Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Glenn Beck
Right-wing carnival barker Glenn Beck returns to the list this week for making the latest in a long string of bold, obviously wrong predictions.
In an effort to convince his listeners to support Utah senator Mike Lee’s doomed plan to shut down the government unless Obamacare is defunded, Beck declared that September 30, 2013 — the date after which the government cannot operate without a new budget deal — as the date when America’s death certificate will be signed.
“This truly is the end of the Constitution,” Beck said. He added that, if Obamacare is still being implemented on September 30th, then President Obama will be “a dictator at that point.”
Thankfully for Beck, Obama probably won’t have an opportunity to impose authoritarian rule. After all, the Gang of Eight immigration bill will have long since killed America by then.
4. E.W. Jackson
Virginia lieutenant governor candidate E.W. Jackson, who holds the almost impossible distinction of being too far right for Ken Cuccinelli, made Republicans face-palm again on Thursday when he told a local radio host that the Democratic Party is “anti-God.”
After WLEE host Jack Gravely noted to Jackson that he is a Christian who tends to vote Democratic, Jackson doubled down on his belief that Christians should abandon the Democratic Party.
“I said it because I believe that the Democrat Party has become an anti-God party, I think it’s an anti-life party, I think it’s an anti-family party,” Jackson said. “And these are all things I think Christians hold to very dearly.”
As Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald points out, a 2012 Pew poll found that 77 percent of Democrats said they “never doubt the existence of God,” and 62 percent said that prayer is an important part of their life, and that “we will all be called before God at the Judgment Day to answer for our sins.” But based on Jackon’s previous statements, it’s a safe bet that he sees those numbers and immediately thinks that 77 percent of Democrats are evil Muslims.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party is now in the sixth month of its “rebranding” process.
Photo: markn3tel via Flickr.com
3. Stuart Varney
Fox Business host Stuart Varney really seems to hate hungry people.
During a Tuesday morning appearance on Fox & Friends, Varney lashed out at the AARP for encouraging the 350,000 Pennsylvania seniors who lack food security to apply for benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“Now the AARP, huge supporters of President Obama politically and financially. Big supporters of Obamacare. And now they’re out there signing people up for food stamps,” Varney seethed. “This is part of the buy the vote campaign. They’re really shifting America, changing what America really is.”
Varney is technically correct, in the sense that the Obama administration is helping seniors to vote by buying them food, making sure that they don’t starve to death. This is apparently a bad thing in Varney’s world.
Varney wasn’t done yet. The next day, while complaining that immigrants’ lives are too easy, Varney flirted with the idea of also letting immigrants and their children starve to death.
Of course, in Varney’s mind he isn’t being cruel — because according to him, poor people don’t really exist anyway.
2. Donald Trump
Birther conspiracy theorist Donald Trump, who is once again pretending that he is going to run for president, played up his religious right credentials on Tuesday in an interview with Iowa talk show host Steve Deace.
Describing himself as a “pro-life” and “very, very pro-family,” Trump explained that he is a good Presbyterian with a “great relationship with the church.” And in true Trump style, he claimed that he will be the main draw at The Family Leader’s upcoming Iowa conference.
“Tickets are going at a rate like they’ve never gone before, maybe it’s one of the other candidates but you know what, I doubt it,” Trump said. “I know some of the people that are candidates and the Republicans are not going to be winning with these people.”
Based on Trump’s reception at CPAC, we can safely assume that ticket sales are indeed being driven by the other candidates. And based on his two divorces and his ties to organized crime, prostitution, and drug dealing, he seems unlikely to secure much of the conservative Christian vote.
But hey, at least he’s got Stuart Varney’s vote locked up: “People don’t work, they don’t have to work, they get better benefits if they take it easy, which is unfair because the people that are working are paying for that,” Trump obliviously told Deace.
Audio of the interview is available at Right Wing Watch.
Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.com
1. Brooke Goldstein
Ever since Anthony Weiner revealed that he did not stop sexting young women after resigning from Congress in shame back in 2011, most of the political media have become a bit obsessed with the “Carlos Danger” scandal. But only one media outlet has used the story to push Michele Bachmann’s stupidest conspiracy theory.
This week’s “winner,” the Lawfare Project’s Brooke Goldstein, has appeared on multiple Fox News programs this week pushing her Bachmann-esque theory on Huma Abedin. According to Goldstein, Abedin basically forced Weiner to cheat on her, because he is not attracted to the fact that she is a secret Muslim Brotherhood operative who “poses one of the greatest national security threats of this administration.”
To host Greg Gutfeld’s credit, he openly laughed at Goldstein’s attempt to paint Abedin as some kind of radical sleeper agent. Unsurprisingly, however, Goldstein found a much more receptive audience peddling the same lie to Sean Hannity.
