Vice President Mike Pence is undeniably a self-evident, far-right, theocratic bigot with 19th century ideas about social values, but I think it’s very important to remember something else about him.
He’s also a giant moron.
Now, I happen to be of the political bent that would put me in a frame of mind to call most of Pence’s political career and policies evidence enough of his being a moron. However, I realize that my politics might not be yours, and so I can’t just hang my rhetorical hat on that. So instead, let me offer up to you what I believe to be solid, unbiased, irrefutable evidence that Mike Pence is a completely loony idiot.
Pence actually had the ability to say, with a straight face, on national TV, that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Donald Trump have things in common other than being carbon based lifeforms. In an interview on CBS ‘s long-running talk show Face the Nation, Pence tried to make a hamfisted allusion to MLK, since today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I’m presuming, and tie it into Trump’s border wall.
…the hearts and minds of the American people today are thinking a lot about it being the weekend where we remember the life and work of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But one of my favorite quotes from Dr. King was, “Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”
Okay, that’s not so bad so far…
You think of how he changed America. He inspired us to change through the legislative process to become a more perfect union. That’s exactly what President Trump is calling on the Congress to do. Come to the table in a spirit of good faith. We’ll secure our border, we’ll reopen the government and we’ll move our nation forward as the president said yesterday to even a broader discussion about immigration reform in the months ahead.
Oh dear sweet Baby Jebus. He really did directly compare the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the ineptitude of Trump’s freewheeling kakistocracy. Mike Pence really did try to convince the American people that the “good people on both sides” of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville has some tangential connection to one of the greatest champions of racial equality to ever live and breathe.
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We’re entering the fifth week of the longest shutdown in history, and Pence is out there trading on King’s name to push for a monument to American xenophobia and white supremacy without even a soupcon of irony in his voice. I have to admit, that’s pretty impressive. His sociopathy and apathy toward his fellow humans
Sane, rational people can debate the merits of a southern border wall; that’s not the issue here. The issue is that Pence is taking what King did for the country and comparing it to what Trump does. Dr,. King was a brave man who put himself in danger for the better of others; allowing himself to be arrested and have his constitutional rights trampled on. Donny Trump said his heels hurt too much to go to Vietnam and it took him almost two years in office to visit the troops overseas with all the protection the most powerful man in the world is afforded.
The fact that Pence would compare Trump and Dr. King speaks volumes about his intellectual prowess, if not his total intellectual bankruptcy. I would entertain notions of Trump’s bigly hands and business acumen as serious and having merit before I’d hear a syllable of “Donald Trump is like Martin Luther King” without dying of laughter.
Of course, given that Pence was dumb enough to let his ideological views on drugs unleash an AIDS epidemic in his state, perhaps no one should be all that surprised that he’d say something so categorically stupid. These are the kinds of stories that make me laugh the hardest when someone calls Pence the smart one in the bunch.
Writer/comedian James Schlarmann is the founder of The Political Garbage Chute and his work has been featured on The Huffington Post. You can follow James on Facebook and Instagram, but not Twitter because he has a potty mouth.