Andy Ogles, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, chose an unorthodox way to mark Pride month yesterday: by tweeting, “Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month.”
The backlash was swift and came from all quarters, even Ogles’s fellow Republicans. “The behavior of consenting adults is their business,” Senator Ted Cruz said. “Andy, you have family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and constituents who are gay and lesbian,” tweeted Representative Mike Lawler. “What an absolutely idiotic statement to make.” Some of those colleagues include Trump appointees such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg, as well as the President’s top pollster Tony Fabrizio.
Then came the climbdown. “Earlier today while working on the farm, my phone began going crazy because of a post made by a member of my comms team,” Ogles posted yesterday evening. “The post was stupid, hurtful and a complete distraction from my America First focus. The employee has been reprimanded.”
Response to his retraction has been mixed. A number of people seem confident that the “member” of his “comms team” who has been thrown under the bus is fictitious. “I’ve found a picture of the alleged employee,” one profile commented with a picture of Ogles. “Please make sure he is reprimanded appropriately.”
A smaller segment of commenters have expressed annoyance that Ogles would “bend the knee to the left” and retract the statement. “Just stand on what you said so your constituents can vote on it,” one user suggested. This should cut close to home, seeing that, back in October, Ogles proclaimed, “President Trump needs warriors who will never bend, never break, and never sell out.”
Ogles previously found himself under scrutiny for introducing a constitutional amendment that would allow President Trump to run for a third term and being exposed for exaggerating portions of his résumé. Ogles claimed he had “studied economics” in college when, in reality, he only took one economics class at a community college and earned a “C.”
The congressman also got himself in trouble for earlier tweets. Back in March he published a similarly phrased message, “Muslims don’t belong in American society,” which has now racked up 22.1 million views. The post sparked anger from commenters pointing out that Ogles is supposed to be working in service of a nation that practices freedom of religion. At that time, Ogles met the backlash with intensified rhetoric, claiming that “Multiculturalism is NOWHERE in the Constitution” and “Muslims are unable to assimilate; they all have to go back.”
Bombastic rhetoric is par for the course on the President’s social media platforms. Yet the die-hard firebrand members of Congress with which Trump once surrounded himself are dwindling in numbers. The likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, George Santos, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, to name a few, find themselves either out of Congress or out of the President’s good graces. Now B-listers such as Ogles are attempting to fill the void with shock-and-awe tactics. Let’s hope his next attempt isn’t so clumsy.
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