Last night, I made a mistake and I took an action that I can’t take back, and I’m not proud of what happened. I should not have responded the way that I did and for that I’m sorry.
That’s from the election night speech delivered by Republican Greg Gianforte, who prevailed in a special election last night over Rob Quist, a folk singer.
As you’re undoubtedly aware, Gianforte’s apology excerpted above is a reference to a rather unfortunate incident in which he apparently “body-slammed” a reporter from The Guardian earlier this week.
Greg Gianforte just body slammed me and broke my glasses
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 24, 2017
He’s been charged with misdemeanor assault and will make a court appearance sometime before June 7 to find out whether he’ll be convicted.
So that’s fun.
Trump called Gianforte’s victory a “great win in Montana.” Here’s Politico with some context:
In a state that Trump won handily during last year’s presidential election, Gianforte was the beneficiary of significant assistance from high-profile Republicans, including the president and Vice President Mike Pence, both of whom recorded robocalls on behalf of the GOP candidate. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) all sent fundraising emails for Gianforte, who was also boosted by phone-banking efforts from the National Rifle Association.
Both Pence and Donald Trump Jr. also made in person appearances in support of Gianforte.
Gianforte’s apology came after Paul Ryan suggested it might be a good idea to express some semblance of remorse.
“I do not think this is acceptable behavior, but the choice will be made by the people of Montana,” Ryan said during a press conference on Thursday. “I think he should apologize.”
Well he did and as CNN notes, “Republicans couldn’t refuse to seat him even if they wanted to [as] this was litigated in the late 1960s in a case involving Rep. Adam Clayton Powell.”
And really, I’m not sure why they (Republicans) would “want to.” I mean look, you shouldn’t be out there body-slamming reporters and to be sure, “assault” isn’t something you want to put on your resume as a politician. But politicians do worse things every single day than body-slamming reporters and ultimately, I’m not sure “misdemeanor assault” is a charge serious enough to warrant essentially stripping Montana voters of their right to choose their representative.
But, do you know what should be cause to keep Gianforte out of any roll in which he is trusted to make decisions that impact all Americans? This (ca. 2014 from Salon):
A major funder of “creation museums” has been selected – strange as it may seem – to be the commencement speaker at Montana’s leading institution of science, Montana Tech, the mining and engineering school in Butte that has produced some of the world’s top geologists.
The speaker is Greg Gianforte, a conservative billionaire whose philanthropic endeavors include funding museums whose purpose is to discredit Darwinism and persuade visitors that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that North America’s geology was carved by Noah’s flood, and that dinosaurs coexisted with early humans.
To say the least, Gianforte is an odd choice to address an audience of young men and women who are embarking on careers in the earth sciences, many as mining and petroleum engineers. On the day Gianforte speaks, these graduates will be ending four years of studying how the Earth, and everything in it, formed over billions of years out of stardust.
They will now be sermonized by a man who bankrolled the 20,000-square-foot Dinosaur and Fossil Museum in Glendive, Mont. This museum’s website warns that “when you visit a major natural history museum, you will see wide-eyed children being funneled into an abyss of deception.” The curator of the museum told the Billings Gazette that “there’s no scientific proof whatsoever that evolution ever took place.” Visitors are shown displays and dioramas that explain how the dinosaurs likely died out 4,300 years ago, during the great flood.
Here’s renowned paleontologist Jack Horner (who consulted with Steven Spielberg on the “Jurassic Park” movies) to explain why Greg is a fucking idiot:
Right.
So no, misdemeanor assault is not a good reason to strip Montana voters of their right to choose who represents them.
But do you know what is? Believing that evolution isn’t real and claiming that the earth is only 6,000 years old. That’s what.
You absolutely cannot have people like that involved in making public policy decisions.
Because I couldn’t possibly think of a funnier way to drive this point home, I’ll leave it to Molly, who notes that “body slam guy believes that dinosaurs were heterosexually married in Noah’s ark.”
https://twitter.com/mollycrabapple/status/867582922265681921
Fortunately, in the bigger scheme of things, Montana does not count for much (number of members of Congress, popular vote). Knowing as I do some people living there I suspect the body slam was met with some amount of approval.
yeah, definitely not applauding the body slam. just think the bigger issue is a guy pushing lies about the planet Earth on school children
Pushing lies does seem to be fashion lately.
I mean BIG lies.
My Gosh. The total ignorance of these people is umfathomable. How can you become a multi-millionaire and be an idiot at the same time. He and humans like him(aka Trump) are proof how primitive humans truly are. This is more proof how are societies need sane people to run for office (not these backwoods sociopaths). The question is are there enough sane people to vote for them?
Unfortunately, he joins a congressional caucus, of many, like-minded individuals.
Sad, bigly sad. Facts don’t matter, only guns, the hated “others,” aborted fetuses, and the bedrock of Republican theology, tax cuts for the wealthy Fuck them all to hell!
Yes, Ger, I concur — when I read comments posted on almost any article, political or not, I am truly shocked at the ignorance on full display. Of course I realize some of the most shocking ones are really just some bored troll. Our society is becoming more of a disgrace each year and when we have a president like this one, omg, we will take years to overcome what is lost. And if you read enough yesterday about this MT. assault, you also read how much trump loved it — and I fully believe we can lay blame for the open aggressiveness and racist behavior on the example set forth during the campaign. It seemed to have freed the evil to show itself.
– Murphy
Indeed!
More amazing than the exceptional ignorance of Gianforte’s Dark Ages belief system – is that the critically thinking people of this country (unfortunately less than 20% of the population – and probably under 5% if you want consistency of unbiased thought) are just now beginning to wake up to threat of the stupidity of the under educated masses. Forget concepts of evil and good – the intellectual advancement of humans has always been between antiquated faith based ignorance and critically derived reproducible knowledge. Surely you do understand that with Trump’s recent EO allows that our churches will now become the political tools of far right extremist that elected Trump – joining the neo-nazis and other uneducated social conservative alliance that elected this privileged from birth ass hat. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-signs-order-aimed-at-allowing-churches-to-engage-in-more-political-activity/2017/05/04/024ed7c2-30d3-11e7-9534-00e4656c22aa_story.html?utm_term=.393fc9d018c2)
The New Dark Ages has arrived in the US with Trump and his acolytes dragging the country further into the darkness of deceit and ignorance daily and it has now become obvious that some of the unfortunate co-characteristics of US critical thinkers – include apathy, laziness, the general lack of a “spine” and or an effective sense of self-preservation. If you can’t turn loose of your supernatural/paranormal religious addictions – then consider paraphrasing Edmund Burke’s quote: “”The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil (ignorance) is for good (critical thinking) men (people) to do nothing.” If you don’t want this self-serving fool to drag the US nation, democracy and way of life into extinction – you better get off your asses and force the Congress, the JOD and or the Military to do their Constitutionally assigned jobs and stop him while you can. The more Gianforte Brown Shirts Trump gets behind him, the further into the darkness we are.
D Dugger — precisely why I spend extraordinary amount of posting time asking everyone to please vote to remove any/all current repubs who will not step forward and lead an impeachment charge to remove the head of the snake! Democrats and realistic sane repubs can overthrow the EVIL that is lurking and working to shut down our democratic beliefs. With faith I believe the next president can undo some of the bullshit EO’s that assface has signed! (And how ridiculous was it that this guy signed an EO to make April sexual assault awareness month and it went almost without notice??!) PEOPLE, PLEASE PAY ATTENTION to what this cretin is doing!
– Murphy