The Congressman Who Yelled “Lies” During the State of the Union Has a History of Crazy Outbursts
Rep. Derrick Van Orden at the Capitol last year.Tom Williams/AP
Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisc.) has an obvious problem with anger management. The latest example came on Thursday when the freshman Republican from Wisconsin shouted “lies” at President Joe Biden during the State of the Union.
The interruption came after Biden criticized Donald Trump for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Fellow Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan has demanded that Van Orden apologize for his conduct, saying that Van Orden “continues to embarrass Wisconsin and the United States Congress with his constant unbecoming behavior.”
Van Orden defended his conduct in a radio interview on Friday in which he claimed that Biden’s speech “could have been delivered by Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong or President Xi.” In some respects, Thursday’s outburst was a sign of progress. Unlike two previous incidents, Van Orden was shouting at an adult this time.
Van Orden got in trouble last year for yelling at a group of 16- and 17-year-old Senate pages for lying on the floor of the Capitol Rotunda to take photos. According to a transcript written by one of the pages immediately after the incident, Van Orden said some of the following things to the teenagers:
“Wake the fuck up you little shits.”
“What the fuck are you all doing?”
“Get the fuck out of here. You are defiling the space.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I don’t give a fuck who you are, get out.”
Van Orden never apologized. Instead, he defended taking the teenagers to task for “defiling” the Capitol and treating the building like a “frat house common room.” (After losing his first congressional race in November 2020, Van Orden went to the Capitol on January 6 but did not enter the building.)
Shouting at a Library Page
In 2021, Van Orden made news for yelling at Kerrigan Trautsch, a then-17-year-old page at the Prairie du Chien library in Wisconsin. Van Orden, who was running for Congress at the time, took issue with a Pride Month-themed display in the children’s section of the library.
The main target of Van Orden’s rage was A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, a satirical children’s book written by John Oliver that imagines Mike Pence’s real-life pet rabbit Marlon Bundo marrying another rabbit of the same sex.
“His voice was loud, he was aggressive, he had his finger jabbing into [the book] constantly,” Trautsch said about what she described as “very uncomfortable” and “threatening” situation. Traustch said she offered to help only to have Van Orden keep saying: “Hush, you don’t have a voice. You don’t have a voice.”
Van Orden reportedly demanded multiple times to know who had set up the children’s book display so that he could “teach them a lesson.” Trautsch was too scared to tell him that she had set it up, saying, “He was full on shouting at this point and he kept aggressively shoving the books around.”
Van Orden ended up checking out nearly every children’s book from the Pride display. He filed a complaint that day about A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo that was obtained by the La Crosse Tribune. The complaint misidentifies Pence’s rabbit as the book’s author.
La Crosse Tribune
Nearly Bringing a Loaded Gun Onto a Plane
Later in 2021, Van Orden went through security at an Iowa airport with a loaded handgun in his bag. Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL, pled guilty, paid a fine, and was ordered to take a gun safety course.
In a statement released at the time, his campaign said “this situation was purely accidental.” The campaign noted that Van Orden did multiple deployments to combat zones and is a weapons expert.
Van Orden drew on his military experience for his 2015 book titled, Book of Man: A Navy Seal’s Guide to the Lost Art of Manhood. According to the book’s description on Amazon, “Stories of fist fighting, fishing, and driving fast cars are all interwoven with the principles of what used to be known as basic manhood, but has now become a lost art.”
In an interview to promote the book, Van Orden said it covers topics such as how to start a fire and kiss a girl. The congressman, who identifies himself as a “heterosexual male” on multiple occasions in the interview, stresses the importance of being a “renaissance man” who can go from hunting to discussing poetry. It’s unclear if he considers shouting at presidents and teenagers to be one of his many talents. Van Orden’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
