Wait, what…?
People in Michigan won’t soon forget the man who arguably ran the most incompetent Senate campaign in our fine state’s history. His “Yellow Girl” Superbowl ad tanked his already lackluster campaign and then Hoekstra spent the next nine months digging the hole he was in deeper and deeper.
In pure Trumpian fashion, Hoekstra has now ascended to the level of his incompetence by being named the ambassador to the Netherlands. Given his homophobia and xenophobia, the folks in the Netherlands weren’t particularly happy about this. They also aren’t wild about Hoekstra characterizing their country as being in the grip of Islamic terrorists.
This past week, a Dutch journalist confronted Hoekstra on this. What happened next is an example of failed gaslighting happening in real time. It’s such an epic face plant that it’s being talked about globally. Hoekstra first denies saying that cars and politicians were being “burned” by Islamic terrorists in the Netherlands and that there are so-called “No Go” zones where these terrorists are in such total control that law enforcement officials (or anyone who isn’t Muslim) don’t dare to enter them. He says that this is what we call “fake news” in America. The journalist then shows Hoekstra the video of him saying these things and asks him if it’s really “fake news”. Hoekstra then denies calling it “fake news” even though he literally just said it was moments before, captured on video by the cameraman that Hoekstra had to have noticed lurking a couple of feet away.
Let’s roll tape…
This is the sort of incompetence that is the hallmark of the Trump administration. Republicans tell us all how terrible government is. Then, once they gain control of it, set out to prove what they have told us.
Honestly, the next thing you know Scott Pruitt will name someone to head up the EPA branch that oversees the Great Lakes with a person who left the Wisconsin DNR “in tatters”, dismantled the agency’s environmental enforcement abilities, kicked out its scientists, scrubbed its website of climate change information, and shifted its focus from protecting Wisconsin’s natural resources to handing out favors to polluters.
Oh, wait. Never mind.
He already did that.
