Lucy Lawless smacks down Kevin Sorbo over Capitol riot conspiracy theory

3 Min Read
Lucy Lawless smacks down Kevin Sorbo

Kevin Sorbo, who starred as Hercules in the โ€™90s series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and is a right-wing Republican who apparently has been duped into a world of conspiracy theories, weighed in on a photo on Twitter of Trump supporters who breached the Capitol.

Sorbo, 62, a Trump supporter, was responding to a tweet from attorney and fellow Trump supporter Rogan Oโ€™Handley.

โ€œDo these look like Trump supporters?โ€ Oโ€™Handley tweeted, sharing a photo of pro-Trump rioters inside the Capitol Wednesday. โ€œOr Leftist agitators disguised as Trump supportersโ€ฆโ€

Twitter had already designated the tweet โ€œmanipulated mediaโ€ because of Oโ€™Handleyโ€™s false claim. There is no evidence that the pro-Trump mob that breached the Capitol was made up of โ€œLeftist agitatorsโ€ or Antifa, as some have asserted.

But Sorbo quote-tweeted Handley, supporting his debunked claim.

โ€œThey donโ€™t look like patriots to meโ€ฆโ€ he said, doubling down despite the overwhelming evidence that the group was made up of Trump supporters.

Lucy Lawless, who played the title character in the successful Hercules spinoff series Xena: Warrior Princess, was ready with her own pointed reply.

โ€œNo, Peanut,โ€ she said, replying to her former castmateโ€™s tweet. โ€œThey are not Patriots. They are your flying monkeys, homegrown terrorists, QAnon actors. They are the dochebags that go out and do the evil bidding of people like you who like to wind them up like toys and let them do their worst. #keepingYourFilthyHandsclean #enabler.โ€

Twitter was quite impressed with her comeback as โ€œPeanutโ€ became a trending topic.

Where Kevin Sorboโ€™s conspiracy theory came from

A number of right-wingers are pushing this completely baseless theory that liberals infiltrated the pro-Trump protests against democracy and instigated the violence the crowd committed. Some, like Sorbo and multiple Republican members of congress, are all in on this idea, while others, like Sean Hannity, have been a bit more circumspect in their language so they can say theyโ€™re โ€œjust asking questionsโ€ or whatever.

This idea has permeated the far-right sphere of influence on Thursday, even though itโ€™s completely false. The conspiracy theory comes from the conservative Washington Times, which published an article on Wednesday claiming a facial recognition software company identified left-wing agitators in the frenzied terrorist mob.

The only problem? The company referenced in the story says the Washington Times made it up and issued a cease-and-desist order against the publication. The Washington Times then unpublished the article.