Republican Lawmaker Has To Pay $200,000 To Drag Queens He Defamed

A Republican lawmaker from New Hampshire has agreed to pay $200,000 to settle claims that he defamed two drag queens in the state. The state lawmaker, named David Love, made false statements about the two individuals during a discussion session about pending legislation and he accused one of them of being a “convicted sex offender” and said that the other was seen “rubbing butts” with children, both of which were completely untrue. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Everybody's gotta love a good story about karma, right? Well, as we all know, for many years now, Republicans have been out there on a crusade against drag queens because they believe that for some reason, drag queens are actually a threat to our children. Even though one of the biggest threats to our children based on reports all over the country for many, many years now, is actually coming from organized religion. But nevertheless, Republicans across the country, at the federal and even state level have been trying to pass legislation limiting the exposure that children can have to drag queens. And one of those people happens to be State representative David Love from New Hampshire. Here's what happened. Mr. Love, about a year or so ago, put forth legislation in the state of New Hampshire saying that libraries had to run background checks on anybody that was either working there, volunteering there.

If you're gonna read the kids, we gotta do a full blown background checked on you. And if he had left it at that, it's probably not that bad of an idea, right? Like it's a public space. Hey, let's have background checks. But the reason he was pushing for this was not to make sure that we kept actual bad people out. It's 'cause he didn't want drag queens there because Mr. Love, specifically during a floor session about the bill, he proposed named two drag queens by name called one of them a convicted sex offender, and said that the other one was seen rubbing their butt against children's butts.

Neither of those things actually happened. One of them was not a convicted sex, sex offender, and there is no evidence that they ever rubbed butts with children. Yet this man named these two people by name on the floor causing intense damage to them based on lies. And now, state representative love has to pay each of them a hundred thousand dollars to settle the defamation claims that they made against him. They have reached a settlement. It was announced this week. He has to pay each of them a hundred thousand dollars and issue a public apology, which he did saying, of course, he didn't take the blame. It was somebody else's fault. But here's what he said. After being provided with inaccurate information, information that I failed to verify, I publicly accused Robert Champion AKA Monique too soon of being a registered sex offender, and Michael McMahon, AKA Clara Devine of rubbing butts with children. Uh, I have since learned that those assertions were completely false. I wish to publicly retract those statements and apologize to Robert and Michael, you didn't verify 'em because you didn't want to verify 'em. Let's be real about that. Oh, somebody gave me fake information. There's fake information all over the planet

Right now. You can open up your Twitter app right now, and you're gonna be bombarded with fake information. That's part of what the internet has become these days, is just nothing but fake BS if you don't take the time to look at it yourself and figure out what's true and what's not. You don't get to sit there and say, oh, well, I was handed. No. You're a frigging lawmaker dude. You got what you deserved, but this is how you fight back. This is what you do. When these people come out there making these outrageous claims, you take their to court. That is how we fix this. That is how we stop it. So I applaud these two individuals for taking on this Republican lawmaker and each getting a hundred thousand dollars for it. That probably doesn't make you whole again after what he publicly said about you, but it is a good little way to kind of stick it to him because that's what that a-hole deserves.