Yesterday, a video of Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of the more America First-leaning members of the House of Representatives, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, one of the most leftist members of the House, speaking together during the chaos in the chamber over Kevin McCarthy’s repeated, failed bids for Speaker.
Predictably, the clip took off. But not just because it was interesting to see the far right and far left mix and mingle like a dollop of oil dropped into water. Rather, the clip went viral because it got a hilarious “bad lip reading” dubbed onto it, and the stuff whatever genius made the edited clip put in their mouths is absolutely hilarious.
Watch it here:
This is excellentpic.twitter.com/HM3jZDX0IV
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) January 4, 2023
As you can watch, it begins with an outraged, animated-looking AOC saying “I’ve heard that the floor asked for shrubs to be put in the common areas?”
Rep. Matt Gaetz, replying, says “Yeah, you’re right.”
AOC, still looking very angry and animated, says “Nah, we will not let this slide. Because, like, when you do that-”
Then she was cut off by Rep. Gaetz, who said “Obviously we’d, you know, put in some rocks too.”
All of the sudden, AOC calms down, looks thoughtful for a moment, and says “Oh, interesting. All rocks are my friends. I didn’t know.”
Then, seemingly appeased, she walks away.
Hilarious stuff. People on Twitter, however, didn’t seem to get the joke. Instead they replied with outrage at the idea that Rep. Gaetz and Rep. AOC would be discussing rocks and plants in the common area during a fight over the Speaker of the House, saying things like:
“This is an actual recording. Goes to show why DC is…. You know the word.”
“Complete sickening conversation when we have 1000 other more important issues!!!! OMG”
“Please excuse my ignorance on the matter but does anyone know what the heck they’re talking about. Only shrubs & rocks I can think of pertain to gardening but I’m fairly certain thats not it.”
No, that was “not it”. According to the Intercept, the two were actually discussing whether Democrats would, as Kevin McCarthy apparently suggested to his more conservative colleagues, walk away and not vote so that he could ram through his Speaker of the House bid. AOC said that she told Rep. Gaetz that that was not the case.
Others got the joke but wished it was real, saying things like “This discussion is the least amount of damage that can be caused by our government so I’m saddened that it’s not real” and “I would feel so much better if I knew they were actually discussing that“.
Fortunately, a few people did get the joke and were able to have a laugh at both it and the people who didn’t get it was a joke. One of them said “The amount of people not understanding this is a bad lip reading video astounds me. This is hysterical.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from embedded YouTube video