“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
That’s the way it was during the days of the Old West, or at least in 1962 when John Ford made “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”
As for now, not so much. We’ve got people making up stories out of whole cloth to make themselves appear heroic.
Meet Madison Cawthorn.
He — yes, Madison is apparently also a boy’s name — is the youngest member of Congress, barely 25 years old. He’s confined to a wheelchair.
He is also a major league liar.
He was riding with his closest friend, Bradley Ledford, on a 2014 Spring Break trip to Florida when Ledford lost control of his car and slammed into a concrete construction barrier. Here’s how Cawthorn tells the story.
“He was my brother, my best friend. And he leaves me in a car to die in a fiery tomb. He runs to safety deep in the woods and just leaves me in a burning car as the flames start to lick my legs and curl up and burn my left side. Fortunately, there was several bystanders who come by and they break the window open that they pulled me out to safety and they sat me down.
“The paramedics arrive and decided that I’m gone and I have no pulse, I have no breath. And I was, I was declared dead on the scene. For whatever reason, may it be adrenaline or divine intervention, I definitely believe it’s the latter, I had a deep inhale of breath.”
He said the accident, which left him partially paralyzed, prevented him from attending the Naval Academy.
But here’s the truth:
“That statement he made was false,” Ledford said. “It hurt very badly that he would say something as false as that. That is not at all what happened. I pulled him out of the car the second that I was able to get out of the car.”
In addition, while Cawthorn was in critical condition, no one was even close to declaring him dead.
Oh, one more thing. He had applied to the Naval Academy, but had been rejected for poor grades. He wound up going to an obscure Bible college.
Where by the way, numerous former female classmates have accused him of sexual harassment.
He was also one of the right wingers who helped incite the insurrectionists on January 6th.
If he weren’t paralyzed, he might have a future in Trump Jugend. This guy is scary in his disregard for the truth, and he’s definitely someone to watch.
By the way, Ledford says, Cawthorn admitted to him later that he knew his friend hadn’t abandoned him. He just wanted to make the insurance claim sound better.
Nice guy, huh?
His story does tell us one thing. It tells us what he would have done if the situation had been reversed. He would have been hiding in the woods while his friend burned to death.
Love those young Republicans.