Pat Robertson’s “The 700 Club” today profiled right-wing fears about the U.S. military’s Jade Helm 15 exercise, a conspiracy theory that reporter Jennifer Wishon blamed on “the fact that a vast majority of Americans simply don’t trust the government, a level of mistrust that has peaked under the Obama administration, driven by what many believe to be violations of the Constitution and civil liberties.”
Wishon interviewed Rep. Louie Gohmert, a purveyor of the Jade Helm 15 theory, to confirm that President Obama is in fact to blame for fears that the U.S. government is about to invade Texas and impose martial law.
“At first, people were not sure what to think: Do we have to worry about martial law? Is our federal government coming in and gonna practice imposing martial law on Texas?” Gohmert told Wishon. “This is actually taking areas of our home country, the United States, and saying Texas is hostile, Utah is hostile, Southern California is hostile and we’ve got to take it back from the ‘hostiles.’ I find that incredibly offensive.”
After explaining that the Jade Helm 15 map looks a bit too much like the electoral college results from the 2012 election, Gohmert blamed the whole right-wing freak-out on Obama: “When my own commander-in-chief through his subordinates is just fine with, for games purposes, declaring an enemy of two or more of your states, I got a real problem with that, that is one of the most insensitive, outrageous things that a military commader could do.”
Gohmert’s conspiracy theory, as well as being unhinged, isn’t even internally consistent, as the Jade Helm map lists the blue state of New Mexico as “leaning hostile” and the red state of Arizona as “leaning friendly.”
