Rep. Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican so wacky his own brothers and sisters endorsed his Democratic opponent in the last election, is now in hot water for tweeting out a fake photograph of former President Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani shaking hands.
It’s a fake, and Gosar now claims he knew it all along.
The doctored image was first used in 2015 by a super-PAC supporting Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.
The actual photo showed Obama shaking hands with India’s prime minister, Narenda Modi.
Former President Barack Obama shaking hands with India’s prime minister, Narenda Modi.
Gosar tweeted out a photo-shopped picture of Obama with Rouhani, writing: “The world is a better place without these guys in power.”
The world is a better place without these guys in power. pic.twitter.com/gDoXQu9vO5
— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) January 6, 2020
In fact, Obama and Rouhani have never met.
And, here’s the big kicker, Rouhani is still in power.
Gosar, a former dentist, defended posting the doctored image, writing, “no one said this wasn’t photoshopped.”
But his original post did not indicate that it was faked.
The truth doesn’t really have much impact on Gosar who has developed a lightweight reputation on Capitol Hill.
And it’s not just his colleagues who think little of him.
Gosar’s siblings ― David, Gaston, Grace, Jennifer, Joan and Tim ― all endorsed their brother’s Democratic opponent in the 2018 midterm election.
“It would be difficult to see my brother as anything but a racist,” Grace Gosar said in a campaign ad.
Gosar proudly promotes a white nationalist view of America.
In October 2017, he suggested that the deadly white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was planned by “an Obama sympathizer” and that liberal activist George Soros may have been a Nazi collaborator as a youth.
Both suggestions were lies.
During a congressional hearing last year, Gosar invoked a taunt that you’d more expect to hear on a playground than during a Congressional hearing.
‘Liar, liar, pants on fire,’” Gosar said to former Trump fixer and attorney Michael Cohen.
Next to Gosar was a poster of Cohen emblazoned with slogan.
Perfect, if you’re in an SNL skit, not Congress. (SNL did mock Gosar that weekend)
Kyle Mooney as Arizona’s Paul Goser on SNL.
Gosar, who grew up in western Wyoming, represents the 4th Congressional District, Arizona’s most Republican-leaning.
It spans northwest Arizona, from the Nevada border down past Lake Havasu City along the Colorado River to Yuma, and sweeps across the rural outskirts of the East Valley.
It is a district that once was represented by Bob Stump, a well respected and admired Democrat-turned-Republican who never made national headlines as a fool.