The day after Oklahoma celebrated the birthday of its favorite son Will Rogers, two Republican lawmakers filed a bill to essentially spit all over part of his legacy. You can’t make this stuff up.
Sens. Nathan Dahm (R-Broken Arrow) and Marty Quinn (R-Claremore) want to rename part of historic Route 66, aka Will Rogers Highway, after a corrupt sitting president facing possible impeachment for pressuring foreign leaders to investigate an election opponent. You know, conservative values and all that.
Dahm, who is probably best known for doing and saying and tweeting dumb things for attention (remember the bill that would have made “all wildlife found in this state … property of Almighty God”? Yeah, he wrote that.), went on KOCO to explain why he initially picked Route 66.
Apparently, the highway goes through Commerce, Oklahoma — not through either senators’ districts — which he said would “be a good nod to the commerce and industry that president Trump has brought back” to Oklahoma and the United States.
Well, if that’s the criteria, how about one in the town of Braggs? That would be a good nod to everything that comes out of Trump’s mouth in lieu of a town named Lies. Or maybe Devol? That one’s pretty self-explanatory, and the town’s population was roughly 150 in 2010, so the damage would be minimal.
Unfortunately, Dahm likes to go all-out when fishing for attention, so he’s not quite backing off tarnishing Route 66.
“Normally when naming a section of highway after somebody, it’s usually 2 miles long,” he told KOCO. “This one section that ODOT identified was 4 miles long, so with President Trump, everything being huge, I thought doing something larger than normal would be appropriate as well.”
Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell, who also serves as secretary of tourism and branding, recognized how bad this move would be for tourism and spoke to Dahm about looking at other highways to desecrate with the President Donald J. Trump Highway name. Associated Press even wrote a story saying Dahm ditched the bid, to which Dahm responded via Twitter—the account of every immature high school troll with too many gifs—that he hasn’t abandoned the idea. He also called AP fake news and “the enemy of the people,” but he’s a Trump brown-noser, so that’s par for the course.
