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Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day: Clay Higgins- 2022 Update [1]
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Date: 2022-07-07
Should anything happen to Louie Gohmert, Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins seems more than ready to fill the vacuum of being referred to as "America's Dumbest Congressman".
On this date in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, as well as 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of Clay Higgins, the U.S. House Representative from Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District after an improbable win in the 2016 elections where he finished second in the “jungle primary”, but came from behind to defeat fellow Republican Scott Angelle with 56% of the vote. That won Higgins, a guy nicknamed “the Cajun John Wayne”, the right to go to Washington, D.C. and replace Congressman Charles Boustany, (whose own bid for U.S. Senate failed, due to the unsavory rumors about him soliciting prostitutes that popped up).
Anyway, when we say that Clay Higgins’ victory in the 2016 elections was improbable, we aren’t joking around. Scott Angelle was considered a favorite in that race for months, and as of February of 2016, Higgins was still serving as a sheriff in St. Landry Parish, making appearances on the “Crime Stoppers” show where he would not just ask the community for help in finding felons, but would start berating and mocking them in segments on the show. That got him some notoriety, particularly from the right, because over time, Higgins’ rants started to get… well, a little alarming, and kind of racist. So, of course he had a few guest spots on Fox and Friends in 2015. But as Higgins continued to get more and more over-the-top in his segments on Crime Stoppers, he went viral when he asked for help with “The Gremlins gang”, seventeen individuals who just so happened to be African Americans who he referred to as “heathens”, “thugs” and “animals” while threatening them to turn themselves in with a contingent of officers in SWAT gear and with rifles because, “You will be hunted, you will be tracked. And if you raise your weapon to a man like me, we’ll return fire with superior fire.”
Making things even more troubling was that the seventeen men had their annoyed families come forward to wonder why the hell the Cajun John Wayne was threatening their loved ones, because they weren’t even aware of their family being in any “Gremlins” gang, saying that it may have been referring to an attempt by some of them to start a rap group years earlier. Higgins tried defending the police’s information on the “gang” by saying his department had “read it on the internet”, which sounds a lot like Donald Trump, come to think of it. Oh, he also insisted his video wasn’t racist because each of the officers in it also was standing near an African American community leader (similar to the “we have black friends” defense). Well, after his boss let Higgins know he’d gone too far, he gave a public resignation, saying he “don’t do well reined in” and that he would “rather die” than sacrifice his principles by… I guess conducting himself professionally? Fox and Friends and other right-wing allies began to rally around poor, poor Clay Higgins for having his free speech quelled (even though the First Amendment doesn’t allow you the right to speak without punishment from your employer on television while representing them). He parlayed the criticism against him into being the victim and started his campaign for Congress instead.
And then, once Clay Higgins advanced to the final two in the GOP Primary, partially due to receiving a large contribution from fellow fascist-lunatic and former Congressman Allen West, the local media started doing its job, and digging at the sudden political star that could end up in Washington, D.C. They noted that back in 2007, Clay Higgins previously had resigned from the Opelousas Police Department to avoid receiving disciplinary measures after he was accused of using excessive force, and giving false statements in the ensuing investigation.
But even more damning was when a public records request was made with the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Office that discovered Higgins wasn’t just dismissed because of the “Gremlins Gang” video… his superiors had become appalled at how Higgins had begun trying to exploit his appearances on Crime Stoppers as a new means of getting revenue, using government e-mail to sell mugs and t-shirts with his likeness to fans of the show, and book himself on whatever talk shows would have him on to appear… as long as they paid him in cash. The “cash preferred” nature of his bookings was because Higgins had the IRS garnishing money from his wages to pay back taxes and keeping payments off the books would prevent the IRS from getting their hands on it. Higgins even had dreams of appearing on his own reality show called “American Justice” where they would carry out SWAT raids, with him leading the charge, and talking trash to the crooks as they brought them in.
