Blue-checked Obama admin alumnus reminds Republicans that the IRS was founded 'to end slavery and to burn white supremacy to the ground'

When Joe Biden signed the insanely dishonestly named Inflation Reduction Act into law, he was effectively giving the federal government a truckload’s worth of new tools to screw over hardworking Americans. And 87,000 of those tools will be working for the IRS thanks to the $80 billion allocated for one of the most oppressive forces the government has at its disposal. Some of those tools will even be packing heat.

Americans already had good reason to be wary of and worried about the IRS, but now, they should be downright terrified. And Democrats will have no problem whatsoever looking us all in the face and telling us that we’ve got nothing to worry about. That’s what Brandon Friedman, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama, is telling us. Even more than than that, Brandon suggests, we should get down on our knees and express our gratitude that an entity as vital and wonderful as the IRS exists.

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted this message to his followers yesterday:

Happy Sunday.

Abolish the IRS.

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) August 28, 2022

And Brandon shortly thereafter took it upon himself to remind Cruz — and all of us — what the IRS has done to make this country great:

Republicans don't just hate the IRS because it pays for things like highways and social security. There's history here. They hate what it represents. The IRS was created in 1862 specifically to fund the Civil War, to end slavery and to burn white supremacy to the ground. https://t.co/zWg9IRti1v

— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) August 28, 2022

"Abolish the IRS" may sound like an innocuous anti-tax message, but it's literally a call to defund the U.S. military. The same military that crushed secessionists the first time. It's a fundamentally anti-government message. The insurrection continues.

— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) August 28, 2022

We don’t recall ever arguing that “abolish the IRS” is “an innocuous anti-tax message.” Taxation is theft, and there’s nothing innocuous about believing that you should be able to keep more of the money you’ve earned.

We also don’t recall ever hearing the argument that the IRS is necessary because it was created during the Civil War to fight slavery and white supremacy. That’s definitely a new one for us. So points to Brandon for creativity on that.

Ah, yes, the famous primary mission of the IRS, "to burn white supremacy to the ground." https://t.co/q5XLNMdI8m

— Damin Toell (@damintoell) August 29, 2022

Nailed it. That's exactly what I think every time I write a check to the IRS. /s https://t.co/0Oq4tLk3Dh

— Fusilli Spock (@awstar11) August 29, 2022

Heh.

What https://t.co/DOjgiY6Bga

— 卄𝕌𝐝sσ𝐍 🦔 (@auteurtheory__) August 29, 2022

(FYI, Brandon has limited replies to his tweets, so if you want to congratulate him for coming up with them, you’ll have to let him know via quote RTs.)

I don’t want to pay taxes because I want some slaves is quite a take lol 😂 https://t.co/R076K3s4k5

— SSGoodGirl (@USSGoodGirl) August 29, 2022

don’t be critical of the irs because it began due to the civil war is some of the dumbest argumentative i have ever heard https://t.co/3km8oEOSMO

— kaitlin, by definition, a woman (@thefactualprep) August 29, 2022

The IRS was then used to fund the Union Army warring with Indians for the next several decades, presumably as part of that same quest to combat "white supremacy" https://t.co/CoKPP4mhhQ

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) August 29, 2022

Whoops!