Tommy Tuberville Slammed For Latest Interview After Defeating Doug Jones

After defeating incumbent Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in Alabama, Republican and former football coach Tommy Tuberville was fact-checked heavily for missing the mark in his latest interview.

Tuberville, a former football coach at Auburn University, flipped a senate seat after defeating incumbent Jones with 60.4% of the vote.

In an interview with the Alabama Daily News published Friday, he was quoted as saying the three branches of government are the “House, Senate and executive.”

Power in the U.S. government, however, is divided between the legislative branch, comprised of the House and Senate, the judicial branch, comprised of the Supreme Court and federal courts, and the executive branch, which includes the president, vice president and Cabinet members.

In a speech last week to supporters in Montgomery, Tuberville relayed the story of his father, First Sergeant Charles Tuberville, who landed on the beaches of Normandy as Allied forces sought to liberate France from Nazi Germany.

The incoming senator remarked that his father took part in “liberating Paris from socialism and communism,” the Intelligencer, a division of Vox Media, reported.

The problem, however, is that Nazi Germany was a fascist regime, not socialist or communist.

What “an absolute idiot,” one person commented on Twitter. Another suggested elected officials take a civics test before taking office.

On the campaign trail, Jones made a point of showing that Tuberville knew little about the Voting Rights Act, landmark legislation passed in 1965 that bars racial discrimination in voting.

“The thing about the Voting Rights Act is, you know, there’s a lot of different things you can look at it as,” Tuberville said in October, according to the Associated Press. “Who is it going to help?”

Tuberville enjoyed support on the campaign trail from President Donald Trump. Tuberville beat back an effort from U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to take his own senate seat back in a primary runoff early this year.