Rendell ‘not one for name-calling’; SOBs, idiots, wusses beg to differ

Rendell thinks Katie McGinty took things too far when she called Pat Toomey "an asshole."

McGinty apologized for the comment hours after saying it, at a Communications Workers of America union event Monday. Rendell told Politico reporter Burgess Everett her remarks were "probably a little extreme."

"I love Katie, but I’m not one for name calling," he said. "I think there’s too much disrespect in the business." He also said that she responded correctly in apologizing.

Is Rendell truly "not one for name calling?" It’s tough to agree. We vividly remember the time he name-called the whole country.

This was back in 2010, after the NFL bumped a late December Eagles home game against the Minnesota Vikings from a Sunday to a Tuesday due to weather. "We've become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything," he told a local radio station. "If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down."

After his comments went viral, Rendell not only stuck to his guns, in 2012 he published a book on the topic: A Nation of Wusses: How America's Leaders Lost the Guts to Make Us Great.

Wuss appears to be a common word in the Rendell lexicon. He called Chris Christie one in 2014 for rooting for the Cowboys. In 2012, he called then-Virginia Gov. Bob McConnell one for not voicing support for a ban on semiautomatic weapons.

"I like Gov. McDonnell and think he does some good things, but he is being nothing but a coward and a wuss when he won’t confront the question," he stated on MSNBC. That same year, the Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe reported that despite condemning stimulus funding, Paul Ryan had actually requested some. By Rendell’s measure, Ryan was "a total wuss for denouncing something and then asking for money from it, and stating that it’s going to create jobs," as he told HuffPostLive. "Had Paul Ryan read my book, he would not have made [this] mistake he made on the campaign."

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stated on March 24, 2024 in a Facebook post

Donald Trump won Pennsylvania in the 2020 presidential election.

It’s also hard to forget when, in 2011, Rendell didn’t appreciate some of "60 Minutes" correspondent Leslie Stahl’s questions. She was asking whether gambling legalization could have a poor influence on gambling addicts. Rendell reacted: "You’re not getting it. Those people would lose that money anyway. Don’t you understand?" Then... he popped off: "You guys don’t get that! You’re simpletons! You’re idiots if you don’t get that."

Last year, after the Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia, Republican lawmakers in Congress backed a plan to cut Amtrak funding by $252 million. "Those SOBs, and that’s all I can call them, these SOBs didn’t even have the decency to table the vote," he told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.

And this May, he observed that many US women are "ugly." He felt, when assessing potential damage Donald Trump’s comments could have on his campaign, that one should consider the relative unattractiveness of women in the country. "For every one he’ll lose 1½ , two Republican women. Trump’s comments like ‘You can’t be a 10 if you’re flat-chested,’ that’ll come back to haunt him," he told the Washington Post. "There are probably more ugly women in America than attractive women. People take that stuff personally."

Our Ruling

Rendell told Everett, "I’m not one for name calling."

Pennsylvanians know: Rendell can put his foot in his mouth. But he also can very purposefully read a fellow politician(s) for filth during a live broadcast.

We’re not judging. We’re just saying.

We rule this claim a Pants on Fire.