This was a very strange September 11 anniversary on the Sunday shows. Could be that many conservatives were busy defending the honor of a foreign monarch and the institution she represented. Could be that after 21 years of faux patriotism from conservatives, they just couldn't muster the full effort. But the most peculiar thing we noticed is this need to rewrite the history of the immediate aftermath of September 11 ( again ), whether through purposeful propaganda or plain ignorance of actual history.
Take Republican House minority leader and malfunctioning cyborg Kevin McCarthy. Appearing on Maria Bartiromo's MAGA infomercial Fox Business show "Sunday Morning Futures," McCarthy had a whopping 18 minutes of airtime to spout off.
Because we at Wonkette love you and want to spare you the mental torture, here are the "highlights."
First, McCarthy spoke about the Republican fantasy version of the aftermath of 9/11:
MCCARTHY: ... united as one nation. We put our political parties aside. We worshiped together. We united together. People signed up to go to the military. People came down to dig out thosetowers.
Pretty sure plenty of Muslim Americans would disagree with this whitewashing.
Also, when it comes to the active response to 9/11, we know how much Republicans care about 9/11 first responders by their deeds, not their words.
When Republicans speak of "unity," they mean any time people follow them without question. To them, bipartisanship is "do everything Republicans want." Yes, George W. Bush had record approval ratings after 9/11. This political momentum allowed Republicans to run roughshod over most war opposition by hijack nationalistic jingoism. This "unity" would not have been reciprocated if it had been President Gore or Obama or Biden.
Around the 2: 26 mark, McCarthy and Bartiromo tried to bring back Benghazi,like they were playing an encore of "Free Bird" from their glory days. They then brought up the Afghanistan withdrawal, hinting that it should be investigated (Benghazi 2: The Next Batch?) whilenever mentioning the context of said withdrawal. That morphed into how Russia, China and the Mexican cartels have maybe all united at the southern border to invade us!
Then McCarthy gave one of his patented idiotic axioms:
MCCARTHY: If you want to know about 21 years ago today, you've got to pay attention to what is happening now. So in the future, nothing like that happens again.
This makes absolutely zero sense. Or does it? The phrase McCarthy is coopting is about learning from past mistakes to not repeat them in the future. But his inversion, however intentional or unintentional, might highlight the GOP's revisionist view of history. Rather than look to the past to fix the future, why not look at what you want now and "fix" the past to justify doing so. Be it guns or abortion or civil rights or 9/11 even, let's revise things so that you can say your AR-15 was blessed by Jesus and the ghosts of every founding father.
McCarthy then spent some time talking about how the Iran Deal and inflation have made us "less safe."
Maria Bartiromo "reported" a story about a student caught with drugs in California, which allowed McCarthy to complain about the border. Then he told a story you will never believe, unless you are very not smart, of a school guidance counselor who OD-ed on fentanyl when they caught a student with drugs, just by touching the drugs :
“i have questions”
— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1662914625
McCarthy's story is bullshit. Refuted by numerous sources just by doing a simple Google search, it's clear that it's scaremongering used for politics. Which McCarthy made even more obvious with his next talking-point after this story.
MCCARTHY: Don't think that your city is not a "border city" today. Every single city in America is now a "border city."
McCarthy is technically right. Almost every major city is a "border city," but that has to do with CBP enforcement bullshit, not drugs.
https: //twitter.com/MPLSKerrBear/status/1534722484...
But McCarthy wasn't talking about that. He was scaremongering and lying.
McCarthy ended his extended political ad by touting the great candidates they are running (they are not great) and the "divisiveness" of Joe Biden's speech condemning insurrectionist "MAGA Republicans," despite how Biden really gave Republicans a lot of unearned leeway in that one.
It was a Kevin McCarthy interview. It was 18 full minutes of garbage. The end.
Have a week.
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OMG, is that fucking loser wearing a MAGA hat?!
You mean the social center that wasn't actually a mosque?