Herschel Walker Will Stop Mass Shootings With Department Of Looking At Young Men Who Are Looking At Young Women Who Are Looking At Social Media
Finally, a fresh new idea for stopping mass shootings!
When we last checked in with OFFICIAL REPUBLICAN GEORGIA SENATE NOMINEE Herschel Walker, he was expressing shock and surprise to learn that Donald Trump thinks the 2020 election was stolen. What? Donald Trump? Thinks the election was stolen? Herschel Walker had never heard him say that! Reporters say that! Not Donald Trump. Pshaw and hooey and poppycock!
Of course, that was earlier in the week. Now Republicans have shifted into Blame New Mass Shooting On Stuff That Isn't Guns mode. And never let it be said that Herschel Walker does not have new ideas. Try this one on for size:
\u201cHerschel Walker's solution to school shootings involves "a department that can look at young men that's looking at women that's looking at social media."\u201d— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1653571799
WALKER: There is a person wielding that weapon. You know, Cain killed Abel. You know, and that's a problem that we have. And I said what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things, you know they talked about doing a disinformation, what about getting a department that can look at young men that's looking at women that's looking at social media? What about doing that? Looking into things like that, and we can stop that that way? But they wanna just continue to talk about taking away your constitutional rights, and I think there's more things we need to look into. This has been happening for years, and the way we stop it is by putting money into the mental health field, by putting money into the other departments rather than departments that want to take away your rights.
Indeed, Cain killing Abel is a problem that we have, nobody can deny it. And verily WHAT ABOUT having a Department of Young Men That's Looking At Women That's Looking At Social Media? No one even suggested that before. Why put money into the Department Of Take Away Your Rights when you can just put it in other better departments?
We dare anyone to argue with this.
Also, you thought our headline was a joke. You silly.
Someone on the internet said Tommy Tuberville derped so Herschel Walker could fly. It's truly disturbing that it's entirely unclear Walker would enter the Senate as the absolute dumbest Republican in there. Top 10, for sure. But in a world of Tubervilles and Marsha Blackburns and Ron Johnsons and Rand Pauls? Sheesh.
We'd also add that this should be the last time anyone ever doubts that Donald Trump's best brain is capable of identifying fellow best brains to shove into Georgia Senate races. He found Herschel Walker!
This is almost as good as the time Herschel Walker explained evolution (not real because there are still apes) and how science can't make babies because only God can make babies (duh).
And those are just the idiot words. There are also the lies about his chicken business and the lies about his education and the domestic violence allegations and all the rest of it.
Senator Raphael Warnock, the next few months of your life are going to be fun.
Please win so we can all look back on this and giggle at the hilarity of it all.
Please.
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David Duke Thanks Tucker Carlson For Spreading 'Great Replacement' Lie, Asks For More Antisemitism
Just some helpful tips for America's top white nationalist.
Following the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke had a message for Tucker Carlson: Thanks for the great job making white supremacist rhetoric the common language of the GOP. On his podcast — of course he has a podcast! — Duke expressed his gratitude for all Carlson does, and hoped that maybe Carlson's success so far would lead him to start introducing more overt antisemitism into his Fox News show, to better advance the white nationalist agenda.
Media Matters has an audio snippet from the podcast; we'll embed it but you needn't feel obliged to listen.
Duke said that he likes Carlson, and is "thankful for many of the things that he says. I also disagree with him on a number of points, but I think overall, he's the only voice that gets out some of the information at all."
Mr. Duke is an optimist, you see, and he's grateful to see Tucker Carlson burning a cross in the darkness.
Duke, who ran successfully for a seat in the Louisiana state House in 1989 and then came disturbingly close to winning a race for governor in 1991, is an old hand at converting full-on KKK ideology into a somewhat more sanitized version and selling it in the Republican Party. And of course he's a shameless self-promoter, but even so, when he says Carlson is presenting the same message as white supremacists, he's not wrong.
Duke explained that because Carlson's on national TV, he can push white supremacist ideology, but "can't really say it" openly:
“He himself is reluctant to use the word ‘white’ unless he quotes other people saying ‘white.’ You can talk about – we can talk about a ‘demographic war.’ But he can't really say it like we can,” Duke said of Carlson. “He can't say there is a war on white people, and there is – there is a war against the white race.”
