GOP Rep’s Office Denies He Ripped Trump as ‘Evil’ Forrest Gump: ‘Never Set Foot in a Safeway’
A spokesperson for Republican Congressman Peter King says he has never been inside a Safeway grocery store.
This random piece of politician trivia is only important because his office used it to prove he did not privately call Donald Trump “evil, really fucking stupid Forrest Gump,” as TBS late-night host Samantha Bee fingered him as the unnamed GOP lawmaker in conservative pundit Erick Erickson’s bizarre Safeway rendezvous.
When contacted by Mediaite for comment on the claim pushed by Bee — which the show purports to be “100% right” — and the liberal blog Wonkette, the Long Island congressman’s office said he did not attack the president in private and added that he does not even know Erickson.
“The story is totally untrue,” said King’s press secretary Kevin Fogarty. “He has never met or spoken with Erickson [and has] never said anything like that to anyone.”
King’s spokesperson went so far as to say the lawmaker “has never set foot in a Safeway” — the location that Erickson says the meeting with the unknown official and subsequent anti-Trump rant went down.
To fact check these claims, I went to the Safeway location in Georgetown — which, based on an Erickson Instagram post, appears to be where the two met — and interrogated every employee I could find on if they had seen a plump, grey-haired Irish-American male walking among “the cereal and dairy selections” with a pear-shaped cohort. I even pulled the “have you seen this man?!” act and presented witnesses with multiple photos of King, like I was wandering the streets looking for a lost puppy.
However, every employee I spoke to denied seeing the New York lawmaker in the store on the previous night, which suggests King’s denial may be sincere.
As the “final clue” in their story, Bee’s staff used one of King’s previous references to the iconic ’90s film Forrest Gump as proof that he is the congressman in question, since the lawmaker who spoke to Erickson couldn’t seem to shut up about it:
“It’s like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really fucking stupid Forrest Gump. He can’t help himself. He’s just a fucking idiot who thinks he’s winning when people are bitching about him. He really does see the world as ratings and attention. I hate Forrest Gump. I listen to your podcast and heard you hate it too. What an overrated piece of sh*t movie. Can you believe it beat the Shawshank Redemption?”
Oddly enough, it is true that King has referenced the movie an absurd number of times when discussing politics publicly or with reporters.
Going all the way back to 1997, he called a former IRA fighter “either a Forrest Gump from Ireland or the Manchurian candidate or both.” In 2011, he referred to himself as the film’s protagonist, saying he had “a Forrest Gump moment” after his meeting at the White House so-happened to occur just after the Osama bin-Laden raid. Three years later, when discussing his presidential aspirations, King dropped another Gump reference: “Whether you end up being a Forrest Gump or a Ronald Reagan, you still are a part of history.”
But one piece of Gump-King trivia doesn’t help Bee’s assertion that he is the Forrest-hating lawmaker. In 2017, King lauded Emmy award winning actor Gary Sinise — best known for playing Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump — as “a true American patriot.” It also makes sense that King would cite the film — many lawmakers do — given that it’s riddled with enough political references to make D.C. types worship it the way they do Hamilton.
So it seems that King — who, for God’s sake, really, really needs to watch another movie — might have opposite feelings on Forrest Gump than the closeted-Trump hater.
What’s more, Erickson describes his relationship with the unnamed congressman as amicable. “We have known each other for years and have been promising to connect this week while I’m passing through DC,” he wrote.
But Erickson and King appear to have bad blood: As recently as 2014, Erickson described King in several articles as “a man who raised money for a terrorist organization while that organization was murdering American allies” and “supported a Soviet backed terrorist group responsible for killing many,” all while “ignoring the blood on his own hands.”
That doesn’t sound like the kinda’ guy you invite on a date to Safeway.
[images via screengrab]
