Our favorite ex-con ex-Congressman Jim Traficant (D-OH) appeared on Hardball tonight just to make everyone’s day a little brighter with a graphic description of what he’d do if he successfully ran for office.
“I want to get the IRS,” Traficant said. “Kick them in the crotch real good.” He said he’d also work to repeal the 16th Amendment, which gives Congress the power to collect income tax.
Traficant, who recently finished a seven-year prison term on corruption charges, hasn’t decided whether or not to run for public office again. “You never know, I may,” he said, because he’s none to pleased with Congress these days.
Mixing his metaphors in a way rarely seen, Traficant called lawmakers a bunch of “little lemmings” following each other over a cliff — and prostitutes on top of it. He recalled a time he said, on the House floor, that his fellow members were hookers: “They jumped up like 100 wounded TV evangelists.”
Video after the jump.
If they don’t do something to ease unemployment, he threatened, “I will come back down there.”
(We’re guessing that Traficant, one of the only representatives in history to be expelled from the House, wouldn’t be welcomed back with open arms.)
As to what he’s been up to since his release (besides auctioning off some of his best paintings, that is), Traficant said he’s been “speaking at a lot of these teabag — tea party rallies,” although he spoke highly of President Obama. “His heart’s in the right place,” he said.
