After a tense exchange with Attorney General Eric Holder at Tuesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing ended with the Attorney General hurling what he believed to be a year-old insult at Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Rep. Gohmert joined Glenn on radio this morning to explain why he might actually get the last laugh.
“Let me go to Louie Gohmert, the great congressman from the great state of Texas. Louie, tell us the background of what Eric Holder said to you at the end of your exchange yesterday. This is one of the most insetting conversations I have ever heard come from a personal in the administration,” Glenn said. “He says, ‘Good luck with your asparagus.’ We had to look this up from a year ago, Louie. What is it?”
To recap: Last May, Holder and Gohmert got into a heated back-and-forth about whether the United States government could have done more to prevent the Boston Marathon bombings. The exchange ended with the Congressman declaring: “The attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus!”
Fast-forward to yesterday’s hearing, and Rep. Gohmert and the Attorney General were once again in a tense debate – this time over whether or not the Department of Justice has ignored requests to turn over certain documents to congressional investigators. After Rep. Gohmert’s time expired, the Attorney General went for the jugular with a juvenile ‘dis’ he had apparently been holding onto for nearly a year.
“Good luck with your asparagus,” Holder said smugly.
Rep. Gohmert’s “the attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus” comment was widely considered a bungle at the time, but, as it turns out, he used the phrase intentionally.
“[Holder and I] had a very heated exchange last year… There's a writer with TheBlaze that said I bungled the line – obviously he have didn't understand – but Percy Foreman was a very, very liberal criminal defense attorney. He was incredible in the courtroom, and when somebody started attacking his integrity, he stood up and said, ‘I object. He's casting aspersions on my asparagus.’ And people would scratch their heads, but it brought down the level of the rancor,” Rep. Gohmert explained. “So I was using a Percy Foreman line from criminal trials back probably 50 years ago.”
The reference obviously eluded just about everyone. But as Glenn, Pat, and Stu agreed, the context Rep. Gohmert provided makes the Attorney General’s flippant remark yesterday that much more offensive.
“That makes it even worse,” Pat said.
“For him to come back and say, ‘How's your asparagus,’ shows that this guy has held that for a year,” Glenn said. “I heard this exchange, and the vitriol and the hanging on to something for a year – this is a very dangerous man with this kind of power. He's a very dangerous man.”
Ultimately, Rep. Gohmert made it clear he is much more concerned with providing some kind of check to the out-of-control power this Administration has attempted to wield than what people think of his comments from a year ago.
“Look what they have done to people who have had the nerve to disagree with them. Other people say, ‘Man, Louie, you're kind of crazy to take on the attorney general,’” he explained. “But good grief! Somebody has got to have the executive branch – particularly the Department of Justice – held accountable. And, under the constitution, that is our job.”
“I have tremendous respect for you, and I know you stay close to the lord. Keep doing it. Let Him be your sword and your shield. They are bigger enemies of his,” Glenn concluded. “I will have that story corrected on TheBlaze right away.”
