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John Cornyn thinks "penis," "vagina," and "scrotum" are swear words

Cornyn’s campaign team triggered a feud with Patton Oswalt after the comedian and actor made a cameo in a campaign video for MJ Hegar.
Cornyn’s campaign team triggered a feud with Patton Oswalt on Tuesday after the comedian and actor made a cameo in a campaign video for MJ Hegar.

Although we know that quotes from Italian fascism founder Benito Mussolini are not off-limits for GOP Sen. John Cornyn, it would seem the words “penis,” “vagina,” and “scrotum” are.

Cornyn’s campaign team triggered a feud with Patton Oswalt on Tuesday after the comedian and actor made a cameo in a campaign video for MJ Hegar, a military veteran who’s running in Texas’ Democratic primary to unseat the 67-year-old Cornyn. In retaliation, Cornyn’s official campaign account attempted to humiliate Oswalt with the tried-and-true method of digging up old tweets. But the best Cornyn’s team could find were tweets that contained curse words or — perhaps even worse — anatomical references.

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Cornyn’s team screenshotted the damning — excuse us, d***ning — tweets and made sure to put asterisks over the expletives and also the words “penis” and “vagina” so that readers would not be offended.

“Oh my God,” Oswalt responded in a tweet. “Lemme put a nickel in the swear jar and then you can tell me about your crush on Theda Bara, you pointless fossil.”

The back-and-forth continued for some time, and Cornyn’s campaign team dug up additional tweets that included even more profanity, like the word “scrotum.”

Oswalt and his defenders responded by noting that Cornyn had dismissed allegations from Christine Blasey Ford during Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process that the then-Supreme Court nominee assaulted her when they were teens.

The move seemed to backfire spectacularly for Cornyn, as Oswalt ended up trending on Twitter.

“You can’t even trend when you’re being dunked on,” Oswalt tweeted. “What a sparrowfart you are.”

Cover image: Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, listens to testimony from pharmacy benefit managers during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 9, 2019, exploring the high cost of prescription drugs. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)