Madison Cawthorn has announced divorce from wife
Madison Cawthorn (Photo: US Gov.)

Madison Cawthorn has prompted ridicule and scorn (again!) with his latest uttering. Taking to Twitter, the North Carolina GOP Rep. took aim at some Olympic athletes, saying, “If you went to the Olympics to represent America and decided to represent another nation once you arrived there, your citizenship should be revoked.”

It’s unclear who Cawthorn may be referring to here. Freeskier Eileen Gu, 18, was raised in the US by her Chinese mother and an American father. She switched to representing China in 2019, aged 15, and has become a huge star in that country. She won gold this week at the Winter Olympics and is in the running for further medals.

Then there’s out, gay Olympian Gus Kenworthy, who competed for the US in the 2014 and 2018 games and is now representing Great Britain (he has dual citizenship due to having an English mom and being born in England).

Related: Madison Cawthorn praises “genius” Donald Trump: “He’s like a father to me”

However, like Gu, Kenworthy announced back in 2019 that he was switching teams. There are no obvious examples of athletes jetting off to the Olympics for one team and then deciding to switch sides upon arrival, as suggested by Cawthorn’s tweet.

Cawthorn’s statement prompted derision online.

Related: Madison Cawthorn was caught doing WHAT during a Zoom meeting?!

Besides ridicule online, Cawthorn is having a bad week for other reasons. On Monday, the North Carolina Elections Board said in a court filing that it had the power to bar Cawthorn from running again if he was found to have encouraged the insurrection in the Capitol on January 6 last year.

The move comes after a group of voters in North Carolina launched a legal bid last month to disqualify Cawthorn from running. The group cites Cawthorn’s involvement in the 6 January attack. Cawthorn participated in the ‘Save America Rally’ in DC earlier that day, telling the crowd the election had been stolen. Cawthorn also tweeted, “The future of this republic hinges on the actions of a solitary few … It’s time to fight.”

The group of 11 voters point to a line from the 14th amendment to the constitution that states no one can serve in Congress “who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress … to support the constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same”.

Last week, Cawthorn filed a lawsuit to halt the challenge. He said, “Running for office is not only a great privilege, it is a right protected under the Constitution. I love this country and have never engaged in, or would ever engage in, an insurrection against the United States.”

The statement from the North Carolina Elections Board was in response to Cawthorn’s efforts to throw out the legal challenge. The board said the state of North Carolina does indeed have the “authority to police which candidates should or should not be disqualified per Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Although the announcement by the NC Elections Board is significant, expect weeks of wrangling over whether Cawthorn “engaged” in insurrection or not.

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