Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert’s Tooth Appeared To Fall Out While He Was Speaking At A Press Conference

Republican Representative Louie Gohmert has never achieved the celebrity dunkable status of a Matt Gaetz or a Jim Jordan or even a Steve King, but not for lack of trying. He was part of the Tea Party wave into Congress during the Obama era, and the things he said were harebrained enough to inspire Mother Jones to place him on a 2009 list entitled “Capital Hill’s Most Unhinged Republicans.” But on Tuesday he suddenly went viral — not for something he said, but because it looked like one of his teeth fell out of his mouth while he was talking at a press conference.

The Texas representative was coming out hard against one of the major issues gripping America right now. No, not COVID-19. No, not outgoing president Donald Trump’s increasingly laughable attempts to overturn the election. No, not even about how much Piers Morgan looks like Brenda Fricker’s homeless woman in Home Alone 2. It was about…renaming military bases that were named after Confederate leaders? That’s still a thing, apparently! And as if to show that the GOP is literally falling apart, as he spoke he had to pause while a tooth-like object rattled in his mouth.

The above clip is normal speed, but here’s one slowed down and zoomed-in.

Gohmert later confirmed that it wasn’t a tooth. It was a temporary crown that had come loose. He then somehow managed to tie it into Hunter Biden’s laptop and (baseless accusations of) voter fraud, chastising reporters for being uninterested in a politician who isn’t very famous and is speaking about a subject people cared about over the summer.

Gohmert also tried to create a hashtag around “#Crowngate,” a quick search on Twitter shows it never exactly took off.

In fact, if you known Louie Gohmert’s name in 2020, it’s probably because he was one of many Republican politicians who tested positive for COVID-19, after being mask skeptics who played down the severity of a pandemic that’s currently spiking in places that voted for Trump’s failed re-election. One doctor speculated that teeth falling may be a long-term symptom of having had COVID-19; after all, we’re only now starting to see the grim side effects of surviving the disease.

Still, a New York Times piece says the jury’s still out on that one. Perhaps Republicans simply need better health care, to hook them up with better dentists. Maybe some kind of “Medicare for All” would be a good way to stop people from having teeth fall out while they’re speaking on camera?

(Via Mashable)