Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) held a town-hall meeting in Arizona the other day, and was confronted by a constituent who disagrees with the senator on Syria. After claiming to speak for “all Americans,” and accusing McCain of “treasonous” behavior, the voter made one especially noteworthy comment.
After working through a whole lot of silliness, note that the guy eventually told McCain, “I believe wholeheartedly you do not care about the will and well-being of America or its people. You lied to the American people about the chemical attacks in Syria. The American people know that it was our government that is most likely responsible.”
Got that? This Arizonan believes the U.S. government was “most likely responsible” for a chemical weapons attack in Syria, which targeted the side we want to prevail in the Syrian civil war.
And where in the world would this guy get that idea? Because Rush Limbaugh told them to take the idea seriously.
There have long been mutterings that the chemical attack in Ghouta was a false-flag operation. That is, the Syrian opposition actually carried out the attack, hoping that Bashar al-Assad would get blamed and President Obama would retaliate with a huge bombing campaign. But it’s just been mutterings. [Tuesday], though, Rush Limbaugh upped the ante, jabbering on air about an article by Yossef Bodansky titled “Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack?”
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Got that? Not just a false flag operation that snookered the idiot-in-chief, but an operation actually put in motion by the White House. Bodansky, an Assad sympathizer who has previously suggested that the 1995 Oklahoma bombing was orchestrated by Iran and that Saddam’s WMDs all ended up in Syria, tells a simple story….
I’ll spare you the details of the story, but the gist of it has to do with the U.S. coordinating with the Syrian opposition to … never mind, it’s just too dumb to repeat.
But Limbaugh shared all of this with his audience, as did Alex Jones and some right-wing bloggers. And now it’s shown up in a senator’s town-hall meeting.
If recent history is any guide, members of Congress will start repeating it any day now.
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."
