The New Face Of The Insane Clown Party

Anna Paulina Luna prioritizes freeing rappers over her constituents’ interests

Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is “fed up.” In an angry X post last week, she castigated her fellow Republicans for their lack of urgency in solving America’s pressing issues. “We don’t need more grandstanding, we need results,” she argued.

The very next day, she devoted her attention to the urgent matter of freeing a rapper convicted of shooting an unarmed woman. APL took time away from congressional duties to write a long-ass thread spreading the “truth” about the rapper, Tory Lanez. Lanez was convicted on gun charges after shooting Megan Thee Stallion in 2020. Despite the rapper not even being an American citizen, Luna, who's supposed to represent the people of Florida’s 13th congressional district, feels it’s necessary to prove Lanez’s innocence.

This isn’t the first time Luna dedicated her X page to freeing the rapper. In a tweet thread on May 20th, she claimed Lanez was a victim of racism. “Tory Lanez was sentenced to 10 years—despite having no prior record—largely due to a firearm enhancement law now under scrutiny for racial bias,” she said. “Black defendants face a 92% higher rate of this enhancement. That’s not justice. That’s discrimination.”

This comes from a woman who claims to be an ultra-MAGA conservative.

APL embodies the Insane Clown Party mindset. She has no real principles besides entertainment. She will condemn Black Lives Matter one day, and then embrace the movement’s principles the next day to free a black celebrity. Her entire political focus is on silly matters. It’s all about gaining attention, nothing more. We can trust her to fully support Donald Trump, but that’s now the norm for most Republican lawmakers. Her embrace of the “systemic racism” talking point should discredit her in the eyes of the MAGA faithful.

Prior to campaigning for Lanez, Luna made her name demanding special privileges for new mothers in Congress and proudly sharing a bikini picture of herself. For over a year, she’s led the effort to get proxy voting for new mothers in Congress. This would allow the nursing moms to not attend congressional sessions and let other members vote for them. Her fellow Republicans oppose this as they feel it’s a dereliction of duty and unconstitutional for congressmen to not work.. Luna left the House Freedom Caucus over its lack of support for her effort.

Essentially, her main issue was to get special privileges to allow her to avoid work. This wasn’t a conservative issue at all, but it matters to her personally.

When old footage of her in a MAGA swimsuit emerged last year, Luna happily embraced the clip and shared it on social media. This inspired Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace to also share swimsuit pics. It truly was a defining moment for women in politics.

Luna’s other legislative concerns include getting more information about the JFK assassination and teaming up with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to push for credit card “reform.” The AOC bill would cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent. This sounds like a good idea on paper, but it’s actually dumb. While intended to help lower-income Americans and benefit all consumers, it would instead cut access to credit cards and make it more expensive to use them. As the Wall Street Journal noted last year in response to Donald Trump entertaining the idea:

The interest rates on credit cards reflect operating costs, including nonpayment. A 10% cap would effectively cut off people with less-than-pristine credit scores. After Illinois capped many consumer interest rates at 36% “all-in APR,” a study in the journal Public Choice said “financial well-being declined” for residents who lost access to short-term, small-dollar loans.

Why do Messrs. Trump and Sanders think it’s helpful to limit credit access and send folks to the pawn broker or leg breaker instead? Card companies might respond by raising fees, which is what happened to free checking after Democrats regulated debit swipe charges in 2010.

President Trump wisely ditched this idea when returning to the White House. APL did not. She kept up the pseudo-populism for attention-seeking purposes.

Many otherwise good lawmakers will occasionally do stupid things. Luna still votes correctly, especially when compared to some of her colleagues. Many of her actions would be forgivable. It’s lame for lawmakers to want to avoid their job and vote by proxy, but it’s not a huge deal. Promoting a bikini pic is standard thot behavior but what else can you expect from female Republican lawmakers. The joint effort with AOC is stupid but she’s not alone among MAGA Republicans in engaging in pointless populist grandstanding.

The Tory Lanez advocacy is a bridge too far. It would be one thing to want some random rap figure freed. It’s entirely another to adopt BLM’s idiotic ideology to do so. Coupled with her other shenanigans, it makes APL the embodiment of the Insane Clown Party. There’s no core principles here besides attention seeking and entertainment maxing. All it takes to win over the ICP is the veneer of MAGA and an anti-establishment vibe. APL provides that with a bikini shot on top.

Without Trump, the ICP would be a mere circus with no principles. Every possible position could be adopted so long as they could turn it into a conspiracy theory and blame the Democrats for it. (Luna, of course, blames Democrats for Lanez’s imprisonment.)

Republican lawmakers are incentivized to turn themselves into clowns by our current media environment. Nancy Mace makes a mockery of Congress every week with her stunts. But she knows there’s no price to pay. She’s resolutely pro-Trump, so she faces no real primary threat to her seat. She ultimately gets the endless attention without consequence. What more could a woman in politics want?

Luna follows a similar, albeit less insane course.

No Republican should call sensible anti-crime laws “racist,” especially in the context of advocating for a random rapper. It’s completely against the principles of a genuine Right. There are many clownish representatives, but Luna set a new benchmark with her Lanez crusade. Nationalist principles and serious political purpose were cast aside to advocate for this guy. Right-wingers should no longer respect Mrs. Luna.

It’s understandable why America depends on the executive and judiciary branches to make policy now. The legislative branch is filled with clowns who care more about social media engagement than getting anything done. Just look at Anna Paulina Luna.