Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, exhibiting his skill as a mouth-breathing idiot.
On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, as well as 2022, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day posted profiles of Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, whose real name is Dannie Goeb, but he legally changed it in 2003 after he rose in the ranks of the Texas Republican cult of personality over a fifteen year career working as a conservative talk show host. He made numerous racist remarks on his show, particularly directed at Asians, including discussing trade negotiations between the Clinton administration and China by speaking in pidgin English and pronouncing Clinton’s name as “President Crinton”. Patrick has also insisted illegal immigrants are bringing tuberculosis and leprosy (yes, LEPROSY) into the United States, claimed ISIS is sneaking across the U.S./Mexico border, and has tried to pass legislation patterned after Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 anti-immigration law. As a Texas State Senator, Dan Patrick walked out of the chamber in protest when a fellow lawmaker (who was Jewish) asked for a Muslim cleric to give a prayer before the legislature. Patrick is also fiercely opposed to abortion, comparing his rivalry with State Senator Wendy Davis to Jesus facing off with the Pharisees , and once asking a fellow legislator during a debate on abortion, “And if those aborted souls were in the gallery, what you say to them right now?” (Really, he seems to think there are ghost embryos about.) As if we needed to add anything else, Patrick has also denied the existence of a separation of church and state in the United States Constitution, and after Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson publicly bashed gay people in 2013, Patrick heralded him as one of God’s modern day prophets while spending his own money on misleading and fear-mongering ads to support ballot initiatives to ban transgendered citizens from using the public bathroom of their choice by insisting there are mythical sexual assaults taking place in those bathrooms by men in drag. In 2016, Patrick called for a boycott on Target, for suggesting that they would allow transgendered citizens to use the restroom of their choice in their stores, and in June of that year, responded to the shooting at The Pulse nightclub in Orlando by getting on Twitter and quoting the Bible passage Galatians 6:7, that seemed to indicate he felt the victims got what was coming to them.
Dan Patrick immediately took it upon himself to introduce a transphobic bathroom bill into the Texas state legislature, calling it a “top priority” to prevent all the non-existent sexual assaults from the transgender community from occurring (while conveniently doing nothing about any of the members of his own party who seem to be in the news for them these days). He continues to insist that a bill designed to discriminate is “not discriminatory”. Outside of that, he has also blamed Democrats for the deaths of several undocumented immigrants who overheated in a semi as part a human smuggling ring, as their fault because of policies of “open borders”, which is about as ass-backwards logic as you might see.
At least, it would have been had he not also got on board with arguing against the University of Texas at Austin removing Confederate statues, where he invoked Godwin’s law by mentioning Nazis, and posited a “slippery slope” argument that seemed to wonder if eventually statues at the Alamo might be taken down. Dan Patrick outraged many in 2018 after reacting to a a mass shooting at Sante Fe High School in Texas, explaining that the real problem causing mass shootings is that “too many entrances” are available to mass shooters, so buildings are harder to defend. Now, not only is this just dumb in terms of a need for gun control in Texas, but it means that Patrick fails to understand that “too many entrances” are also “many exits” for kids having to flee buildings when they’re being shot at.
In August of 2018, after the murder of Iowa college student Mollie Tibbets, Dan Patrick said that CNN and MSNBC were “accomplices” in the murder, as Tibbetts’ family are telling Republicans around the country to not politicize her death. A month later, in September of 2018: Patrick, on the campaign trail, ranted impotently at Colin Kaepernick appearing in Nike’s new ad campaign (the highly successful one). He was regrettably re-elected to another term in office as Texas’ Lieutenant Governor, narrowly beating Democrat Mike Collier with only 51% of the vote. Eking out a win was due to his brilliant strategy of being a coward who doesn’t like having to have his idiocy challenged, as evidenced by Dan Patrick’s refusal to debate his opponent.
In September of 2019, Patrick again disgusted people around the country after blaming the video game industry for “teaching people to kill”, and proposing the solution to curtail gun violence was to allow prayer in schools. One might think that would prove that Patrick is heartless, but that would apparently be medically inaccurate because two weeks later Patrick was hospitalized with a blocked artery. He survived, only to somehow find a way to reach a new low.
Because, as many dumbass Republicans have begun attacking public health mandates that will save lives during the Covid-19 pandemic, Dan Patrick was one of the first to rush to the microphone to encourage people to die. That sentence in no way has any hyperbole, as Patrick literally offered up not only himself, but other senior encouraged people to be willing to sacrifice the elderly in order to “save the economy”.
”Those of us who are 70 plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country. No one reached out to me and said, 'As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that America loves for its children and grandchildren?' And if that is the exchange, I'm all in.”
While perhaps less evil of a move, but still decidedly out-of-touch with reality and partisan (Patrick’s wheelhouse), after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, Dan Patrick fanned the flames of voter fraud conspiracies by literally offering a $1 million bounty if anyone around the country had proof of any voter fraud cases. The only response he got was from Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman let him know that his state caught two REPUBLICANs trying to vote fraudulently, and said he’d like his $2 million. To the surprise of no one, Patrick, the true motherf***er that he is, didn’t pay.
Almost a year later, he finally did… put he short-changed a Pennsylvania poll worker who provided another case of voter fraud about $975000 of the promised total. Because he’s a lying s***bag.
We’ll note that at every step of the way during the Covid-19 pandemic, Dan Patrick has pushed back against mask mandates and vaccine mandates, but as Texas became an obvious candidate for bottom of the pack in Covid-19 cases and deaths, Patrick went on Fox News to blame African Americans for refusing to get vaccinated, and the lack of progress in stopping the virus… he blamed that on Texas Democrats…. Interesting considering that the GOP controls the Governor’s mansion, and the state legislature, and the courts there, yet they hold not responsibility.
After the Uvalde shooting, of course Dan Patrick had a stupid take, running onto his safe space on Tucker Carlson’s White Power Power Hour to call for schools to be fortified, arm teachers, and get rid of the real problem… too many doors on the school.
”Obviously we have to do more. We have to harden these targets so no one can get in ever except through one entrance. Maybe that would help. Maybe that would stop someone. But it’s really bigger than that, Tucker. We’re a coarse society. We’re a society that’s just at each other’s throats all the time. And we’re better than this as a nation.” Dan Patrick still remains in office at the age of 71… and in 2022, inexplicably won a third term in office. Texas remains in the hands of Christian nationalist madmen, and at this point, Patrick will even defend collecting fundraising from a white nationalist, and call for the resignation of anybody who calls him out for it.
