Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), a former Auburn University football coach who defeated Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) in a landslide during the 2020 elections, apparently forgot to brush up on grade school-level U.S. history and civics before he decided to be a part of the government.
A revealing interview with the Alabama Daily News on Thursday showed that Tuberville did not know what the three branches of the U.S. government are.
“You know, our government wasn’t set up for one group to have all three of branches of government. It wasn’t set up that way, our three branches, the House, the Senate and executive,” the senator-elect said, apparently unaware that the House and Senate form one legislative branch and omitting the judicial branch altogether.
Additionally, he incorrectly asserted that Al Gore was president-elect for 30 days in 2000.
Those weren’t the only, uh, flubs: Tuberville also indicated that he didn’t understand what World War II was about.
“My dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe of socialism,” he told the Daily News (it was fascism, not socialism).
That wasn’t even the first time the incoming lawmaker had misidentified the basis for U.S. involvement in World War II: During his victory speech on election night, Tuberville told supporters his father was “liberating Paris from socialism and communism” during the war.
The Alabama Republican also had a difficult time explaining the Voting Rights Act in September, per a recording published by HuffPost.
“You know, the thing about the Voting Rights Act is…it’s…you know…there’s a lot of different things you can look at it as,” he stuttered when asked if he supports extending the law. “Who’s it going to help? What direction do we need to go with it? I think it’s important that everything we do we keep secure. We keep an eye on it. It’s run by our government.”
