Rep. Louis Gohmert melts down on Anderson Cooper over “terror babies”:
All I can think about is Jon Lovitz as Michael Dukakis on SNL- “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.”
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The Moar You Know
I was a terror baby. Ask my mom.
xochi
Terror babies sounds like the title to one of those low budget Cannon horror films from the 1980s.
Michael
I thought they took Hee Haw off the air years ago. This version is funnier, but a little more redneck-y.
Ross Hershberger
Oh noes! It’s teh Terror Babies!1! Crawl for yur lives!
Jason T.
If the law is on your side, argue the law. If the facts are on your side, argue the facts. If neither is on your side, pound the table.
These are bully tactics. Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, O’Reilly — they don’t actually have arguments, but they are very good at histrionics and out-shouting their opponents. Why should Louie Gohmert be different?
Sentient Puddle
It’s striking to me how he just completely flips out after the first question. Like Anderson said that the sky is orange, or something. How the hell?
You know those bogus emails your grandparents always forward on to you and everyone they know that spew right-wing bullshit and fail the Snopes test? I’m thinking about trying to start one of those, only including clips like this and saying “This is what you’re getting if you vote for Republicans.”
Michael
Were I Cooper, I’d have just said “you’re an asshole”, and then cut his microphone before apologizing to the audience about the stupidity of the guest.
ETA: When we set up Obama’s FEMA re-education camps for conservatives, does anybody object if I personally select Gohmert’s re-education training regime?
Mike in NC
Gohmert Pyle
licensed to kill time
My SO and I laughed our asses off at this last night. Gohmert and the Gaping Hole, wild-eyed jug-eared hair-on-fire nutball. It reminded us both of the Red Scare Loonies who saw a Commie under every rock. “Terror Babiez zOMG!”
Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahaha!
QDC
This guy’s for real, right? I mean, if you’re just being cynical, you come up with something better than terror babies.
ruemara
That was stupid on steroids.
handy
I’m sensing a new tagline.
Cat Lady
Teh Terror Babies is a GREAT name for a band. Also.
ETA: Sadly, my inlaws came back from their yearly trip to Tucson spouting this crap. It seemed pointless to make fun of them, and I just made a face and asked them if they thought that really made any sense. They watch Faux, so….
Omnes Omnibus
Holy f*&^-ing sh*t. Gohmert is an idiot.
jacy
Should I be terrified of Anderson Cooper’s secret squad of commando retired FBI agents? Gohmert certainly seems to think so.
And really, “gohmert” just sounds like a synonym of “doofus.”
jrg
The fact that Anderson Cooper keeps asking for so-called “evidence” is proof of his liberal bias. /sarcasm
Seriously, though. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything as moronic as “terror babies”. Ever.
cleek
the guy sounds like a southern version of Micheal Scott trying to BS his way out of a giant fuck up.
Brachiator
With each new day, the GOP outdoes itself in bringing the stupid.
And for some reason, I kept seeing Rep. Goober instead of Rep Gohmert.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Was Elian Gonzalez a terror child then?
Catsy
Gohmert raises an excellent point. For decades there has been a dangerous pattern of mothers having babies in the United States in order to make them American citizens, with the ultimate goal of undermining the foundations of this country and turning it into a theocracy more aligned with their oppressive religious ideology. These children are then raised with values that are antithetical to everything America stands for, taught to hate our freedoms and spend their lives working to erode them, and shielded from the corrupting influences of American culture in order to make sure their indoctrination isn’t challenged during their formative years. They are taught how to conceal their radical ideologies from their peers, and upon adulthood they infiltrate American society at every level and wait for the right opportunities to instill fear into the American people. They claim to adhere to a religion of peace and exploit our freedom of religion in order to spread their message of hate and fear, but in practice it is really just a political movement dedicated to overthrowing the American government.
What? No, I’m talking about Republicans.
jimBOB
That was just sad. The guy is so thick he actually thinks it’s a viable terror strategy to create recruits this way. He’s certain CERTAIN that in twenty years we’ll see bombs going off from the current crop of anchor babies.
