The Sorry Truth About Rep. Derrick Van Orden
Wisconsin Republican just can’t stop making a fool of himself.
ON BEHALF OF THE ENTIRE STATE of Wisconsin, I would like to apologize for the statements, actions, and indeed the very existence of U.S. Congressman Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.). Although he is in fact an elected representative, he is not representative of the vast majority of us Wisconsinites. In fact, this guy embarrasses the hell out of us.
Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL and bit-part movie actor (in the 2012 film Act of Valor, he delivers the line “Shit filter’s full” while interrogating a terrorist), was re-elected last November to a second term on the strength of heavily gerrymandered congressional maps. Of the thirty-two bills and resolutions Van Orden sponsored in the 118th U.S. Congress (2023–24), exactly none became law; just three bills passed the GOP-controlled House before dying in the Senate, and a single Van Orden resolution received agreement in the House: It encourages all Americans to “engage with veterans.” A legislative titan he is not.
Despite this sorry record, Van Orden has nonetheless managed to make a name for himself in Congress, placing high in such categories as crudest, meanest, dumbest, and most obnoxious.
He’s been edging out competition in these categories for years. In August 2023, I wrote a piece for The Bulwark that ran under the headline, “Derrick Van Orden Makes No Apologies for Being a Jerk.” At that time, he had just drawn national attention for having vulgarly berated a group of 16- and 17-year-old Senate pages who were in the Capitol just after midnight, engaged in a Senate page tradition of lying on the Rotunda floor taking photos of the Capitol dome. Van Orden happened upon them after leaving an event in his Capitol office at which the beer and liquor had flowed freely.
“Wake the fuck up, you little shits,” he shouted. “What the fuck are you all doing? Get the fuck out of here.” Van Orden called the teenagers “jackasses” and “pieces of shit,” reportedly “screaming inches from the pages’ faces.” His outburst drew sharp condemnation, including a public rebuke from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.): “This is inexcusable and embarrassing behavior for a member of Congress or any adult for that matter. The Congressman should do the right thing and apologize.”
Apologize, Van Orden did not. Instead, he issued a statement bizarrely accusing the pages of “threatening a congressman with bad press to excuse poor behavior,” adding, even more bizarrely, “Luckily, bad press has never bothered me and if it’s the price I pay to stand up for what’s right, then so be it.”
Okey dokey.
Van Orden was similarly bereft of contrition in 2021 when he upbraided a 17-year-old girl who was working at a public library in his district in western Wisconsin. The then-candidate for Congress was upset to see a display of LGBTQ-themed books that had been set up in recognition of Pride Month. “His voice was loud, he was aggressive, he had his finger jabbing into [the book] constantly,” the girl told the local paper. “He was full-on shouting at this point and he kept aggressively shoving the books around.”
Again, true to form, Van Orden could not muster an apology, instead issuing a statement in which he claimed the moral high ground: “There are people who continue to divide us as Americans for political purposes,” he wrote. “I will not allow them to further degrade the relationships we have as citizens.”
What a piece of work this guy is.
Also in 2021, before he was first elected, Van Orden got nabbed at an airport in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with a loaded handgun in his carry-on luggage, for which he was fined and ordered to take a firearms-safety course. Of course, Van Orden framed the experience in a way that deflected blame and minimized culpability, with his campaign issuing a statement proclaiming him “a decorated Navy SEAL veteran with 5 deployments to combat zones who is an expert with firearms and firearm safety.” Why, he should be allowed to bring loaded guns on planes!
This all was, as I noted at the time, part of a pattern: Van Orden’s deplorable behavior “is always excusable and never his fault.”
SINCE THIS EARLIER ELUCIDATION, Van Orden’s deplorableness has continued, including his social-media meltdown last year in response to Trump’s conviction on thirty-four felony counts for falsifying business records to hide hush-money payments to a porn actress.
In one post, Van Orden described presiding Justice Juan Merchan as “Communist Scum.” In another, he ran Merchan’s picture alongside that of Roland Freisler, a Nazi judge few would recognize, with the message “Same vibe, different hair stylist.” He also derided former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a fellow Republican, for saying “the jury verdict should be respected.” Van Orden quote-tweeted Hutchinson to broadcast his reply: “You have just permanently disgraced yourself and destroyed any positive legacy you had. Kick Rocks, coward.”
A few days ago, on February 21, Van Orden posted on X the image of a very large shirtless man in overalls shopping at Walmart. In the caption, Van Orden mockingly claims the man is Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), a fellow member of the state’s congressional delegation and Van Orden’s nemesis. He writes: “He has to go incognito because all of the farmers just love him for the zero work he has done for them.” I’ll spare you the image, although it’s available at the link above. But here is a sampling of the comments that were posted in response:
“What an embarrassment to the office. This is beneath even you.”
“Grow up, jerk. Act like a man for a change.”
“Real Wisconsin has no use for scrubs like you.”
“What a pathetic piece of shit you are.”
“How old are you? Grow the f up you drunken disgrace.”
“[D]oes your permanent disability from the military relate to being a fucking asshole?”
“Drunk again eh? Fuck you Derrick you disgrace to Wisconsin.”
“Good grief. You are a man baby. You were not voted in office to do this.”
“You are a fricking disgrace as a representative!!”
“WTF is wrong with you? How does any of this serve your constituents? Debate him like a normal human being or shut the fuck up and drown yourself in your booze.”
Was Van Orden chastened by this backlash? Did it cause him to rethink his behavior? Perhaps the remarks alluding to being drunk might make him want to distance himself from such a reputation? Are you kidding?
