersfield station KGET, McCarthy floated the idea that both the FBI and several Senate committees had investigated Trump's involvement with the Capitol insurrection and effectively cleared him of bearing any responsibility for what happened that day.

In a joint statement Saturday, the chair of the Jan. 6 House select committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi andvice-chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming, blasted McCarthy's claim as "baseless." McCarthy, they said, made the claim based on an anonymous report that had no merit.

"When this anonymous report was first published, the Select Committee queried the Executive Branch agencies and congressional committees involved in the investigation," said Thompson and Cheney. "We’ve received answers and briefings from the relevant entities, and it’s been made clear to us that reports of such a conclusion are baseless."

The statement also noted that McCarthy's remarks from the House floor on Jan. 13 about the insurrection were entirely "inconsistent" with his latest claim.

“The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters,” McCarthy had said on the House floor. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump."

In other words, careful what you say, McCarthy, it might come back to bite you—especially if you end up testifying before the committee. Just a guess that harkening back to his previous comments was a little touch of Cheney since she was still in charge of caucus messaging at the time.

McCarthy's interview with KGET was rich with lies, half-truths, and false innuendo. Among other things, McCarthy warned that if the select committee was able to obtain the phone records of congressional members, "they can go after any Americans’ phone numbers that they want."

Fear mongering, plain and simple. Congress has the power to police its members, and if what the committee is doing is illegal, McCarthy can file a court challenge. Instead, he and several members of the GOP caucus have threatened retaliation against companies who legally comply with a congressional subpoena.

But it's quite a turn for McCarthy to suddenly be concerned about government surveillance of private citizens. As former Michigan congressman Justin Amash noted on Twitter, McCarthy "voted for the Patriot Act (multiple times), FISA 702 (multiple times), and every dystopian surveillance bill that has ever made it to the House floor."

Apparently, being surveilled looks a little different when you're a target and have something to hide.

5. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. The perpetually howling mustache-man otherwise known as Mike Lindell has said—and repeated-- a lot of stupid things over the course his many diatribes. Occasionally, though, some brand new bile happens to ooze out.

In case you hadn’t heard, the by-now-infamous MyPillow CEO is convinced the November presidential election was stolen in the middle of the night by the Chinese, who surreptitiously installed Joe Biden as president. What’s worse, all we liberals know it happened, but we’re disgusting quislings who are doing awful things to this country because we hate Trump and Jesus and puppies and the American way and the most comfortable pillows ever offered for a 66% discount anywhere in the known multiverse. That’s the Cliffs Notes version, anyway. You don’t want the whole book. You’d be better off trying to read Ulysses in a single afternoon while a Scotch-besotted Rudy Giuliani rides you around your living room like a Shetland pony.

But prattle as he will (and, presumably, must), the thoroughly discredited Lindell really can’t say anything new about the election that will matter at this point—unless, of course, it relates to the pending $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit Dominion Voting Systems has filed against him. In Lindell’s crack-flashback fever dreams, Dominion is Public Enemy No. 1—the sinister voting machine manufacturer that, in Pillow Man’s ramshackle impersonation of a mind, gave the keys to the kingdom to Chinese anti-Trump apparatchiks.

You’d think if you were being sued for an amount neither you nor anyone in your camp could reasonably be expected to afford, you’d watch what you say. Of course, if you think that, you’re not Mike Lindell.

Late this month, Lindell made a surprising admission to his loyal followers, considering that he faces a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for $1.3 billion. Lindell said his company has profited from his repeated accusations about the voting technology firm — enough that the pillow king has recently hired an additional 200 employees.

"We hired 200 more employees because — 200 more employees," the MyPillow guy stated on his streaming site, Lindell TV. "We had to hire more because we are busy. People have responded. They have responded out there. We are a USA company with — now we have 2,700 employees. They are hardworking people."

Well, that’s a nice, inspiring, all-American story, huh? Magnanimous business owner makes 200 hardworking Americans’ dreams of working in a nondescript pillow factory come true.

Except for one thing …

According to Dominion’s lawsuit, Lindell is using his platform and his baseless accusations about the 2020 election to sell pillows. In other words, he’s profiting off his nonsense. That’s a problem for Lindell, of course, because his boasts about prospering in the wake of his efforts to restore Trump to the throne contradict a key part of his legal team’s defense against Dominion’s lawsuit:

"The Plaintiffs finally claim that Mr. Lindell's statements about Dominion were nothing more than an attempt to sell pillows. Exhibit 230 demonstrates that Mr. Lindell's principled stand resulted in a loss of business," Lindell's lawyers wrote. "Numerous retailers – including Bed Bath & Beyond, Kohl's, Today's Shopping Choice and Wayfair – dropped MyPillow products after Mr. Lindell's public statements."

In other words, Lindell has apparently just thrown himself under the bus.

Defamation cases are usually hard to win, but in this case, we have the Plaintiff drawing a connection between his alleged defamatory statement and his own wallet—an ignominious stupidity to the core.

_______________________

And the winner is:

If I again acknowledge former IGGY winners Johnson and McCarthy as deceitful hypocrites and liars, Lowry and Lindell as absolute idiots, I’m left with Madison Cawthorn as September’s IGGY winner. He seems determined to out-Gaetz, Gaetz.