About a year, President Obama announced an executive order requiring federal contractors to raise their minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.” As expected, congressional Republicans were not pleased. Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas), for example, called the president a “Socialistic dictator” and the “Kommandant-In-Chef.”
He probably meant “chief.”
Last night, the right-wing congressman offered the world another look at his rhetorical flourishes.
Texas Rep. Randy Weber, an outspoken conservative hardliner, compared President Barack Obama unfavorably to German dictator Adolf Hitler in a tweet posted Monday night.Weber bashed Obama for failing to travel to Paris on Sunday for a massive anti-terrorism march attended by dozens of other world leaders.
Specifically, on Twitter, the unhinged lawmaker wrote, “Even Adolph Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn’t do it for right reasons.”
He probably meant “Adolf.”
I seem to have lost my right-wing decoder ring, and so I’m left confused about what exactly the Texas Republican was trying to argue. Apparently, Weber wanted President Obama to go to Paris for the photo-op over the weekend. Fine. Given the necessary security precautions, there was simply no way the president could have attended with two days’ notice, but if conservatives want to throw a fit over this, they’re welcome to get this out of their system.
But the Hitler analogy is tougher to decipher. Is the congressman comparing Obama to Hitler? Is he arguing that because Hitler went to Paris, the president should also go to Paris? When news outlets sought clarification from Weber, he did not respond. (That said, he also did not delete the tweet.)
Chris Hayes added, “As a general matter, Hitler-invading-Paris jokes are definitely a tough genre for US congressmen to pull off.” Truer words were not tweeted.
Postscript: I saw some suggestions overnight that Rep. Randy Weber might be a parody account, set up by a liberal to make congressional Republicans look foolish. There’s simply no way, the argument goes, than an elected federal lawmaker in the United States could be this ridiculous, publishing such nonsense on purpose.
But the truth is Weber really is an actual congressman, representing Texas’ 14th district, and chosen by House Republican leaders to serve on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Update: Weber issued a statement apologizing for his incoherent tweet: “I need to first apologize to all those offended by my tweet. It was not my intention to trivialize the Holocaust nor to compare the President to Adolf Hitler.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."