Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has been trying very hard to shore up Republican base support in anticipation of possibly being indicted on federal sex trafficking charges, and that means Gaetz jumped at a chance to say the words criticalracetheory at Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley. (Yeah, an alleged sex trafficker who’s been exposed as part of a sex crimes ring is on the House Armed Services Committee. Republicanism!)

Gaetz, along with fellow Florida accomplice Rep. Mike Waltz, wants to know if anybody at West Point has been teaching our timid and impressionable young officers about criticalracetheory, which Republicans at this point evidently believe is some sort of airborne illness, because teaching cadets this thing that nobody but a bare handful of graduate students and law schools have even heard of before it became the newest propaganda buzzword among trickle-down sex traffickers would be very, very bad. A much worse thing than, say, House Republicans inciting a deadly insurrection, for example.

Republicanism’s newest Most Visible Child Trafficker might have thought he was knocking out a few quick lines for his campaign staff to edit into a new ad, but Gen. Mark Milley wasn’t having it today. Maybe Milley was already having a bad day or maybe Milley just doesn’t like slickhaired child rapists, but when given an opportunity to respond to Gaetz’s showboating by Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, Milley cleaned Gaetz’s greasy clock.

“I do think it is important, actually, for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read. And the United States Military Academy is a university. And it is important that we train and that we understand, and I want to understand white rage—and I’m white—and I want to understand it.

“So what is it that that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out. I want to maintain an open mind here, and I do want to analyze it. It’s important that we understand that because our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and guardians, they come from the American people. So it is important that the leaders, now and in the future, do understand it.

“I’ve read Mao Zedong, I’ve read, I’ve read Karl Marx, I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. So what is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding about the country that we are here to defend?”

Oh, he looks pissed. He looks very pissed. He looks like a general who checked in on Gaetz’s toilet-cleaning duties only to find him crouched in a bathroom corner looking at porn.

Fascinatingly, Milley was also able to identify what “critical race theory” actually consists of, in contrast to the hoaxes being perpetrated by Republican promoters of fascism, so it seems the Trump team’s efforts to purge all book learners from positions of power wasn’t as thorough as they might have hoped. In terms of answering the actual question, it was the secretary of defense who did that. No, criticalracetheory is not something taught at West Point.

Just like it’s not taught in kindergartens, or in high schools, or in pizza parlors, or skate parks, or in antifa-sponsored puppet shows that spontaneously pop up from storm drains. It’s not a thing. It’s the Republican propaganda equivalent of telling you that bull sharks that hate white people are going to come through your water pipes because the gubbermint refuses to put enough lead in them these days—useful for rousing the base into yet another racist panic, but fictional.

Ah. That exchange was pleasant, though. I really think people not taking Gaetz’s bullshit could become a new national pastime. It could be its own Netflix show.