Like a virus, the field keeps growing

By BRUCE LOWITT

The field of candidates for the 2024 presidential election grew to 23 today with the addition of Ron Johnson, Josh Hawley, Elise Stefanik, George Santos and Louie Gohmert, all of whom claimed separately in their announcements that front-runners Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis “are morons” and said the same of each other.

The proclamations come on the heels of recent entry into the race for the GOP nomination by fellow Republicans Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andrew Clyde, Kristi Noem, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz and Eric Trump – although Trump said he was “mainly trying to let my dad know that I hope he’ll say that he still loves me and, like, um, maybe he’ll unblock me on Truth Social.”

Johnson, R-Needles, said the main thrust of his campaign would be the elimination of vaccines “because you never know what’s in those tiny pointy things they poke you with. Vaccines cause injuries and they’re not all that rare. I had to wear a Band-Aid once when some doctor stuck me because he said he was trying to keep me from catching penicillin or something.”

He also said COVID is turning out to be “just another government hoax” and that “probably half of the million or so people the CDC say died of it were probably vaccinated, so there’s that.” And he said he supports global warming “because I’m freezing my ass off up in Wisconsin and we should do something about that.”

Hawley, R-Fist, best known for running from the Capitol on Jan. 6 like his hair was on fire shortly after saluting the mob that stormed it, said he wants to be president in order to restore America’s masculinity. “Trump’s grab-’em-by-the-pussy and rape-’em-in-the-dressing-room philosophy doesn’t go far enough,” he writes in his forthcoming book, Macho Man. “Show who you really are; do it out in the open.”

He also said if he was the Republican presidential nominee, recently impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton would be his running mate. “You couldn’t ask for a more zealous vice president, compared to the wuss Trump had,” Hawley said. “I mean, ‘Mother, may I?’ Really?”

Stefanik, R-Sublimaze, said she wants to ramp up her campaign against the infestation of drugs in the United States by wiping out Customs and Border Protection as part of the GOP’s goal to trigger a recession they can blame on President Joe Biden.

“Since he took office, over thirty-four thousand pounds of deadly fentanyl has been seized at the southern border. That’s, um, thirty-four thousand pounds times sixty-four thousand dollars a pound, street value. That’s two-billion dollars and I want to know what he’s doing with it.” she said.

Santos said his triumph in the Jeopardy Masters show, the no-hitter he pitched for the Oakland Athletics against the Los Angeles Dodgers and the 51 points on an NBA-record 17 three-pointers in Miami’s Game 7 playoff victory over Boston convinced him he has the best chance of winning the presidency.

“There’s nothing more important in government than honesty and I’ve already shown I’m prepared to govern like no one has ever governed before,” Santos said from the Bahamas, where he was advising Sam Bankman-Fried in the FTX founder’s fight to avoid extradition to the United States.

Gohmert, looking for something to do since voters ignored him and reelected Paxton as Texas AG, said he would revive his long-forgotten campaign against “terror babies,” a claim he first made in 2010 that foreign enemies were impregnating women and sending them into the United States to give birth to future terrorists.

“I’ll also be fighting homosexuality, which Trump and DeSantis say they’re against, but they won’t admit it leads to bestiality,” Gohmert said, “just like my granny said what I did would lead to blindness.”

In other news, Biden hesitated momentarily when asked about his reelection campaign, causing the computers and phone lines at the Democratic National Committee to crash when Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsom, Elizabeth Warren, Jared Polis, Raphael Warnock, Gretchen Whitmer and John Fetterman all simultaneously attempted to declare their candidacies.