Notoriously Dim GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert Is Being Dragged For Appearing To Think That Government Agencies Might Be Able To Alter The Moon’s Orbit

In news so absurd we couldn’t have possibly made it up, the “dumbest member of Congress” just questioned whether the U.S. might be able to stop climate change by altering the Earth’s orbit around the sun.

Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert made the comment during a House Natural Resources Committee hearing focused on combatting the effects of climate change. Claiming that a past director of NASA once told him that the orbits of the Earth and moon were changing, the House member from Texas asked Jennifer Eberlien, associate deputy chief of the National Forest System, if her organization was looking to space for answers on how to improve global warming issues here at home.

“I understand from what’s been testified to the Forest Service and the BLM [Bureau of Land Management], you want very much to work on the issue of climate change,” Gohmert began, via Gizmodo. “Is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit or the Earth’s orbit around the sun? Obviously, they would have profound effects on our climate.”

Eberlien seemed a bit stunned at the question, telling Gohmert she’d have to follow up with him regarding his orbital concerns. To be fair, she was probably trying to figure out if the Congressman was just joking because really, how can anyone be that obtuse? Gohmert responded to her answer saying, “Well, if you figure out a way that you in the Forest Service can make that change, I’d like to know.”

Now, in all likelihood, Gohmert probably doesn’t care that much about climate change and wanted to make some point about global warming being a ridiculous theory by posing his own, equally implausible solution. After all, this is the guy whose tooth fell out during a press conference and said his face mask gave him COVID — though he rarely wore it. He’s not the sharpest tool in the GOP’s shed.

Still, some people will no doubt latch onto this ridiculous idea and run with it on Reddit forums and QAnon pages so let’s set the record straight: Global warming is an absolutely real crisis that humanity is fueling far more than any changes happening to the moon’s gravitational orbit. In fact, the whole concept of Earth’s orbit changes — we circle the sun in different ways over the course of thousands of years, and sometimes we “wobble” on our axis — is something NASA has studied, written about, and given a name. They’re also fairly clear on why none of these changes to Earth’s orbit are the cause of global warming.

And yet, Gohmert doubled down on Twitter, slamming people for conflating the abbreviation for the Bureau of Land Management with the Black Lives Matter movement in an effort to make him look even more ridiculous.

As if the question in its original context didn’t do that job already. But don’t worry, Twitter had the appropriate response to Gohmert’s nonsensical answer to the global warming problem.