The Epic Stupidity of the Rich Who Run the GOP Gets Caught On Secret Tape

Last updated on April 9th, 2018 at 02:32 pm

Sure, there are a lot of important policy gaffes caught on the Mitch McConnell bowing to the Kochs tape. But there’s also this. A woman named “Cheryl” asks Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to comment on the fact that we can’t engage in war anymore because of Obama. Seriously.

This level of complete ignorance about government is what runs the GOP, apparently, from the Koch donor summit on June 15th:

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Transcript via The Undercurrent (my bold):

FEMALE SPEAKER: Yes, I’m Cheryl (inaudible). I wanted to know, I, I just recently read that with changing rules of engaging in war, you cannot engage in war (inaudible) wasn’t meant for you. Can you comment on that?
MITCH MCCONNELL: I’m not sure I know –
SPEAKER: Well, before we could give more people help, and now, I, I mean, (inaudible) if we felt, um, that, uh, uh, we — if we felt that we were threatened in some way, and now we can’t engage in war unless we’re actually attacked, would you say?
MITCH MCCONNELL: Uh –
FEMALE SPEAKER: You don’t know anything about that?
MITCH MCCONNELL: No, I don’t. You know, if we’re attacked, uh, certainly I don’t think there’s anything inappropriate (inaudible).
SPEAKER: Is there anything from the Obama Administration that states you can’t engage in war?
MITCH MCCONNELL: I think they choose not to do much of anything over there.
SPEAKER: (Inaudible) in Iraq now (inaudible).
MITCH MCCONNELL: Yeah, I’ll have to take a look at it. What I can tell you with regard to this Administration’s foreign policy is, can you think of a single place in the world where we’re in better shape now than we were when he took office? I mean, he took power in 2009, and, you know, (inaudible) American exceptionalism. And we really ought to talk to each other more frequently instead of (inaudible).
And so we’re, uh, in tough cases about everywhere in the world. As a result, citizens from all (inaudible) have more questions in foreign policy than (inaudible) because they don’t have to deal with senators and members of, uh, Congress. But uh, it, it isn’t enough, so (inaudible) try to pull through. Not to mention, it’s pretty hard to think of anything they didn’t mess up here at home. I don’t know if you all know (inaudible) all my life.

Even professional story teller Mitch McConnell struggled to find a thread of reality to cling to in this one. Um, we are actually “helping” people right now in other countries. War does not always “help people”. The Obama administration has never said that we will no longer be declaring war anywhere, ever. This is complete insanity.

The irony here is that while Republicans beat the drums for war at every possible occasion, they also wail to the press if the President does what other presidents have done in the past by taking some action without their approval. (There are war power precedents that should concern everyone, but that’s not what the Republicans are objecting to. They are objecting to a Democrat being elected and using those powers.)

The soul-crushing stupidity of this question only gets worse when you realize that this person, this Cheryl person, and people like her are running the country via the GOP. These are people who believe what Fox News tells them because it suits their agenda.

These people run the GOP, and they have not a frigging clue what they are talking about. They don’t seem to know anything about government or reality. These are not your wealthy educated elite. These are your libertarian greed monsters, sucking up Ayn Rand at night and tittering at fictional foreign policies. They’re so ignorant they can never be told how ignorant they are because the information is out of their grasp.

This is surreal level ignorant. It’s tin foil dollars on foreign policy. And it’s running the GOP.

Image: ListDose

Correction: 8:30 PM There’s was corrected to there are in first paragraph.

Sarah Jones

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