So instead, American racists have to settle for Carlson and most of the GOP talking about immigration as a literal "invasion," which would justify all sorts of action, possibly including sending troops to the border to shoot undocumented migrants, although there again, few say it publicly unless they're Donald Trump.
Duke was a little disappointed, however, that Tucker has so far held back from a central tenet of "great replacement" rhetoric, which blames demographic change on a shadowy conspiracy by international Jewry. Apparently Republicans' occasional invocations of George Soros as the puppetmaster behind all Democratic policy don't do it for Duke. As Media Matters 'splains, Duke himself carefully hedged his antisemitism, not saying "Jews" but instead just jabbing an elbow into his listeners' ribs. We bet they got his meaning!
Duke also bemoaned that Carlson never spells out what Duke claimed is the common thread between “people he mentions like” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the heads of social media giants, and the “neocons that bring us into these terrible wars” (for Duke, a virulent antisemite who was in the middle of an anti-Jewish rant, the key commonality is obviously that they are all Jews).
Considering that the Minnesota Republican Party had to be pressured to apologize for screening a video depicting George Soros as an evil puppetmaster (hurr hurr, he was pulling the strings of two Jewish Democrats, GET IT?), we don't think Duke needs to worry too much about the message getting across. The video was part of a campaign presentation for GOP secretary of state candidate Kim Crockett at the state convention earlier this month.
Video screenshot
Crockett, her team, and everyone involved with the state convention were simply astonished to learn that the imagery of Soros as a puppetmaster controlling Jewish politicians might be considered antisemitic, according to the apology:
“We understand that the use of imagery depicting Mr. Soros as a puppet-master at our state convention raised concerns that the imagery perpetuated an antisemitic trope,” state GOP chairman David Hann said Thursday in a statement, noting that the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas had contacted them after the video screened.
“We wish to assure the JCRC and our friends in the broader Jewish community that the image was not intended to invoke hostility toward the Jewish people,” Hann said. “It should not have happened, we apologize, and are committed to working with the JCRC to educate our staff and candidates on antisemitism.”
Hann said he'd talked to Crockett, and he'd concluded that the image wasn't intended to be antisemitic, and that "neither Ms. Crockett nor her creative team were aware that the depiction of a puppet-master invokes an old but persistent antisemitic trope."
The horrible thing, of course, is that the denials aren't entirely implausible, even if the imagery remains inexcusable. The far Right has so successfully integrated its messaging with the "mainstream" GOP that it's almost academic whether the makers of the video knew they were parroting antisemitic imagery. It's firmly embedded in how the GOP communicates now.
After all, great patriot Ben Garrison did it, and he got invited — then disinvited — to the Trump White House! Notice the very subtle "Rothschilds" hand controlling Soros in turn, which Garrison insisted was also not antisemitic, because "international banking" and 'Federal Reserve." He has Jewish friends, you know.
So golly, David Duke, it sure looks like your wish is coming true even if Tucker Carlson isn't yet reading passages verbatim from The Turner Diaries — or if he fails to cite the source when he inevitably starts.
[Media Matters / Forward / Times of Israel]
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Judge Boxwine Doesn't Know Why Y'all So 'Triggered' By Seeing One Little Gun
And some more Fox News hot takes from coverage of America's weekly high-casualty mass shooting!
The wingnut hot takes on the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting, where 19 beloved children and two of their favorite teachers were gunned down in cold blood, are coming hot and heavy. Why can't wingnuts just be emotionally gutted like the rest of us, and vow that these things shall never again happen in this country? Because that's not what they do.
Here's a new mini-batch, starting with Judge Boxwine AKA Jeanine Boxwine AKA Boxwine Pirro, who doesn't understand why all ye libs are so "triggered" just by seeing a little gun. No, don't worry! This isn't a slurring defense of the school shooters' bad guns! It's a defense of the security guards' good guns!
JESSE WATTERS: About what the FBI profiler said and what Greg mentioned about hardening these softer targets, where is the obstacle to having, politically, to having one single armed security guard in every single public school K-12, in the country? It doesn't seem like that is that huge of a deal. Where would be the pushback on that, judge?
