Who’s the most cringe member of the Ky Congressional delegation? We have a new winner.
On Tuesday, two members of Kentucky’s Congressional delegation made national headlines, one of them because he did something praiseworthy and the other because he did not, instead begging the question of whether we have the most embarrassing politicians in the country.
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, as he occasionally does, stood his ground against Trumpworld and for a working democracy when he excoriated the Republican National Committee for deciding that the Jan. 6 insurrection was “legitimate public discourse” and anyone who said otherwise should be censured. Although this supreme gaslighting is embraced by a majority of the Republican party, Mitch was having none of it.
“We all were here,” he said. “We saw what happened. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent a peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”
So while McConnell did help Trump weasel out of not one but two impeachments, he is at least being a grownup about what we all saw on television that day. Ridiculous? Farcical? Dangerous? All yes. Discourse? Not so much. This kind of gaslighting is a feature, not a bug, of authoritarian governments, so thank you very much to Mitch McConnell for reaffirming the sky is blue.
By afternoon, however, any small, somewhat proud feelings we might have had were dashed under the wheels of a train taking members of Congress up to the Capitol for a vote. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, saw the 84-year-old feudal kingpin known as Rep. Hal Rogers boarding without a mask and respectfully asked him to put one on. Whereupon, she said, Rogers poked her in the back and told her to kiss his ass. He later apologized, probably at the insistence of his younger staff, who understand the optics of a white-haired, red-faced guy from Kentucky telling a 71-year-old Black Congresswoman to kiss his ass.
Rogers showed his posterior last year when he was put on the “Wall of Sedition,” voting to overturn election results even after the events of Jan. 6. But unlike the constant and embarrassing shenanigans of Rep. Thomas “Look at My Big Gun” Massie and Sen. Rand “No, Really I’m a Very Important Doctor,” Paul, Rogers stays more quiet, content to keep a low profile counting his money or something.
What money, you ask? In 2020, John Cheves wrote yet another story about Rogers’ various and lucrative political organizations, including a PAC that pays Rogers’ wife $3,000 a month for “event planning.” Also, Cheves found the PAC had paid $18,000 so far for Tracy Rogers, the congressman’s daughter-in-law, and $36,000 so far for Bob Mitchell, his longtime friend and former district director who retired from Rogers’ office in 2012.” In 2011, the Center for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found that Rogers, also known as the “Prince of Pork,” the longtime chair of the House Appropriations Committee, had funneled more than $236 million in federal funds since 2000 to a web of nonprofit groups he created in Kentucky, benefiting him, his family and his associates.
Politicians are not supposed to funnel money to associates or tell their colleagues to kiss their ass. Then again, they’re also not supposed to support or foment lies about election fraud and riots in the U.S. Capitol. Then again, this is the Kentucky delegation.
Also, whatever happened to term limits?
This story was originally published February 9, 2022 at 12:14 PM.
