The Republican Party has long held a tenuous relationship with the truth and with empirical facts, with the vast majority of their political positions propped up by misleading assertions, twisted words and straight up fantastical lies.
Whether the issue is what really goes on behind the scenes at Planned Parenthood, or what’s really happening with climate change, or the basic biology of women’s reproductive systems, or whether the wealth actually trickles down, or whether wheels are older than walls, the conservative segment of this country is almost guaranteed to be on the wrong side of it.
Not only do they openly flaunt their disrespect for the truth and for established facts, but they also react with violent hostility towards anything that might challenge their previously held convictions, no matter how divorced from reality they might be.
That much was perfectly illustrated by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), who had a spectacular meltdown on CNN this morning when faced with facts and statistics that didn’t support his racist agenda.
Joining John Berman to discuss the shutdown and whether or not the President should invoke a national emergency and force the military to build his wall, Mo Brooks dutifully parroted the same arguments that White House surrogates and ethnonationalist propagandists have been pushing for weeks.
His tired and extraordinarily racist spiel asserts that there’s a humanitarian crisis at the border from fentanyl smuggling and sex trafficking, “criminals” are pouring over the border in order to commit crime, and so on and so forth.
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John Berman countered that those accusations are false and explained to him that building a wall wouldn’t solve anything since fentanyl is almost entirely smuggled through ports of entry and not through “flying bags of drugs” as the President seems to think they are.
Turning to the disgusting accusation that immigrants commit unusually high amounts of crimes — the implication being that they enjoy it and come here specifically for the purpose of “doing crimes” — Berman pulled up a chart and patiently explained to the Representative that in reality, immigrants commit substantially less crime than native-born Americans do, though he really should have just dismissed it out of hand since the notion that one group of people is more inclined to commit “crimes” than others is as ridiculous as it is offensive.
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Brooks did not take kindly to having his talking points debunked on live television, and proceeded to have an embarrassing meltdown where he furiously rejected the statistics from the right-wing CATO Institute as nothing but “political propaganda” and refused to listen when told otherwise.
Rep. Mo Brooks, screaming at @JohnBerman, flatly denies statistics showing that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at rates lower than native-born Americans, dismissing a Cato Institute study as "political propaganda." pic.twitter.com/J5AT6bo39b
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 11, 2019
Later on, when Berman explained to him that the “immigration crisis” that Trump is pushing so hard is actually entirely imaginary, Brooks again refuses to accept the truth:
CNN: Congressman, here's government data showing that there are actually far less people crossing the southern border now than there were 10 years ago.
BROOKS: "I'm sorry, but I disagree with that data that you've thrown out there." pic.twitter.com/2IxvHuiG2C
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 11, 2019
His disgraceful display of whiny petulance shows just how much of an impact that President Donald Trump has had on this party. He’s made it party policy to simply throw tantrums whenever something challenges his bigoted and narrow-minded worldview — and the stubborn white nationalist adult toddlers of the GOP are all too happy to follow suit.