Teh Crazy is strong with this one.
Linda Featheringill
Damn! We white folks get really crazy sometimes.
In addition to the obvious psychological problems is this fact that seems to be ignored:
20 years from now, there will be a new set of trouble makers by whatever name and they will have a completely different agenda.
The agenda of today’s terrorists will not be pertinent 20 years from now. Seeding the country with pregnant women would not be useful to the present groups.
beltane
OK, this is funny, but it is still just about the most disgusting GOP meme ever.
evinfuilt
@Catsy:
I thought you were talking about the Quiverfull movement, and other mass-breeders relying on homeschooling to indoctrinate them.
But yes, Republicans works as well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan: No, for some reason having to do with dolphins, I think.
russell
What the ever-loving fuck is up with Texas? Is there anybody left alive in that state that isn’t an irascible redneck loon?
I say it’s time to vote them off the damned island. Seriously.
Pangloss
These are the same people that think Barack Obama was created by North Koreans in a Kenyan test tube.
Batocchio
Holy crap. The modern GOP is McCarthy, but dumber. (Plus plutocrats.) Cooper is really pretty good here, as he was when Riddle said the same stuff. Also, as it goes on, Gohmert seems tired or even drunk. On the one hand, this is funny, but also truly frightening.
Jay in Oregon
I haven’t watched the clip yet, but my guess is that the terror babies kicked their asses.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
So if a pregnant Muslim women wants access to an abortion clinic, what is a wingnut supposed to think about that? Ticking time baby scenario, anyone?
Brachiator
@jrg:
To be fair, Big Baby in Toy Story 3 could be described as a terror baby. Maybe that’s where Gohmert stole the idea. A CG character in a freakin animated children’s movie. Somebody should hold up a Big Baby doll or picture and threaten him with it. He’d probably pee his pants.
trollhattan
Holy moly, what shitheel district does this guy represent? Did Texas give cattle the right to vote? Kan he and Michele Bachmann haz a terror beebee? Peas in a pod.
OC
Pardon my french but what a fucking idiot.
GambitRF
Terror Babies was my favorite Nickelodeon show. Way better than Muppet Babies.
zenster666
Rep Goober is from NE Texas District 1 (land of goobers and ‘tards) I live in Austin. We’re happy that he lives and works nowhere near us.
trollhattan
Also, too, I think I once bought a set of kitchen knives (“Now, how much would you pay!?”) from Gohmert at the state fair. That kind of persistance is hard to fend off.
Major Mel Funkshun
Shout it from the highest mountaintop, “Republicans HATE BABIES!!!”
Scott
(gets out crystal ball, gazes into the future)
“BREAKING: TV saturated wingnut breaks into hospital, hacks up 16 babies, dragged out screaming ‘TERROR BABIES! TERROR BABIES! LISTEN TO GOHMERT! TERROR BABIES!’ ”
Only thing that’s unclear from my reading is whether Gohmert drops a brick and goes into hiding for the rest of life, or if he uses his newfound infamy to run for preznit and gets his own Fox show…
SpotWeld
The baldfaced racism here is pretty disgusting.
In the US we have a lot of systems specifically designed to help out our citizens when they are in greatest need.
We also have birthright citizenship.
The GOP can’t complain about a color-blind system that helps non-whites because they’d sound racist. (Becuase, it is.)
So, they work up a whole rant about something that is currently okay to hate (terrorists) as a beard to the hated of people because of thier race.
Why is this not obvious?!
Tsulagi
Okay, that clip was funny. The only āgaping holeā I saw was Gohmert. Liked at the end Gaping Hole Gohmert pleaded to let them fill the hole. For Teahadis, itās all about the holes.
You know, with politicians in this country, now even their stupid is stupid. My Argentine SO once told me if any politician or general during the Falklands War (Malvinas for them) had demanded English muffins be renamed Freedom Muffins as a blow for national pride and the Argentine way of life, they would have been laughed out of office as a loon. Not here. Itās America, goddamnit.
licensed to kill time
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I love this. I was thinking about the Red Diaper Doper Baby line, and trying to come up with something similar (you win!).