Okay… so that’s a month before the election. There’s Scott Angelle, a moderate Republican, and Clay Higgins, an arguably pretty racist, over-aggressive, fame-seeking, wannabe-fascist nut who seems to want to evade paying taxes. In 2016… that’s the same formula that got Donald Trump elected, and Louisiana’s 3rd followed suit when presented with the same kind of candidate to represent them in the U.S. House of Representatives. Higgins’ website featured issue stances that were a hot bed of crazy, including an argument against all gun control because it didn’t really exist prior to the 1960s (it did, and a need from rifles available to the public tending more towards the semi-automatic and automatic), and referring to the Affordable Care Act as follows:
Now, here’s the thing… the “Gremlins gang” video was a pretty clear indicator that Clay Higgins might be a bit of a bigot, and that he would overreact to threats. Well, if anyone had any doubts of if that was a fluke, we can be pretty sure it isn’t now, because after a terror attack in London in June 2017, Clay Higgins responded a day later by calling for Christendom to go to war against “Radical Islam”, and giving the level-headed assessment that we should just “kill them all”.
Rep. Higgins made no apologies after people were shocked at his stated desire to commit religious genocide, and blamed the negativity on his comments on “political correctness”. Because of course he did.
In his first year in office, Higgins also outed himself as a climate change denier in August of 2017, but more notoriously, he drew the ire of Jewish groups by filming a political video in the Auschwitz gas chambers without the permission of the museum, using the symbol of the Holocaust as a prop to defend his desire to increase United States military spending. Jewish leaders are, predictably, not pleased. On the upside, for all their long-standing grievances, at least Muslims and Jews can come together and agree, Clay Higgins is an ***hole.
Louisiana’s 3rd District choosing an “outsider” has not served them well, and even outside of his voting record. So far this term, Higgins has yet to learn his lesson about making ridiculous and inappropriate comparisons to World War II (as if the Auschwitz video wasn’t enough of a teaching moment), deciding to announce in the middle of a hearing on immigration where Democrats were grilling Kirjsten Nielsen for her family separation policy by declaring that “We have D-Day every month on our southern border”.
That was slightly a better job than Higgins did than in the Michael Cohen hearing, when he tried to snare Cohen in a “gotcha” moment and only snagged his own ass for about ten minutes straight, obsessively asking Cohen “WHAR BOXES?” in regards to evidence Cohen had returned to him by federal investigators that he brought documents before the House Intelligence Committee for. (And thus making us all ask if Clay Higgins has been placed on the House Intelligence Committee ironically.) Higgins was of course, more apoplectic about the location of these boxes than the fact that what was contained in them detailed a series of financial crimes by Donald Trump, because of course he was.
Which isn’t to say Higgins, the “Cajun John Wayne” has been on top of crimes committed by people within his own party, or even his own orbit. He was apparently unaware that one of his top aides liked to frequent massage parlors where victims of human trafficking were prostituting themselves for sexual favors.
No word on if Higgins is planning an episode of Crime Stoppers for the rest of his staff.
Anyway, his voting record is equally as embarrassing:
Clay Higgins is an over-compensating bigot and fascist, who is regrettably unlikely to be bounced from office by his constituents as long as he plays pretend about being “tough on crime” and enough people thinking this corrupt wanker actually wants to do something other than talk tough and grift while no one’s playing attention.
One Year Ago, July 7th, 2021: Clay Higgins (LA)… 2021 Update
Two Years Ago, July 7th, 2020: Clay Higgins (LA)… 2020 Update
Three Years Ago, July 7th, 2019: Clay Higgins (LA)… 2019 Update
Four Years Ago, July 7th, 2018: Clay Higgins (LA)… 2018 Update
Five Years Ago, July 7th, 2017: Clay Higgins (LA)… Original Profile
Six Years Ago, July 7th, 2016: Christopher Shank (MD)…2016 Update
Seven Years Ago, July 7th, 2015: Christopher Shank (MD)… Original Profile
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