JEANINE PIRRO: The pushback is that people today, many of them are intimidated, they are triggered if there is someone with a gun, they are frightened, that is this new narrative, when you see a gun you should be frightened as opposed to appreciating what they are doing for you.
Irrational libs, being frightened. After all, the good guy with the gun has never turned out to be the bad guy with the gun after all. And the good guys with guns definitely never wait around outside for 40 minutes while the bad guy with the gun is barricaded inside a classroom with his victims. (Look, we don't know exactly what happened there, and there's a lot of speculation. But it doesn't look great, is all we're saying.)
So that happened.
But it was actually one of the earlier reactions to our latest weekly massacre, so perhaps Boxwine can be forgiven for sloshing around like "why errrrrrbody so TRIGGERED," before the reality of the situation set in.
Media Matters watched Fox News all day yesterday, and collected some fresher takes.
For instance, Laura Ingraham says guns don't kill people, pressure cooker bombs kill people, except sure, this time it was a gun, but it could have been a pressure cooker bomb:
LAURA INGRAHAM: Now the Left is focusing on the fact that an 18-year-old with no clear source of income was able to buy expensive guns and 375 rounds of ammo. Of course, he could have just as easily, probably, built a pressure cooker bomb and killed just as many people. So focusing on his methods, it doesn't really end up solving very much.
"No way to prevent this," says only nation where this regularly happens.
STFU, stupid fucking clown person.
Lara Trump seems to think this is happening because there just aren't any Christian fathers anymore, not like her family has, plus also there is internet:
LARA TRUMP: And you look across the board at things like the fact that, you know, we have the dissolution of the family in so many respects. We have fatherless children on the rise in America. We have the loss of religion in so many aspects of our country, where it was a foundation of our country at one time. You can't discount the rise of social media and the role that that has played in things like this.
Just give 'em that old time religion like they do in the Trump family, won't have no guns. Besides, Christians are never terrorists, oh wait.
Meanwhile, Texas GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson — yeah that shitshow — shared that he believes this all happened because of all the rap-a-dee-do-dah and the shoot-em-up video games and yes also the internet.
JoeMyGod has the transcript on that one:
“There’s going to be all kinds of discussions coming up, unfortunately, you know, in the media regarding Second Amendment rights. But I think we really need to ask the question, how could something like this happen?
“When I grew up, things were different. And I just think that kids are exposed to all kinds of horrible stuff nowadays too.
“I look back and I think about the horrible stuff they hear when they listen to rap music, the video games that they watch from a really early age with all of this horrible violence and stuff.
“I just think that they have this access to the internet on a regular basis, which is just, you know, it’s not good for kids.”
The internet is bad for kids and the hippity-hoppity is bad for kids and the video games "that they watch" are bad for kids. Can you believe they let kids just get their hands on any rap musics and internets and video games they want? Why, they can just go down to the store and say, "Hello sir, I'd like some raps and some internets and some violent video games!" And in most states, they just say, "Sure, son!" and sell them the raps and the internets and the violent video games. Any old person can go and get raps and internets and video games. There should be a law!
On other Foxes, Tucker Carlson decided he wanted to talk about violent homeless people, because "this is bigger than a single mass shooting or even two of them in 10 days," and Tucker is just really concerned about the violent homeless people. And we could spend a lot of time talking about that, or smarmy filthy shit person Ted Cruz going on Fox last night and saying the real solution is "door control," and that the problem with schools is just that there are too many dang doors.
But we said this was going to be a "mini-batch" of hot takes, not a great big large huge batch. So this post is over now.
[Media Matters / same / JoeMyGod]
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So Beto's Pissed
As well he should be.
In 2019, during Beto O'Rourke's short-lived run in the Democratic presidential primary, a white male terrorist entered a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, Beto's home, and murdered 20 people. That was an explicitly racist mass killing event, and Beto was not shy about talking about who was inspiring that racism, and what mass shooters use to mass-shoot people. (It's guns.) He said out loud over and over again that "This is fucked up." And he ran on that, without shame. He didn't win, obviously, but it mattered.
