At the end of January, new Republican member of the House of Representatives Cory Mills wanted to share with all his new colleagues the joy of his appointment to the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees. What better way, Mills thought, than to give them all…a dummy grenade?From Business Insider:
Mills sent a letter on Jan. 20 welcoming his colleagues “to the mission-driven 118th Congress,” which included a dummy hand grenade. Mills said he was “eager to work for the American people” and was honored to serve on the committee. “In this spirit, I am pleased to present you with a 40mm hand grenade built specifically for the MK19 grenade launcher,” Mills wrote. “These were made in the Sunshine State, first in the Vietnam War developed.” His colleagues assured them in a postscript that “these Florida-made 40mm grenades are inert.”
It’s good of him to notice. (From now on, we will refer to these grenades as “Grassleys”.)
Welcome to the 118th Congress. It could have been worse.
Mills (left) wants to make an impact.
Mills is a MAGA, through and through. He served in the Department of Defense under the previous president*. Before that, he served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and upon his return, Mills went into the riot control business, making a variety of armed police ammunition. In one of his campaign videos, Mills brags about how well his business has gotten in the summer of 2020.
In a campaign video posted to Twitter, Mills introduced himself as a veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, before explaining that he “came home” and “founded a company that made riot ammunition for law enforcement.” “You probably know some of our work,” Mills said with a smile, as ads began showing violent footage of tear gas being used at various protests across the country. According to campaign ads, tear gas was used against the following groups: “Hillary Clinton protesters” in Charlotte, North Carolina; “left-wing protesters” in Phoenix; “Antifa rioters” in Washington, D.C.; Denver, Colorado Black Lives Matter protesters; and Radical Left protesters in Philadelphia. “Now the liberal media is crying about it,” Mills said after the series of videos concluded. “I’m Corey Mills and I agree with this message because if the media wants to shed real tears, I can help them with that.”
for its part, politician Mills’ company, PACEM, was found to be selling tear gas not only to the country’s police force, but also rubber bullets to Hong Kong authorities, who used them on pro-democracy protesters.
PACEM Solutions was registered to work in Washington, D.C., as well as Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Kenya, Malaysia and Kuwait, according to Mills’ previous LinkedIn profile, which was recently deleted. It also provides so-called “support and advisory” services to authorities in Iraq, Ukraine, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Kurdish region, Malaysia and other countries.
In short, Mills is an arms dealer for law enforcement around the world.
In written responses to POLITICO questions, Mills said PACEM was “proud” to sell tear gas to law enforcement agencies in 2020, citing looting and vandalism following some demonstrations.In response, Mills said: “Products such as tear gas are approved and used by the Department of Defense, state and federal health departments. They are used every day to train our military personnel and [law enforcement officers]. Every officer or service member who uses these stimulants must experience them before being certified. For my part, I’m thankful that our officers have fewer lethal options to ensure order and preserve life. PACEM has stopped selling arms to Hong Kong, he said. “PACEM was never provided to the Chinese government,” Mills wrote. “Before the PACEM acquisition, ALS sold less lethal munitions to the independent government of Hong Kong during the ‘one country, two systems’ process. We have stopped selling any products to Hong Kong since China abolished ‘one country, two systems’.”
Mills has a conscience gifted with alibi, and those have proven to be very lucrative. PACEM was so successful that Mills was able to self-fund his campaign in Florida’s redistricted 7th Congressional District. He campaigned across the MAGA platform: election rejection, anti-vaxx propaganda, performative outrage at key racial theories, and mocking the Biden administration’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “woke up.” In November, Mills was elected with 58 percent of the vote. This gave him the opportunity to present a lovely welcome gift to his new colleagues.
As I said, it could be very, very bad.
Newt Gingrich set the precedent for the modern Republican clown show.
Now let’s go back to those exciting days in the past — especially the opening of the 104th Congress in the first week of January 1995. For the first time since 1955, Republicans control both houses of Congress. More specifically, under new Speaker Newton Leroy Gingrich, Republicans took control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1952. Takes place in the middle of the Civil War. ) Gingrich cultivated a new, young republican class that was both angry and stubborn. He educated them on the political utility of sarcasm and name-calling. He turned them against the legislative ideal of cooperation to such an extent that some of them opposed the idea of actual governance altogether.
This new attitude led to the shutdowns of 1995 and 1996, during which President Bill Clinton completely defeated Gingrich, boosted his re-election chances in 1996, and began the campaign that ultimately led to Gingrich as a viable The process by which the country’s political leaders were destroyed. Of historical importance, Gingrich’s strategy in 1995 was to hold the debt ceiling hostage in order to blackjack Clinton’s spending cuts. Gingrich complained that Clinton had damaged his credibility by trapping him in the back seat of Air Force One as he traveled to Israel for Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral. These two failed power games led Gingrich into an impeachment circus in 1998, which cost him most of his 1998 majority and ultimately his congressional seat as his own personal faults were publicized. Known, and his fellow Republicans are tired of being caught in a hopeless power game that ends up being nothing. But Gingrich changed the basic psychology of conservatism and republicanism. The new members of Congress who followed him into the House of Representatives in 1995 are the best proof.
The Republicans picked up 54 seats in the 1994 midterm elections, a staggering feat that brought into Congress many people who would dominate the Republican congressional caucus for decades. Among them were future senators Sam Brownback, Sucksby Chambliss, Roger Vicker, John Ensign, Tom Cobain and Richard Burr. Current MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was another rookie that year. The class also includes top nuts like JD Hayworth from Arizona, Helen Chenoweth from Idaho and Bob Barr from Georgia.Chenoweth was the darling of the militia masses in and around the Pacific Northwest (she was actually Quote from “Black Helicopter” as the EPA’s Raiders). Hayworth advocated for a solution to the immigration problem first posed by …Henry Ford in 1914. They were a bunch of people. They never really went away because Lindsey Graham Graham at the top of the occasional news cycle.
The precedent set by the Class of 1994 did not bode well for new Speaker Kevin McCarthy. After all, the caucus wasn’t really against Speaker Gingrich until he lost the election due to two shutdowns and impeachment. Class of 2022 not even in Speaker McCarthy yet become Speaker McCarthy. In fact, it came close to rejecting Speaker McCarthy’s idea entirely. Gingrich ascended to the speakership in an almost unprecedented wave of elections. McCarthy wobbled in the speaker’s chair after performing so poorly in the midterms that he needed the presence of serial stallion George Santos (if that’s his real name) to solidify his majority. Even with all the advantages Gingrich had over McCarthy, he ruined himself by overextending himself. McCarthy’s entire caucus was built on overstretch. Gingrich created his majority; McCarthy was created by his majority.
I hope he has a good place in his office to put his new fake grenade. It’s more symbolic than Rep. Cory Mills intended. The entire Republican caucus is a fake explosion.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently idiot americaA working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
