Conservative Congressman Ted Yoho, who worked as a veterinarian before he was elected to represent the 3rd District of Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives, promised he would not serve more than four terms. He lived up to the promise.
https://apnews.com/article/2660bb19f35b9101d3c51b93d4c99ebd
Yoho, who was elected to Congress in 2012, was named one of the 20 craziest members of Congress by GQ magazine.
GQ included this quote from Yoho, who explained his opposition to a proposed tanning-bed tax as follows: “I had an Indian doctor in our office the other day, very dark skin and two non-dark-skinned people, and I asked…, ’Have you ever been to a tanning booth?’ And he goes, ’No, no need.’ So therefore [the tax] is a racist tax, and I thought I might need to go get to a sun-tanning booth twice so that I can come out and say … got taxed because of the color of my skin.”
https://www.gq.com/story/craziest-politicians.
This quote, while a little odd, hardly merits including him among the craziest people in the GOP party or even among the craziest people in the GOP elected to political office in the state of Florida.
Yoho endorsed Trump and Trump endorsed him.
Yoho was such as enthusiastic supporter of Trump that he did not attend the testimony of key witnesses before the House Foreign Affairs committee in October 2019 to investigate whether there was reason to impeach Trump — even though Yoho served on the House Foreign Affairs committee.
He told CNN he didn’t think the possible impeachment of a president was important enough for him to attend.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/29/politics/ted-yoho-impeachment-depositions-cnntv/index.html
In December 2019 Yoho announced he would not seek re-election the next year. Yoho’s statement coincided with the announcement that Democratic House leaders had filed articles of impeachment against Trump.
https://apnews.com/article/2660bb19f35b9101d3c51b93d4c99ebd
The arch-conservative Yoho, with his record of unflagging support for President Donald Trump, could’ve then faded from Congress with little notice that he had ever been in Congress if he had not verbally and profanely attacked Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the steps of the Capitol in July 2020.
In doing so, Yoho became a “yahoo,” a term Jonathan Swift used in Gulliver’s Travels to describe “a crude, brutish or obscenely coarse person.”
He came to represent Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
Yoho angrily called Ocasio-Cortex “disgusting” for daring to suggest that that the stresses of poverty and unemployment were responsible for a rise in crime in New York City during the coronavirus pandemic.
You can certainly understand why Yoho, who lives in Florida, would be upset that Ocasio-Cortez rendered an opinion on what was happening in her congressional district.
His anger certainly had nothing to do with the fact that Ocasio-Cortez was either a Latina or a woman.
“You are out of your freaking mind,” Yoho told Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio-Cortez told Yoho he was being “rude.”
Yoho then walked away from Ocasio-Cortez while delivering the last word.
“Fucking bitch,” he said, loudly enough for witnesses to hear.
Once the exchange because public, Yoho issued a non-apology apology that said his obscenity had not been directed at anyone in particular.
Ocasio-Cortez would not let Yoho – or Yahoo – get the last word.
“Representative Yoho decided to come to the floor of the House of Representatives and make excuses for his behavior. And that I could not let go. I could not allow my nieces, I could not allow the little girls that I go home to, I could not allow victims of verbal abuse and, worse, to see that — to see that excuse and to see our Congress accept it as legitimate and accept it as an apology and to accept silence as a form of acceptance, I could not allow that to stand. Which is why I’m rising today to raise this point of personal privilege.
“And I do not need representative Yoho to apologize to me. Clearly, he does not want to. Clearly, when given the opportunity he will not. And I will not stay up late at night waiting for an apology from a man who has no remorse over calling women and using abusive language towards women. But what I do have issue with is using women, wives, and daughters as shields and excuses for poor behavior.
“Mr. Yoho mentioned that he has a wife and two daughters. I am two years younger than Mr. Yoho’s youngest daughter. I am someone’s daughter too.
“My father, thankfully, is not alive to see how Mr. Yoho treated his daughter. My mother got to see Mr. Yoho’s disrespect on the floor of this house towards me on television, and I am here because I have to show my parents that I am their daughter and that they did not raise me to accept abuse from men.
“Now, what I am here to say is that this harm that Mr. Yoho levied, tried to levy against me, was not just an incident directed at me, but when you do that to any woman, what Mr. Yoho did was give permission to other men to do that to his daughters.
“He — in using that language, in front of the press, he gave permission to use that language against his wife, his daughters, women in his community, and I am here to stand up to say that is not acceptable.”
