Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) drew hackles on Twitter this week when he posted a video of himself making transparently false claims about American history.
In the video, McCarthy falsely boasted that the United States had never taken land seized after fighting a war against a rival nation.
"In every single war that America has fought, we have never asked for land afterward — except for enough to bury the Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice for freedom," said the former leader of the House of Representatives.
In fact, as a community note pointed out, McCarthy's own district in California was ceded to the United States by Mexico at the end of the Mexican-American War of 1848.
The United States also gained territory in the Spanish-American war in 1898, and it forcibly took land held by Native Americans throughout the 19th century.
Several Twitter users were eager to pounce on McCarthy's historical illiteracy.
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"Think of all the wisdom from this man we’d be deprived of if his home state of California had never spontaneously risen from the sea and attached itself to the United States," joked attorney George Conway.
Journalist Tim O'Brien made a similarly sarcastic remark about McCarthy's apparent ignorance of the Mexican-American War.
"New cry of freedom: 'Forget the Alamo!'” he joked.
Davidson College professor Isaac Bailey marveled at McCarthy's ability to recite so much historical ignorance with such certainty.
"What's really amazing about this transparent lie is that he was so confident about it, he shared this clip himself," he said. "That's how far down the rabbit hole too many of us are when it comes to a kind of phony patriotism built upon myth and distortion."
And Marc Lamont Hill, a professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, lamented that McCarthy's historic flubs were symbolic of the way many Republicans view American history.
"These guys spent so much time erasing American history that they forgot to read it," he said.
