It was one year ago today that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented its original profile of the current U.S. House Representative from Wisconsin’s 2nd Congressional District, Sean Duffy, a former contestant on MTV’s reality show “The Real World” (shown here gyrating in his underwear for his housemates). Duffy was yet another beneficiary of the Tea Party Wave, storming into office to replace twenty-one term Congressman Dave Obey back in 2010, and if you ask Sean Duffy, it’s a real struggle for his family to survive on the measly $174,000 salary he gets as a member of Congress, to which some might advise him that he should have stopped having kids sometime before his eighth. Hypocritically, while refusing a pay cut on his own six figure salary, Duffy advises other public workers should accept pay cuts. With 8 children, it comes as little surprise that Sean Duffy is also a die-hard pro-life supporter. In January of 2016, however, he caused an uproar on the floor of the U.S. House after he decided to express that anti-abortion fervor during a discussion about the Black Lives Matter Movement by presenting inaccurate statistics to chastise the Congressional Black Caucus for not supporting black lives because they allow higher abortion rates racially than whites. That’s not only statistically incorrect but totally racist. But Duffy doesn’t always act like he knows it all, like the time he was asked at a town hall about his position on trans-vaginal ultrasounds, and he dodged the question by saying, “Well, I haven’t had one.” Of course, either quote could have been a worse statement… like the time Sean Duffy’s wife, and fellow “Real World” alumni Rachel Campos-Duffy compared abortion to slavery and the Holocaust, as Republicans are frequently in the habit of doing.
The more bizarre thing is that Wisconsin’s 7th District has only a +2 Republican lean according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, yet Duffy won a fourth term in office with 62% of the vote in spite of repeatedly changing his endorsements as candidates dropped out of the race before settling on Donald Trump, saying that the racist billionaire demagogue “fit the template of the conservative movement” with his border wall and financial background. After the election, Duffy embraced authoritarian fascism in full, encouraging Donald Trump use his Twitter account to “push back against the media” regarding negative stories about his transition team (which considering they were all talking to Russians, it’s a good thing it didn’t work).
Within two weeks, Duffy was on CNN, where in an interview with CNN where he was being asked why Donald Trump took WEEKS to condemn Neo-Nazis who began a spree of hate crime assaults, vandalism, and threats against minorities to “celebrate” Trump’s election, Duffy tried changing the topic by claiming that the Neo-Nazis were similar to the Black Lives Matter movement. Host Jim Sciutto was having none of that s*** on his network, and shut Duffy down, and fast.
Only a few weeks after that in December of 2016, Duffy was being interviewed by Tucker Carlson, when he claimed that the city of Madison, Wisconsin, one of the few liberal bastions in the state what with the University of Wisconsin there, was “communist”. After he was widely criticized for this stupid, stupid remark, Duffy played the victim by getting on Twitter to post:”The PC crowd is humorless. For those offended by my ‘communist’ comment, I’ll send a therapy dog to your ‘safe place’ of choice in Madison.” Ah yes. The sensible political strategy of embracing your inner ***hole. It’s no wonder Rep. Duffy was on the Trump transition team (no word on if they trusted him to talk to Russians, yet. YET.)
But the real shock from Sean Duffy came in February of 2017, when he began arguing that the media was deliberately not reporting Islamic terror attacks (ones that they actually HAD reported on), Duffy started trying to claim that white terrorism didn’t exist, and even if it does, it wasn’t the same thing as Islamic terrorism because it has a “bright side”. He did this while arguing in defense of Donald Trump’s attempted Muslim ban in a CNN interview with Alisyn Camerota:
CAMEROTA: “How about Charleston, congressman? He was an extremist. He was a white extremist?”
DUFFY: “Yes, he was. OK?”
CAMEROTA: “How about that? That doesn’t matter?”
DUFFY: “No, it does matter. It does matter. Look at the good things that came from it. [Then-South Carolina Gov.] Nikki Haley took down the Confederate flag, that was great. But you want to say I can give you a couple of examples. There’s no constant threat that goes through these attacks. And you have radical Islamic terrorists and ISIS that are driving the attacks, and if you want to compare those two, maybe you can throw another one ―“
CAMEROTA: “You can.”
DUFFY: “Look at Gabby Giffords. The Marxist, who took her life, a leftist guy, and now you see violence and terror in the streets all across America, burning and beating people with Donald Trump hats. The violence you have to look in, you’re trying to use examples on the right.”
We can’t even begin with how ignorant that whole conversation is regarding the differences between White Nationalist terrorism and Muslim terrorism, but we’ll add that the man who shot Gabby Giffords was also not a Marxist. But hey, Duffy is an idiot, so what do facts matter?
He has since returned to Washington, and returned to being a total wanker:
- February 16th, 2017: Duffy votes for HJR 69, to make it legal for hunters on wildlife reserves to kill several species of hibernating bears or wolves while they’re sleeping. Because… well, the logic really isn’t there as to why, it’s just awful.
- March 16th, 2017: Sean Duffy votes for HR 1181, which would allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to continue to own firearms, and not have them taken away without a judge’s written order. We feel safer already.
- May 4th, 2017: Duffy votes for the GOP’s healthcare plan, that would allow 24,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions, and would treat pregnancy, post-partum depression, and sexual assault as "pre-existing conditions”. Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Duffy would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. He and his Republican compatriots threw themselves a beer bash to celebrate taking away healthcare from millions and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
- June 8th, 2017: Sean Duffy votes for HR 10, an attempt by House Republicans to repeal Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform, because what the country really needs is to allow banks to engage in the behaviors that nearly collapsed the global economy only a decade ago.
We’re well aware that Wisconsin Republicans have both gerrymandered districts, and passed voting regulations aimed at disenfranchising Democratic voters… but it’s still a mystery how someone as s***ty as Sean Duffy keeps getting re-elected so easily.
One Year Ago, June 10th, 2016: Sean Duffy (WI)… Original Profile
Two Years Ago, June 10th, 2015: Jerry O’Neil (MT)