Democrats’ efforts to impeach President Donald Trump are going over with the public like a juicy, wet fart.
Seriously. Such wind was broken live on MSNBC on Monday night on the eve of the Democrats’ next round of impeachment hearings on Tuesday, where a Democrat Congressman helping lead the charge for impeachment was being interviewed by a network host. Then, mid-interview, a loud fart broke out on air.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) denied Monday evening that it was he who ripped the massive fart live on MSNBC during an interview with Chris Matthews on Hardball.
Meanwhile, Matthews and MSNBC remain silent on whether they are owning up to the blast of flatulence that interrupted the top Democrat’s argument backing House Democrats’ push for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
During the video, as the fart was being ripped, Swalwell pauses and appears to smirk as he says, “The evidence is un-contradicted that the president used taxpayer dollars…”:
BuzzFeed, the leftist website, conducted an immediate investigation into who passed gas on MSNBC. The outlet’s Addy Baird noticed Swalwell’s pause and smirk, too, writing: “The Democrat, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, appeared to react to the fart with a brief pause, while attempting not to smile.”
Baird then writes that the clip went viral online, causing Swalwell to deny it on the record to BuzzFeed:
As the clip of Swalwell quickly circulated on the internet, some began to speculate that the California representative was the one behind the loud flatulence.
But in a text to BuzzFeed News on Monday night, Swalwell denied having anything to do with it.
“It was not me!!!!!” he wrote. “Ha. And I didn’t hear it when I was speaking.”
Pressed by this reporter, Swalwell denied again having heard the fart, before adding, “It’s funny tho.”
Many on Twitter mocked Swalwell’s denial, because, as everyone knows when it comes to the old rules of flatulence, he who denied it supplied it:
This old tweet of Swalwell talking about wind behind him resurfaced Monday evening amid the controversy:
BuzzFeed’s Baird notes in her investigation that MSNBC did not respond to BuzzFeed’s comment request. “MSNBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment,” Baird wrote.
But the show’s official Twitter feed later tweeted this out, after removing a now-deleted Spiderman v. Spiderman meme:
But as others have pointed out, right before the fart, the camera cut to a one-shot with just Swalwell on screen, hiding for a moment Matthews from his program’s viewers:
S.E. Cupp also argued in the thread that the acoustics of the two different potential culprits’ locations lean more towards Matthews letting one rip:
Swalwell later took the Hardball tweet and turned the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into a giant fart joke by claiming it was “TOTAL EXONERATION,” like how Trump claimed the report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller was “total exoneration” of him when it came to now-proven-false allegations he or his 2016 campaign colluded with Russians to interfere in the 2016 election and the false claims that he obstructed Mueller’s investigation:
The controversy sent the hashtag #FartGate trending on Twitter–uniting people from all political perspectives ranging from Donald Trump, Jr., and other right-wingers to people throughout the establishment media and even leftist actress Alyssa Milano:
What’s more, sources on Capitol Hill tell Breitbart News that Republicans are currently formulating the best possible ways to bring #FartGate into this week’s hearings. It remains to be seen if they will actually do it or not, but #FartGate is just the latest air to come out of the Democrats’ case for impeachment.