Now Beto O'Rourke is running for governor, and another gunman has murdered 21 in Uvalde, Texas. And the guy he's running against, living breathing piece of shit Greg Abbott, had a press conference today. And Beto showed up. And you can say all you want about how Beto sure does know how to get the camera on him at times like these, and we'll gently explain you how that is called "politics."
Beto was there to say, "You're doing nothing. This is on you." In response, one of Abbott's loser white boy goons called Beto a "sick son of a bitch" and Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick took a break from spreading white nationalist great replacement conspiracy theories to say there'll be "plenty of time" later on to decide what needs to be done about mass shootings.
As we all know, the only response Republicans think is appropriate is to say lame "thoughts and prayers" to a God who clearly doesn't listen to them, and then go back to being fluffers for the NRA. So Dan Patrick is one of several people in this post who can go fuck himself.
\u201cBeto O'Rourke confronts Abbott and Texas Republicans during press conference after Texas tragedy. "You're a sick son of a bitch," a man yells at O'Rourke. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick later says there will be "plenty of time" to assess what needs to be done\u201d— Manu Raju (@Manu Raju) 1653501583
You can hear Ted Cruz's smarmy shit-voice in the clip telling Beto to "sit down!" Other white man losers whine that Beto is "out of line and this is an embarrassment!" Some super-pathetic guy whined his big ass off about "YEEEEEW NEED TO GIT HIS ASS OUTTA HURRRRR! THIS ISN'T THE PLACE TO TALK THIS OVER!" He just barked and barked with that specific kind of southern accent that sounds like it came from the cutting room floor of 12 Years A Slave, screaming "SIR! YOU'RE OUTTA LINE!"
We will attempt to transcribe the sentence uttered by the person who called Beto a "sick son of a bitch."
SOME GUY: I cain't believe you're a sick son of a bitch that would come to a deal like this to make a political issue!
Whatever, dude. (UPDATE: Turns out that was the mayor of Uvalde! But before you say, "Oh well if the mayor thinks Beto did bad," you should know the mayor, Don McLaughlin, is a Republican who has appeared on the Tucker show. So that's a fact about that guy.)
The New York Times has more on the parts that are hard to hear in the video:
“The time to stop this was after Santa Fe,” Mr. O’Rourke said at the civic center, referring to the Texas high school shooting near Houston in 2018. “The time to stop this was after El Paso,” he added, referring to the Texas mass shooting at a Walmart in 2019.
“The time to stop the next shooting is right now, and you are doing nothing. You are offering us nothing. You said this was not predictable — this is totally predictable when you choose not to do anything,” he said.
We can't hear this in the video either, but it happened as security was dragging Beto away:
On his way out, he could be heard telling the audience, some of whom were jeering him while others yelled to let him speak, “Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state, or they will continue to be killed.”
The Times reports that once mean Beto was gone, Greg Abbott, his hands covered in proverbial blood just like every other Texas Republican, just bitched and moaned like he actually cares about the kids who were murdered yesterday:
“There are family members who are crying as we speak,” he said. “Think about the people who are hurt and help those who are hurt.”
Mr. Patrick added: “This is not a partisan issue. This is not a political issue.”
Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick and everybody else on that stage, go fuck yourself.
These are not the only things Beto has said to Greg Abbott the past 24 hours. He's also been talking to him on Twitter.
\u201cGovernor Abbott, if you have any decency, you will immediately withdraw from this weekend\u2019s NRA convention and urge them to hold it anywhere but Texas.\u201d— Beto O'Rourke (@Beto O'Rourke) 1653451572
\u201cThe moment to stop Uvalde was right after Sandy Hook. After Santa Fe High. After El Paso. \n\nInstead, Abbott made it easier to carry guns in public. \n\nThe moment to stop the next slaughter is right now.\u201d— Beto O'Rourke (@Beto O'Rourke) 1653435030
\u201cAbbott chose to let it happen again. And again and again.\u201d— Beto O'Rourke (@Beto O'Rourke) 1653444635
Unfortunately, America's mass shooting victims are unable to tell us whether they agree with the filthy rednecks on that stage or whether they agree with Beto, because they're all dead because of mass murderers aided and abetted by Republican gun policies. But we have a feeling what they might say.
This is your open thread. Sorry we're not ending with something light and upbeat today.
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