The Dems' Ad Hominem Attacks On Alex Epstein Were Appalling
The ad hominem attacks the Democrats levied against Alex Epstein at the recent House Oversight Subcommittee hearing were not only appalling, but also indicative of an inability to attack the actual substance of his arguments.
Alex Epstein, author and energy expert, recently testified before the House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs to advocate for common-sense energy policy in the United States.
Before and during his testimony, the Democrats decided it would be a more effective strategy to try to discredit him using ad hominem attacks against him, rather than refuting any of the actual substance of his arguments.
Probably the most egregious of these ad hominem attacks came from the ranking member of the subcommittee, Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), who claimed Alex Epstein was nothing more than, you guessed it: a racist. She then tried to justify her ad hominem attacks against him by taking some words that he'd said 23 years ago, completely out of context, and claimed that he was speaking at the time about race, and not major societal issues plaguing other countries and cultures. Luckily, Alex Epstein was given the opportunity to address the despicable ad hominem attacks against him, and put a very polite verbal smackdown on Rep. Cori Bush.
After the hearing, Epstein took to his Twitter account to further discredit Rep. Cori Bush's disgusting ad hominems. We've taken the liberty of embedding the tweet below.
When I agreed to testify about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, I didn't expect the hearing's lead Democrat, @CoriBush , to make a prepared statement falsely accusing me of having "espoused White Supremacist views"!
— Alex Epstein (@AlexEpstein) March 9, 2023
Fortunately, I got the chance to respond.
Here's how it went. pic.twitter.com/lgS4RNlbyz
But perhaps a more entertaining (and unique, because let's face facts, calling someone a 'racist' in today's society probably won't win any awards for originality) ad hominem attack came from Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), who ironically began her testimony by stating "some of the behavior of [her] colleagues and how they've addressed the witnesses [was] unbecoming of [the] institution." It's unclear exactly whom on the committee she was referring to, but one can surmise it probably wasn't her colleague Rep. Cori Bush. Shortly into Rep. Stansbury's opening statement, she first referred to Alex Epstein and Ilia Bouchouev (another witness) as "fossil fuel folks." We're not quite sure how being "fossil fuel folks" would discredit them (especially since the Democrats' witness was a "climate change folk," using the Dems' own terminology, (and this didn't seem to discredit him in any way during his equally-as-biased testimony), but we digress...
Rep. Stansbury then leveled a quintessential ad hominem attack on Epstein claiming, because of his background, that he "lacked basic credibility" and therefore shouldn't be testifying before Congress (despite the fact that Epstein was likely the most educated and informed person on U.S. energy policy in the entire room at the moment). Rep. Stansbury then outright lied and claimed that Epstein was present before Congress "on behalf of the fossil fuel industry." Epstein then corrected her and told her to her face that she was lying.
It should be noted that Rep. Stansbury also attempted to attack witness Ilia Bouchouev by asking him whether or not he once worked for the Koch brothers (as if that would somehow discredit his testimony).
Rep. Stansbury spent most of her five minutes talking at Epstein instead of asking him and the other witnesses questions (which seems to be a typical grandstanding technique amongst the Democrats these days), and most of what she said surprisingly wasn't disingenuous, only because she actually is in fact as stupid as she sounded, and was not being insincere (she actually believed the nonsense she was spewing during her rant was true). At one point during her insensate rant, she even blamed Vladimir Putin for the U.S.'s current gas price emergency, completely ignoring that gas prices had increased on average over 40% in the U.S. before Russia's military even set foot in Ukraine. Then, she disregarded reality altogether and brazenly claimed that Joe Biden's actions of emptying the country's oil reserves "alleviat[ed]" the country's current economic crisis. That's funny, considering the last time we checked here at Ending Politics (two minutes ago), the U.S. was still in the middle of an economic meltdown, complete with inflation, failing banks, and near-record-high food and gas prices. Near the end of emotional rant, she claimed the Republicans were holding a "false" hearing. We're still not quite sure what she meant by "false."
After she was finished grandstanding, the chairman of the committee corrected her on the timeline, informing her and putting on the record that gas prices were well over 40% before Russia invaded Ukraine.
This was by far one of the funniest and most ridiculous house subcommittee hearings in history, mostly because of the abhorrent behavior coming from the Democrat House Representatives (which has become far more commonplace lately).
We highly recommend you treat yourself to some free entertainment and watch the entire hearing, which is full of great laughs. We've taken the liberty, as always, of iFraming the video below, courtesy of the Forbes Breaking News YouTube channel.
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