Watch Rick Santorum Take The Craziest Audience Question Ever — And Basically Agree With It
Rick Santorum, the 56-year-old former United States senator from Pennsylvania who is expected to stage his second run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, fielded a two-minute, 30-second ranting “question” from an audience member at an event in South Carolina Wednesday — a question that was so unhinged that it appeared in video of the event that even the ultra-conservative Santorum was uncomfortable listening to the bizarre diatribe.
And yet, when it was finally over — which happened only when a moderator cut the questioner off — Santorum seemed to agree with the strange, rambling claims made by the woman identifying herself as “retired schoolteacher, lifelong political activist” Virginia Eleasor.
Or at least, Santorum expressed no disagreement, even with Eleasor’s head-scratching assertion that President — or as Eleasor put it, “Communist dictator” — Barack Obama “tried to blow up a nuke in Charleston a few months ago.”
This is the greatest question ever asked… RT @ZandarVTS: Oh my dear sainted great aunt Angela. https://t.co/iva0hJl484
— Joshua Holland (@JoshuaHol) March 18, 2015
Watch the astounding video of what one sharp-eyed Twitter user who noticed it deemed “the greatest question ever asked,” above. The question from Eleasor begins at the video’s 18:16 mark.
For readers who don’t have the patience to sit through the video, here is the core of Eleasor’s lengthy rant:
“Why is the Congress rolling over and letting this communist dictator destroy my country? Y’all know what he is, and I know what he is. I want him out of the White House. He’s not a citizen. He could have been removed a long time ago.
“Larry Klayman’s got the judge to say that the executive amnesty is illegal. Everything he does is illegal. He’s trying to destroy the United States. The Congress knows this. What kind of games is the Congress of the United States playing with the citizens of the United States? Y’all need to work for us, not the lobbyists that pay your salaries. Get on board, let’s stop all of this, let’s save America.
“What’s going to stop — Senator Santorum, where do we go from here? Ted [Cruz] told me I’ve got to wait until the next election. I don’t think the country will be around for the next election.
“Obama tried to blow up a nuke in Charleston a few months ago, and the three admirals and generals — he’s totally destroyed our military, he’s fired all the generals and all the admirals who said they wouldn’t fire on the American people.”
As Bloomberg News columnist Dave Weigel pointed out, the startling reference to Obama attempting to “blow up a nuke,” comes from an online conspiracy theory that an oceanic earthquake thousands of miles off the U.S. east coast in October of 2013 — 17 months ago — was actually an attempt by the U.S. government to detonate a nuclear bomb in Charleston, South Carolina.
Eleasor’s claims that Obama “fired all the generals and all the admirals who said they wouldn’t fire on the American people,” most likely refers to several top military brass who were, in fact, fired over various scandals — including a casino poker cheating scheme in the case of one admiral, and a general’s highly intoxicated antics in the streets of Moscow in another instance.
As seen in the video, Rick Santorum fails to contradict any of the questioners macabre claims, merely demurring, “I’m not a sitting member of the Senate, so I’m not taking blame for any of that stuff.”
[Image: Mark Hirsch/Getty Images]