Ticking Time Terror Baby can become a Ticking Time Terror Toddler and then a Ticking Time Terror Teen…it just keeps giving.
Roger Moore
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
She should give the baby up for adoption so it can be raised as a good Christian by honest, God fearing Real Americans(R) in the Heartland(R). SATSQ
A Guest
YOU’RE GOING AFTER THE MESSENGER, ANDERSON!
Cricket
Never has the word “debate” been so misused. I guess CNN was afraid the title “Cooper asks questions while Gohmert rants incoherently” wouldn’t fit.
A Guest
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Particularly if the abortionist plans to use a 2nd Amendment solution.
Comrade Dread
When I hear ‘Terror babies’, I think of a Saturday morning cartoon where cute little versions of Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts wearing diapers get in trouble with their nanny for blowing up the dishwasher because she wouldn’t give them more cookies.
Bella Q
Holy rollerskating fuck. They get crazier by the day in the GOP. If Gohmert and Sharron Angle bred, that would be a terror baby.
Greenhouse Guy
That guy was a judge!?! *palm-face*
Erik T
I don’t get why he thinks the bombs will be going off twenty years from now. We didn’t just suddenly make enemies of the radical loons of the Muslim world, and we didn’t just suddenly start having citizenship-by-birth, and we didn’t just suddenly have a nonzero number of illegal immigrants. The WTC bombing was in 1993. Seventeen years ago. Beirut was before I was born. If terror babies (sigh…) were going to be an issue, they’d already be an issue.
I mean, I know he’s a dipshit, but come on.
Yertle
I see one gaping hole, anway.
Tone in DC
@Greenhouse Guy:
A damn JUDGE?
I truly hope you’re pulling my leg.
trollhattan
Shouldn’t there be a bunch of growed-up IRA terrorbabies running amok right now?
Redshift
@Sentient Puddle: Of course he’s shocked. If a media figure challenges him about whether he’s telling the truth instead of just reporting what he says, they’re taking sides, and that’s Liberal Bias!
Tone in DC
@Comrade Dread:
When I hear āTerror babiesā, I think of a Saturday morning cartoon where cute little versions of Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts wearing diapers get in trouble with their nanny for blowing up the dishwasher because she wouldnāt give them more cookies.
The little brats would use Pop Rocks, baking soda and Jolt Cola, I bet. ;-)
ajr22
Someone needs to tell Louis Gohmert you never go full retard, because he just went FULL RETARD. (Are we past the point we need to make jokes fake apologizing to Palin for saying retard?)
trollhattan
Hey Texas. Consider filing your Petition for Secession (Form 1398[a]) any time. Srsly.
Rick Taylor
Terror babies? We’re talking about terror babies?
My opinion of the right wing keeps plummeting, but it’s never enough.
matoko_chan
And you guyz seriously question my hypoth that modern conservatism is selection for stupid?
plz.
freelancer
It stuns me, that after this interview was broadcast nationally, registered voters in the 1st District aren’t committing seppuku today.
kdaug
@zenster666:
Roger that.
(Although in Wells Branch/Plugerville (District 10) we have Mike McCaull, who though not quite as loud as Gohmert is about as sane. Thanks a fucking lot, Tom DeLay).
Sentient Puddle
I’d also like to note that the other thing that stood out to me was Gohmert saying “more stupid” repeatedly. That just didn’t sound right.
Apparently, that’s acceptable English. I’m finding all kinds of debate over which sounds better. Some think that “stupider” sounds like an egregious mash-up. Me, I think “more stupid” sounds like you’re reaching for a way to correctly modify the word, but are falling on your face and ending up with something like “doubleplus ungood.” That or maybe Gohmert saying it biases me.
(This is the kind of stuff I geek out to)
NonyNony
@Tone in DC:
Lots of states elect their judges. In states where judges are elected they don’t need to be any smarter or better informed than your average statehouse representative. Less because many people don’t bother to vote for judges, so the machine can take over except in egregious cases where the judge is just so gawd-awful that you get people who show up to vote against him.
