Nothing drives conservatives around the bend like a speech by Barack Obama. So, thanks to the president’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, there’s no shortage of wingnuttery this week.
A Grimm Encounter
The most unhinged moment on the right this week was when Rep. Michael Grimm (R, NY) physically threatened a New York television reporter. Grimm walked away from an interview about the State of the Union address, when the reporter started to question him about campaign finance violations related to his campaign.
It’s hard to hear, but Grimm threatened to throw NY1 reporter Michael Sotto off the Capital rotunda balcony. “You're not man enough. I'll break you in half. Like a boy,” Rep. Grimm added before walking away from the interview a second time.
In a press statement following the incident, Grimm made it clear that he was not sorry for his behavior. That’s not surprising. Grimm has done this sort of thing before. In fact, Grimm has a long history of being a violent hot-head, going all the way back to his days as an undercover FBI agent. (That last link is to a long article from The New Yorker about some highlights of Grimm’s FBI career, and well worth a read.)
Realizing that threatening a reporter with violence — on camera, no less — Grimm apologized. By then, an interview that would have been forgotten after the local 11 o’clock news, had gone viral.
The Craziest Things Conservatives Said This Week
- Sen. Ted Cruz (R, TX) told Roll Call that Iran might nuke New York or Los Angeles, thanks to President Obama’s threat to veto sanctions.
- Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R, SC) told Roll Call that, “The world is literally about to blow up.”
- After the State of the Union, Glenn Beck warned, “this was the State of the Union where our president declared he would become America’s first dictator."
- Rick Santorum called into Steve Malzberg’s radio program to discuss President Obama’s State of the Union address, and said that Obama has the makings of a tyrannical dictator.
- Rep. Michele Bachmann (R, MN) is threatening to sue President Obama, if he goes through with his plan to work around Congress by issuing executive orders.
- Sen. Rand Paul (R, KY) time-warped back to Bill Clinton’s sex scandal, and tried to pin the whole “war on women” on Democrats.
- Joe Scarborough said the Lewinsky scandal means that Hillary Clinton can’t attack the GOP on women’s issues, if she runs for president.
- Newt Gingrich said Hillary Clinton is unqualified to be president because she doesn’t drive.
- Former Rep. Allen West defended Mike Huckabee, saying that Democrats should apologize for trying “to win the women’s vote by talking from the waist down.”
- Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R, WA) told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that she supports equal pay for women. The problem is, Rodgers actually voted against the Lilly Lebetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act.
- Fox News host Martha MacCallum characterized equal pay as a ‘handout,” and denied the existence of a gender pay gap. MacCallum insisted that “Many women make exactly what they’re worth. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, if MacCallum means what she says, women are worth about 77 cents for every dollar a man is worth.
- Fox News contributor and radio host Laura Ingraham seemed to suggest that Mexican immigrants want to reconquer the southwestern U.S. Maybe that’s why she suggested that, “We can then wall off Detroit,” if immigrants move there — to keep them from moving to other parts of the country.
- Riled up by a Girl Scouts tweet suggesting Texas Democrat Wendy Davis could be "Woman of the Year," conservative activists have launched "CookieCott 2014.