GOP Rep. Lisa McClain claims Trump "caught Osama bin Laden” in 2011, even though he didn’t take office until 2017

Thanks, OBAMA!

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I still think FDR should have done more to prevent 9/11.

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Maybe it was meant like catching a communicable disease. And that’s how Trump decided to destroy the country. Surprisingly, he has never been recorded (that I know of) saying, “Death to America.”

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eer… receptacales

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This whole thing seems eerily reminiscent of certain Korean politicos who scored 18 holes in one their first time playing golf, and hunted unicorns or whatever (I can’t even be bothered to look up the ridiculous fake claims…)

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Fuckers indeed. They are not the only ones trying to implement that fascist mind trick.

“Putin knows that controlling history is the key to total power”…

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/04/opinions/putin-destroying-ukraine-history-archives-florea/index.html

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What is that cursed filter? I can’t wait to give people the uneasy feeling that came over me when I saw it.

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I think they see things like how Bush was (correctly) blamed for the high unemployment during Obama’s first years and think it’s just dems dunking on the republican. Actual cause and effect isn’t something they process very well, and who gets blamed has little to so with who might have actually caused things.

Of course, it’s not always just a GOP thing. But they certainly seem to be trying for world champion status.

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Ah, Boing Boing showed the truth years ago…

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I’m so, so sick of these lies that are so obviously false that just to hear one is to have one’s intelligence insulted. The North Korea-level bullshit that absolutely nobody believes (wishful thinking, there are, unbelievably, a few who really buy it), but that fascists, bigots and religious zealots pretend to believe, as though that gives them some kind of plausible deniability, willingly throwing aside all dignity and proving there’s no level they won’t stoop to. The entire exercise is just gaslighting- we know they’re lying, they know they’re lying, and we each know that the other knows. Yet society as a whole is playing along, and it’s infuriating.

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I think at this point it’s time to stop assuming that nobody believes it.

They clearly believe it. Fully. It’s not society playing along or pretending or whatever. These people really do legitimately believe it and will tell you stories about how their version is the truth. They don’t know they’re lying, they think they’re on the side of honesty and the angels and the US Government. We need to stop acting like they’re somehow just being contrarian and start acting like what is really happening: They’re intentionally redefining history in a way that justifies eliminating us, and they fully believe the lies they’re saying because they’ve cognitively connected the dots in their head and are likely remembering false memories.

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Oh, it’s so much more disconnected from reality than any kind of semi-reasonable debate about whether a previous president’s policy decisions had consequences still being felt - it’s as simple as “if something good happened, Trump’s responsible, if something bad happened, it was one of the people we don’t like.” So Trump himself claimed responsibility for a number of things that happened before he took office, and when decisions he made turned out badly, people who were in no position to have ever had an impact (like Biden and Hillary Clinton) got blamed, even though it made no sense whatsoever. Not only does the reality simply not matter, the lies are actually desirable, because they’re trying to destroy the notion of truth itself and use lies to create a political identity.

McClain made a whole series of completely false claims at this event beyond this little bundle of falsehoods: e.g. that the record-low unemployment is at a record high (and also, contradictorily, complained that there’s a labor shortage - fully well knowing both her assertions couldn’t be true), and then denied that Biden got elected at all. As reality-based folks call her an idiot in response, she’s using that to claim she “triggered the libs,” because - and I don’t think I’m overstating things - the party has now premised its entire existence on living in a fantasy land.

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I’m fully keeping under consideration that some of the people elected to office as GQP candidates are exactly as reality-challenged as the word noises emanating from their mouth holes imply. :woman_shrugging:

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High unemployment & a labor shortage?
That’s easy to explain.
It’s because of those far-too-generous unemployment benefits those slackers get, & they spend their days smoking dope, watching cartoons, & eating bon-bons, instead of putting in an Honest Day’s Work [they forget the part about an Honest Day’s Pay] like all other True Americans…

TL, DR: Socialism!

Only some? Optomist.
I think they are all Grifters, as well.
Beats working for a living…

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Sorry, but I don’t believe it. A few, sure, but I think it’s a mistake to assume these people are merely stupid rather than shamelessly manipulative. There’s vaccine conspiracies or Jewish space lasers and then there’s a whole other level of “Donald Trump is a chiseled Adonis” or “the capitol insurrection was just a tour group”, stuff that people can directly, repeatedly see with their own eyes is not true. I don’t disagree that they’re trying to justify eliminating us, but they KNOW what they’re doing. I’ve seen too many Republicans to believe that they all think they’re on the right side. Many of them are fully aware they’re villains and are embracing it.

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They get halfway there whenever they try to equate Lincoln’s party with the current Republiqan party.

As for McCalin: she’s obviously confusing the leader of ISIS (Abu Omar al-Baghdadi) being killed under Trump’s watch with Bin Laden. Stupid, but not as stupid as others.

Psychology experiment:
She wants to give Trump all this credit, right? So, you confront her with historical fact that it was Obama who “killed” Bin Laden. Then, see her affect and brain wobble, but quickly readjust: and she goes into the GQP unimpressed-mode of “Well he killed him but so what” that all Republicans assumed after the raid in Abbottabad.

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Methinks you give her too much credit.

Time and time again whenever we have been presented with the question “are Republicans really that stupid?” the answer has almost invariably turned out to be “yes.”

ETA: Now confirmed by her own follow-up statement calling it an “honest mistake.” She really is that stupid.

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She may have been referring to his son that was killed under the last guy and had the same last name but you would think once everyone started fact checking her she could have easily said that’s who she meant.

So she probably was confused on who she was talking about or she knew and was intentionally confusing the crowd.

She also said Biden didn’t win, she bases that on how many people were at her rally.

Oh wait, she really had no idea what she was talking about.

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Some definitely are. She apparently has a background in finance, however. So yeah, she knows better - she’s just pretending to be this dumb.

Yeah, I’ve certainly seen plenty of Republicans make some variant of that claim (or at least imply it) - and like her, I’m pretty sure most of them know damn well that people not looking for work don’t count as unemployed… it’s just disingenuousness all the way down.

Yeah, and to be fair, some of these people are both stupid and shamelessly manipulative. The GOP has plenty of idiots right now, but they’re in office because it hasn’t taken much brainpower for them to figure out that lying (particularly dumb lies) advances their political careers in the GOP. (Also: something something Baudrillard, sufficiently simulating a stupid person is indistinguishable from actually being stupid.)

I feel like there’s no single explanation that isn’t giving her too much credit. I.e. “it was an honest mistake,” “she’s just dumb”… It’s worse than all those, because it’s a combination of them (and a cynical political strategy*), but also a display of the Republicans’ complete disdain for - and attack on - the whole idea of the truth. (And like Trump, they’ve lost track of the line between lie and truth because of their hostility to reality. They just say shit that will benefit them and don’t really worry about the veracity.) It’s so much more dangerous than just being liars or being dumb.

*Both for gaining the support of Republican voters by saying the lies they want to hear, and because she gets to claim both mantle of victim and victor in the culture war when people “attack” her over the “mistake(s),” as she’s “triggered the libs.”

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Probably thinks those bare-chested RamboTrump posters are photos.

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