It’s one day until Election Day and the Republican Party is getting desperate. The polling is looking very bad for Republicans, reports are showing that over 300,0000 Latinos who did not vote in the 2024 election have already voted in Texas, and that since the Supreme Court kneecapped the Voting Rights Act and Republicans went bananas trying to gerrymander the Black vote out of existence, Black voters are pushing back in huge numbers at the ballot box.
Everything is unaffordable, no one wants to be invading Iran, people are tired of giving Israel money to keep bombing Palestinians, none of that money — or any other money! — is going to help us afford healthcare or childcare or groceries or gas or life in general.
So what is the Republican party to do? It’s not quite as easy to get people het up about immigrants after they demonstrated what “cracking down on immigration” really looks like, given that “what it looks like” is killing American citizens and sending people who did nothing wrong to random countries they’ve never been to. All they have now is Islamophobia and transphobia, and neither of those seems to be working as well as they’d like.
Last week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went off the rails with a disturbing rant about how you don’t see Arabs winning science and literature prizes given out by western nations, and how this somehow has something to do with the Muslim Brotherhood.
“There’s 500 million Arabs in the world, and yet they don’t produce science, they don’t win the Nobel prize, they don’t win the Fields prize, they don’t win the Wolf rize, they don’t produce literature,” Kennedy said at a rally for Mike Rogers in Grand Rapids, Michigan, last Monday.
In the week since, thousands have refuted his arguments with examples of Arab writers and scientists, while others have helpfully explained that while there are issues with support for scientific inquiry in the Middle East, they have nothing to do with the freaking “Muslim Brotherhood.” Rather, it’s a combination of factors, along with the fact that we’ve been bombing them for the past 40 years.
Either way, why would that be a reason to vote against Abdul El-Sayed is certainly a mystery to those of us who are not grotesque racists. The man is a doctor, so one would imagine he’s probably in favor of people doing science.
Rather than backtracking, like a sane person might do, Kennedy has doubled down. First, he explained that he was not Islamophobic, and that he didn’t have a problem with Arabs and Muslims but with “Islamism.” It’s not bigoted if it’s a made-up word!
“Leftist mainstream media outlets piled on this week to express outrage at my observation, during a speech in Grand Rapids for Mike Rogers, about the troubling dearth of scientific output from the world’s 22 Arab nations over the past five decades. These reporters,” he wrote on X the Everything App, “omitted critical context, presumably to bestow plausibility on their accusations that my statements were racist and Islamophobic.”
What was that critical context that made his blatantly Islamophobic comments not Islamophobic?
“My speech was not a critique of Arabs or Islam, but of Islamism (also known as ‘Islamofascism’ or ‘Political Islam’), a toxic ideology conceived and promoted by the terrorist group, the Muslim Brotherhood.” He smugly added, "Let’s see which reporters take the time to read this post and then correct their stories.”
Literally no one will do that, because “Islamism,” “Islamofacism” and “Political Islam” are terms made up by people who are Islamophobic. It’s like saying “It’s not that I support bigotry, it’s that I oppose wokism,” when wokism is not a term anyone normal uses. Or crying about how everyone is trying to “trans the kids” or do “transgender for everybody.” Generally speaking, the more ridiculous, babyish and made-up the language Republicans use, the less they know what they’re talking about and the more bigoted they’re being.
Kennedy then explained that the problem with “Islamism” is that … it wants to do the very same things the Republican Party also wants to do.
”Islamism is intensely anti-American, anti-Western, and hostile to modernity. It is explicitly contemptuous of democracy, constitutional government, capitalism, minority rights, gay rights, women’s rights, free speech, and virtually all personal freedoms. Its central aspiration is for a global caliphate ruled by a single theocratic despot with absolute power to impose sharia law that dictates every aspect of human conduct.”
Wait until he finds out about all the Theobros who want to repeal the 19th Amendment and ban gay marriage again. One survey found that 14 percent of Republicans are in favor of this (and only 71 percent fully oppose it), which is actually a pretty huge percentage for something so obscene. One of the main people promoting this terrible, anti-democratic and frankly ridiculous plan is Secretary of WAR Pete Hegseth’s pastor, Doug Wilson. He also wants to impose his religion on everyone, and is not shy about saying so.