Three days later, this is what the congressman posted in response to someone who suggested he should consider “pushing back from alcohol”:
Again, I apologize. I am sorry that you had to see that. I’m even sorrier that this is not the most outrageous work product to issue from Van Orden in recent days.
You heard me. Read on.
ON FEBRUARY 18, VAN ORDEN introduced a House resolution calling for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer of New York for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Engelmayer’s offense? He temporarily blocked members of co-President Elon Musk’s DOGE team from accessing Treasury Department records on millions of Americans, including bank account and Social Security numbers, in response to a lawsuit filed by nineteen Democratic attorneys general. Or, as Van Orden put it in his resolution:
Engelmayer has abused his judicial office by using his authority to further personal or political interests, contrary to the constitutional responsibility to apply the law impartially, including the improper handling of this case in a manner that demonstrates favoritism or undue influence, undermining the fundamental principles of justice.
The resolution says Engelmayer, a former law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall who was appointed to the federal bench for the Southern District of New York by President Barack Obama, “engaged in judicial misconduct when he halted President Donald J. Trump’s Executive order establishing and implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency on purely political grounds, demonstrating clear bias and prejudice against the President and the 74,000,000 Americans who voted for him.”
Actually, Trump was elected last November with more than 77 million votes. The error has been pointed out but not corrected.
Van Orden followed his resolution with a post on Musk’s social media site X. “The time for Judicial Activism is over,” he proclaimed. “The American people gave @realDonaldTrump a mandate and no politician disguised as a jurist will interfere with it.”
Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) introduced his own resolution to impeach Engelmayer a few days later, alleging that “by making a political decision outside the scope of his legal duties, he compromised the impartiality of our judicial system.”
Both resolutions seem to have been inspired by Musk’s own insane assertions about Engelmayer’s exercise of judicial authority. (“A corrupt judge protecting corruption,” Musk posted. “He needs to be impeached NOW!”) Trump himself added fuel to the fire, declaring from the Oval Office, with Musk at his side, “It seems hard to believe that judges want to try and stop us from looking for corruption.” Trump added, “It seems hard to believe that a judge could say, ‘We don’t want you to do that,’ so maybe we have to look at the judges because I think that’s a very serious violation.”
Van Orden’s resolution—which, as of this writing, has attracted a total of zero cosponsors (Crane’s has garnered several)—is plainly ridiculous. As his colleague Rep. Pocan gibed, “Maybe if Derrick took time . . . to read the Constitution, he’d realize there are three equal branches of government, and that we have laws in this country that must be followed no matter who is in charge.”
The editorial board of the Wisconsin State Journal also rang up the congressman, in a February 23 editorial titled, “Derrick Van Orden’s impeachment ploy is absurd, dangerous.” Van Orden’s resolution, the paper noted, claims Engelmayer “may have” acted with political intent, which it called a “new and incredibly low standard for impeachment” under which “any judge in the country could be similarly targeted for removal from the bench.”
“Van Orden’s grandstanding,” the State Journal warned, “will erode the integrity of our judiciary and threaten the rule of law.” It urged voters in his western Wisconsin district to “remember Van Orden’s rash impeachment ploy the next time he seeks their votes.”
Hope springs eternal—or at least once every two years.
IN 2023, WHEN THE STORY BROKE about Van Orden’s verbal assault on teenage Senate pages in the Capitol, he told a reporter—by way of framing the issue in a way that made his own disgusting behavior seem honorable—that the Rotunda had been used as a field hospital during the Civil War. “I would think that I’d be terribly disrespectful to lay on the grave of a soldier that died fighting for freedom,” he said.
Van Orden’s comments prompted Pocan to tweet: “Wonder if he told that to his fellow insurrectionists, who were beating police officers on the same ground?”
Yes, it’s true: Van Orden was among the many thousands of Trump supporters who showed up in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, seeking to overturn the result of a free and fair election. He has claimed he did not enter the Capitol grounds, but the Daily Beast later published photos showing him in a restricted area.
In recent months, Van Orden has drawn plaudits for demonstrating the uncommon courage to “speak against Trump’s pardons of the most violent offenders that day,” as the State Journal wrote in its editorial. The paper said he deserved credit “for defending police officers beaten by protesters,” which really does not seem that heavy a lift. Its basis for this claim, set forth in an earlier editorial, is that Van Orden told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “I do not support pardoning people who assaulted our police officers.”
First of all, it should be noted this bold declaration of nonsupport for cop beaters came only after the advocacy group Courage for America ran an ad in daily newspapers in Van Orden’s district urging his constituents to “CALL CONGRESSMAN VAN ORDEN TODAY AND DEMAND HE OPPOSE THE PARDONING OF ANY JANUARY 6TH INSURRECTIONISTS.”
Moreover, Van Orden’s comment was in no way a repudiation of Trump’s decision to pardon even the most violent participants in what the newly reinstalled president has rebranded as “a day of love.” Van Orden went on to say, in that very same Journal Sentinel article, that he “fully” supports pardons for those who “non-violently” entered the Capitol (perhaps by climbing through smashed windows), and further, he thinks those convicted of committing violence against police should have their sentences commuted.
“Gotta be very clear here,” Van Orden is quoted as saying. “The folks that assaulted police officers sentences should have been commuted years ago to match an equivalent crime from anywhere around the country.”
This is the essence and extent of Van Orden’s purportedly courageous criticism of Trump for turning loose the hooligans who brutalized law enforcement. It is actually an affirmation of his belief that they all should be released to receive their heroes’ welcome.
Wisconsin deserves better than to be affiliated with this awful man. So does the House of Representatives. So do we all. Please, dear nation, accept our apologies. Derrick Van Orden does not know how to make them.
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