The flip is of course that appointed judges don’t have to be all that smart either depending on what political machines are whirring in a given state.
Gohmert is from Texas and is a Republican in a state dominated by a Republican machine. I’m not sure which method they use in Texas (election, I think) but regardless the idea that he might have once been a judge is not actually that surprising at all.
fasteddie9318
@freelancer:
And yet, the fact that he’s won two elections there tells us that it’s likely many 1st District voters watched that and though “My, what a reasoned and thoughtful case Louie made. He makes me proud to be a Texan!”
Well, that or “OOOOGH. LOUD MAN RIGHT. MUZZIE BABY BAD!!!!”
Sentient Puddle
@kdaug: Help me out here…what district is the Jollyville area? I used to be TX-10, but I moved, and I think it put me in a new district.
And fuck, next time around, can we get the Austin area districted in a way that does not have something like ten different rural districts reaching into it to divide it up?
Tone in DC
@NonyNony:
I pity anyone who had to appear before this idiot.
I don’t doubt the GOP Texas machine got him where he is today. What flabbergasts me is no member of the Texas bar has apparently taken him to task for being such an idiot.
kdaug
@NonyNony:
Yeah, we elect ’em down here. Stupid system. Nobody knows who they are, how they’ve ruled, they just punch the R, D, or I. Utterly pointless.
kdaug
@Sentient Puddle: North Austin, between Austin proper and Georgetown.
Brachiator
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Oh snap. This mutha goober Gohmert is reciting a variation of the goddam plotline from the movie Salt with a twist of Big Baby in Toy Story 3 and a dash of Manchurian Candidate.
This moran definitely puts the “crack” in “crackpot.”
gnomedad
@Tone in DC:
The Palinistas have their Supreme Court nominee!
Tone in DC
@Brachiator:
I doubt the Repugs know that Richard Condon wrote that book as FICTION.
Just sayin’.
scav
oh, I’m torn between getting a ticking terror baby (especially if I can find one with a snooze function so it can double as an alarm) and a cabbage patch terror baby (with Kenyan long form birth certificate!). or maybe a terror baby that when you tip it forward and back opens and closes its eyes and cries Allah. I definitely don’t want a baby doll wets: those are all conservatives.
gnomedad
Click on the ad to find out what your Terror Baby will look like!
shortstop
@Greenhouse Guy:
russell
becoming the first Republican since Reconstruction to represent the 1st District of northeast Texas.
Does this mean they’re finally over the Civil War?
kdaug
@Sentient Puddle: Misread your question. Looks like Jollyville’s basically split in half – north of McNeil (ballpark) you’re in District 31, south of McNeil you’re District 21.
Here’s a map.
dww44
@Sentient Puddle:
I was gonna copy the relevant part of your comment here, but my computer decided at this moment to send the text careening off to the right and out of its normal BJ margin.
But please do as you said and create one of those email forwards that we can share with our conservative siblings, cousins, and friends, of which I have legions. Not our grandparents because we are that ourselves. I would so love to be able to send a rebuttal like this around. I’ll share my email address and hopefully be at the top of your list. The right is so good at sticking incorrect assumptions about us with voters, it’s about time the tables were turned.
Sentient Puddle
@kdaug: You know what’s crazy? My house is about 2000 feet away from the district border. I had to zoom in crazy close to see exactly which district it is.
And if I decided to go for this other house I was looking at in the same neighborhood, I’d be in the other district. What the bloody fuck.
Ana Gama
Why does this “terror babies” plot sound so reminiscent of the birther conspiracy that Obama’s parents planted those newspaper birth announcements back when he was born?
Bnut
I had a frat brother from Tyler, Texas. He would have gladly voted for this Mensa candidate and then be shit eating proud of it. What a world.
licensed to kill time
@Ana Gama:
See, TerrOrbama was the Original Terror Baby(c)!
Jim C
@NonyNony:
This, exactly.
