Feeling newly empowered, head House teabbagger Michelle Bachmann has been demanding a position in the House GOP leadership. She’s going to be disappointed, because I doubt that The Orange Man wants her to be the spokesperson for the party going into the 2012 election cycle. Anyway, she’ll be gone after 2012 as her district will probably be merged with that of another republican House member from Minnesota.
But she wins today’s Asshat award for her claim that the President’s upcoming trip to India will cost taxpayers $200 million a day.
To say this figure — $200 million a day — has made the rounds in the blogosphere would be a huge understatement. It has been repeated by nearly every conservative pundit in the land: Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, Drudge. Always with a healthy dose of indignation.
It also got picked up by U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Nov. 3, 2010, it was just the latest example of government excess and spending from the Obama administration.
“The president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day,” Bachmann said. “He’s taking 2,000 people with him.
Yeah, I guess you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet, Frau Bachmann. Didn’t you realize how stupid your claim was when you said it? Or did you just exercise the teabagger’s way of not checking your facts before opening your pie hole?
When she was asked where she got her figures, Frau Bachmann said that “these are the numbers that have been coming out in the press.”
Actually it’s a figure that came from just one source, a news agency in India, relying on an anonymous source. It was then repeated thousands more times in the blogosphere and over conservative airwaves.
The claim that the U.S. would be spending “a whopping $200 million per day” on Obama’s visit to Mumbai, India, originated in a report from the news agency Press Trust of India. It was an estimate attributed anonymously to “a top official of the Maharashtra Government privy to the arrangements for the high-profile visit.” Maharashtra is a state located in western India.
White House spokesperson Kate Bedingfield said “The numbers reported in this article have no basis in reality.” Sounds just like Frau Bachmann and the rest of the teabaggers – they have no basis in reality. Guess we just need to file this claim away alongside the death panels that grandma is going to have to start reporting to soon.