Rick Perry

Subterms

    Latest story

    163 Shares199 Views

    Rick Perry hints at 2024 presidential bid and revives memories of debate gaffe

    by

    The former Texas governor Rick Perry’s announcement on Sunday that he could mount a third run for the Republican presidential nomination encountered widespread mockery over a famous debate stage gaffe in which he forgot the name of a government department he said he would abolish.But Perry, 73, also ran into stormier waters, being accused of lying regarding his alleged involvement in Donald Trump’s election subversion.Perry is the longest-serving Texas governor, in office between 2000 and 2015. A telegenic ex-air force pilot, he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 and 2016.Both campaigns flopped but, speaking to CNN on Sunday, he said a third run was “something that I haven’t taken off the table”.In response, many observers pointed to Perry’s debate stage nightmare in Rochester, Michigan, in November 2011.Perry said then: “It’s three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, education, and the uh … what’s the third one, there? Let’s see … Commerce, education and the, uh, um uh … The third agency of government I would do away with, uh, education, commerce, and, let’s see … I can’t. The third one. I can’t.“Oops.” The third department turned out to be the Department of Energy, which Perry eventually led under Trump’s presidency. During his confirmation process, he told senators he regretted calling for the department to be eliminated.Trump now faces unprecedented legal jeopardy but enjoys commanding leads in Republican polling. On Sunday, Perry declined to endorse him.“He may get to hear me call him names again,” Perry said, a reference to the 2016 campaign which he quit after failing to qualify for a CNN debate featuring no fewer than 11 presidential hopefuls.He added: “It’s early in the process, I think, for any of us to sit back and say, ‘I’m for this person or that person.’ [A 2024 run] certainly is something that I haven’t taken off the table, but the chances of it happening are probably a little bit slim.“There’s a lot of time left, and we’ll see how this all works out.”Perry resigned as energy secretary in October 2019. To CNN, he denied complicity in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.In 2021 it was reported, first by CNN, that congressional investigators believed Perry texted Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, recommending that Republican-held state legislatures disregard wins for Joe Biden.Perry on Sunday told CNN: “I didn’t send it, and that’s kind of the interesting thing. As a matter of fact, if you go back and look at the congressional testimony, the congressman who brought that up said later, you know what, we’re not really sure where this came from.”In December 2021, the text in question was read on the House floor by Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who sat on the House January 6 committee. Raskin initially said the text was sent by a “House lawmaker” but according to CNN, “learned of the error … from CNN” as it reported Perry’s alleged authorship.On Sunday, Perry added: “I got called on [the texts] a couple times. Number one, it’s not my style of speak, or texting, so to speak. So again, there is a lot of misinformation out there … and that was one piece of it. So I can assure you that that didn’t come from me.”The Guardian contacted Raskin for comment.Another January 6 committee member, however, rejected Perry’s claim not to have sent the tweet in question.Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican now retired from Congress, tweeted: “Well, that’s a lie because he did.” More

    More stories

    • 188 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Rick Perry says Texans will endure blackouts 'to keep the government out of their business'

      by

      Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who became Donald Trump’s energy secretary, has said that Texans would willingly endure longer periods of sub-freezing temperatures if it stymied Democrats’ energy policy and efforts to combat climate change.“Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business,” Perry was quoted saying in blog post published Wednesday on the website of Republican congressman Kevin McCarthy.The blog post had asserted that those “watching on the left may see the situation in Texas as an opportunity to expand their top-down, radical proposals. Two phrases come to mind: don’t mess with Texas, and don’t let a crisis go to waste”.Perry’s comments come as millions of Texas are struggling with a brutal winter storm, which created a surge in demand for electricity to warm up homes unaccustomed to such extreme lows, buckling the state’s power grid and causing widespread blackouts. Frigid temperatures and snow have covered most of the central US this week, resulting in at least two dozen deaths, but Texas in particular has reeled because most of its power is on a state-run grid that has repeatedly been described as mismanaged.Residents of the Lone Star state are lining up for grocery stores that are running out of food. Pipes have burst because of the cold, leaving residents without water to drink or prepare food. Many are scrambling to find shelter in buildings with electricity. Multiple municipalities have instituted “boil water” orders, as power outages have impacted water treatment facilities.Meanwhile, many Texans slammed authorities for their handling of the crisis. The severe winter storm has, among some Republicans, been used to open up a new culture war around the expansion of renewable energy, which is a stated priority of the Biden administration in order to address the climate crisis.Perry was among the many Republicans who falsely claimed that frozen wind turbines spurred the mass electricity shutdowns. In reality, the utility system’s failure to prepare for perils presented by cold temperatures – such as frozen natural gas pipes – had a significantly larger role in this crisis.Renewable energy sources such as wind did see failures; these lapses contributed to 13% of Texas’ power outages, while generating approximately 25% of the state’s winter energy. But sources such as coal, gas, and nuclear power ceded nearly twice as many gigawatts of power due to the low temperatures.Nonetheless Greg Abbott, Texas’ governor, voiced anti-wind sentiments similar to Perry’s.“This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” the Republican governor told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday. “Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10% of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis … It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary.”Abbott’s attack contradicts the operators of the Texas grid, which is overwhelmingly run on gas and oil, who have confirmed the plunging temperatures caused gas plants to seize up at the same time as a huge spike in demand for heating. Nevertheless, images of ice-covered wind turbines, taken in Sweden in 2014, were shared widely among conservatives on social media as proof of the frailty of clean energy.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman behind the Green New Deal platform, said that Abbott was “blaming policies he hasn’t even implemented for his own failures” while the renewable energy industry also hit back.“It is disgraceful to see the longtime antagonists of clean power engaging in a politically opportunistic charade misleading Americans,” said Heather Zichal, chief executive of the American Clean Power lobby group.Oliver Milman contributed to this report. More