Locally, our former city councilman ran for judge in the last primary, against 4 others. All of the local bar associations and other endorsing bodies rated him “not qualified” or endorsed anyone else but him. (Now, there may some bias in who they favor by background, but he still came out bottom out of 5)
He did, however, have the backing of the local Democratic Party. He cruised to victory, and will likely cruise again in the general election. He might even be a decent judge – he wasn’t a bad city councilman (I disagreed with him a lot, but still). I also wouldn’t want to directly compare him to Gohmert, but elected judges aren’t always elected on merit.
kdaug
@Sentient Puddle:
That’s the beauty of Tom DeLay’s off-schedule 2002 redistricting – they basically just polled people in neighborhoods and asked whether they were R or D. Then they drew the lines to corral enough R’s in the D segments to outweigh the D’s.
Again – fuck you Tom DeLay
YellowJournalism
“Help us fill the hole.”
The comedy writes itself.
scarpy
@Ana Gama:
Exactly. This whole “controversy” is really an exercise in reimagining reality to fit birther fantasies.
Fax Paladin
@Sentient Puddle: No, because the Republicans still control the process.
srv
I take it this congressman thus supports killing all the babies in his district as part of a zero-tolerance strategy.
kdaug
@Fax Paladin:
Right now they do (and they sure as shit did in the early aughts). But I find it surprising that so few people remember the rich Democratic tradition in Texas.
Ann Richards? Molly Ivans? Jim Hightower?
GOTV for Bill White, let’s put “Governor Goodhair” out to pasture.
YellowJournalism
This interview just screams for a You Tube remix, like the one they did when Christian Bale had his professionalism freak-out.
Ana Gama
@srv: Only the brown ones, of course.
shortstop
@licensed to kill time:
Certainly. Forty-nine years ago, terror-loving doctors, nurses and newspaper editors got together with Barack Sr. and Stanley Ann and helped lay the foundation. Today’s terror babies, who will be reducing Anderson Cooper to a blip in only 10 years when they hit fifth grade, simply don’t have the patience to do this with thoroughness and quality like the Obamas did.
mslarry
Anderson help us fill the HOOOOOOOLE!!!! and leave Trig ALOOONE, also. Gawd, I despise these people.
Zuzu's Petals
@trollhattan:
Not only was he an appellate judge, he claims to have been a chief justice in his circuit, and to have tried death penalty cases.
Can you even IMAGINE having your life in this guy’s hands?!
Comrade Rich
I am reminded of what Dave Barry once wrote about the attack on Pearl Harbor [from memory]: “…implementing a complex, long-term, and ultimately successful plan to dominate the U.S. consumer electronics market.”
Svensker
This person is allowed to do anything more than be a bag boy at the Piggly Wiggly? My god.
Say, I wonder where he stands on bombing Iran?
pickledjazz
I watched in total disbelief as this guy sounded as moronic as ever. How do these people get into Congress? I was embarassed for him.
He sounded like a terrorist actually.
What has happened to these politicians?
Ah yes. The black man in the White House.
Jay in Oregon
@srv:
Ask Herod how well that worked for him…
b-psycho
Why didn’t Anderson Cooper just say “fuck this, you’re an idiot, cut to commercial”?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Sentient Puddle:
Girls go to college to get more knowledge
Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider
Men go to Texas to flee from their Ex’es.
CalD
That I have to say was surprising act of journalism from someone I have frankly never considered to be anything more than a dull witted, self-promoting clothes horse. If this keeps up I may have to consider easing my two-year moratorium on watching cable news.
I can understand the congressman’s frustration with Cooper though. Two years ago and for most of the last decade, guys like Louis Gohmert could go on CNN and say the craziest shit imaginable and be treated with deference, as if they were just an opposing viewpoint to sane people. At the point where Anderson Cooper of all people is asking the obvious questions and refusing to be shouted down instead of meekly curling up and seeking artificial “balance,” is it time to start wondering if American journalism as a profession might actually be on the verge of sprouting a pair?
CalD
@Catsy: I’m gonna print that out and hang it on my wall.
Angela
It sounds like the plot from Ira Levin’s The Boys From Brazil. A lot of cloned Hitler’s raised by moms dedicated to the return of the Third Reich.