You know who has literally no interest in pushing his religion on anyone? Abdul El-Sayed, which is what makes this Islamophobic ad so absurd:
El-Sayed has been clear, he’s not for Sharia Law, but is for Shawarma Law, and that means delicious shawarma and not shawarma sandwiches with lettuce in them. That seems correct to me! I am also viciously opposed to lettuce in caprese sandwiches.
The fact is, the only people in the US trying to take rights away from women are in the Republican party. The only people out here trying to make it harder for women to get a divorce are Republican leaders who have made eliminating no-fault divorce a part of their platform.
Surely, if El-Sayed wanted to do all of the things Republicans say he secretly wants to do, he’d have a much better time running as one of them.
This is all, of course, ridiculous. If he were to run as a Democrat and then suddenly turn around and oppose women’s rights and gay rights, we’d run him out of town just like we did to Kyrsten Sinema and will soon be doing to John Fetterman. All Republicans have, really, besides the bigotry, is the insistence that Democrats secretly want to implement horrible laws that no one wants, including those who vote for them. It would also be real hard for El-Sayed to convince anyone in the Senate — given that he would be the first Muslim Senator in American history and therefore the only one at this time — to convince enough people to go along with forcing women to wear hijabs. We can’t even pass universal healthcare, something that 66 percent of Americans want, but Sharia Law is going to sail right through? Really?
Kennedy’s nonsense continued and continued for ages, as he falsely claimed that gay people in Israel have full rights, which they do not (same sex marriage is illegal there); noted that Jewish people don’t put babies in ovens (neither do Muslims, that was a hoax) or blow up buses and; he ultimately whined that El-Sayed has not sufficiently condemned the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization he has nothing at all to do with.
Republicans have gone completely over the top when it comes to the threat El-Sayed supposedly poses as a Muslim, including the president of the United States straight up calling him a jihadist and saying that the Capitol building will need to implement metal detectors — something that might upset gun-toting Republicans a lot more than it would bother El-Sayed, who is notably in favor of gun control.
As Tim Murphy of Mother Jones documented back in September, they haven’t been shy at all about saying that they just straight up hate Muslims.
“Muslims don’t belong in American society,” says Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee.
“No more Muslims immigrating to America,” says Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas.
“We need more Islamophobia, not less,” says Rep. Randy Fine of Florida.
“Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic,” says Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina.
“No more Muslims,” says Rep. Chip Roy of Texas.
“No more Islamic immigration,” says Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia. “Denaturalize, deport, repeat.”
“I hate Islam; it’s a demonic death cult,” says Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith of Indiana.
“It is time to let your elected officials know exactly how you feel about the infiltration of Islam into our communities,” says Rep. Keith Self of Texas.
“We must IMMEDIATELY BAN all ISLAM immigrants and DEPORT every single Islamist who is living among us just waiting to attack,” says Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.
“Muslims need to be treated like enemy combatants,” says Laura Loomer, of Mar-a-Lago.
Imagine talking like that and not realizing you’re a bad person!
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Historically, going this over the top has not worked out well for Republicans in the long run, because eventually they sound like a bunch of weird Chicken Littles freaking out over insane things that are never going to happen. This is likely why the anti-trans hysteria hasn’t been nearly as effective this go-round as they’d hoped. National surveys have repeatedly shown that voters are just not actually that concerned that their kid is going to get a sex change at school one day for no reason, or even that worried about trans kids playing sports. Surveys have also shown that people are just not that het up about “Sharia Law” anymore, probably after noticing that Barack Obama never implemented it the way Republicans insisted he would.
Perhaps they should have combined their fears. Claim that Democrats don’t just want your daughter to wear a hijab, they also want your son to have a sex change and wear one as well, while also being a furry and insisting upon using a litter box at school and deciding to never speak to you again.
I’d say they should have stuck with kitchen table issues, but they’re not good at kitchen table issues, so perhaps they should have picked on a minority that people weren’t so burnt out on hating. Perhaps next time they’ll go with the Belgians.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
This Jew responded to backstabber Stevens by sending Dr. Abdul $50 yesterday.
As for Killer Kennedy and his fellow Klanbots they can go to hell.
This is what makes Haley Stevens so absurd, and why it's been so easy to dismiss her bullshit. Because you don't 'stand against hate' standing with the bigots who've spent the last couple of months calling El-Sayed a terrorist.