'Sheer idiocy': Watch MSNBC anchor's brilliant debunking of GOP panic over 'dystopian' IRS

and

22 August 2022

The Republican talking point about Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act resulting in the hiring of 87,000 new armed IRS agents received a brutal fact check and debunking on MSNBC on Sunday.

"What if I told you the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service, the tax guys are coming to hunt you down, to shoot you, and maybe even kill you? Hold on, I know it sounds insane, but bear with me, because according to Republicans that's almost exactly what's about to happen," MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan began.

"The new Inflation Reduction Act is not so much a bill to address inflation, climate change, and the cost of prescription drugs, they say, as it is a legislative Trojan Horse design to award one Joseph Biden, 'Dark Biden' himself, with the personal and very lethal government militia armed to the teeth ready and eager to be sicced on law-abiding Trump supporters and hardworking small business owners."

"The right has become obsessed with this new, and I would argue extremely dangerous conspiracy theory," Hasan said. "You would be forgiven if you were unaware of this but they are all over it and you just don't have to take my word for it, watch for yourself. Here's just a small selection of the current craziness."

Hasan played clips of Fox News anchor Will Cain, Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

"I cannot believe I even have to clarify this, but to be clear, nothing you just heard there is remarkably tethered to our shared plane of reality. It is a mixture of lies, fantasies, paranoia, and sheer idiocy," Hasan said. "This is not just fringe voices, it's the whole GOP and the whole right-wing infotainment complex."

"Yes, the IRS is getting almost 80 billion in new money over the next decade from the inflation reduction act, but no we don't have a Biden-helmed dystopian police state ahead of us as a result and neither is the IRS on track to become the new Gestapo," Hasan said. "Here's some good old-fashioned debunking."

He proceeded to debunk each aspect of the GOP talking point.

"Look, Republicans on the right broadly want you to believe that the IRS has declared war on you, when the truth is that they declared war on the IRS on behalf of their big donors," Hasan concluded. "It's not the IRS that financially wants to screw you, it's the "GOP."

Watch:

From Your Site Articles