Out Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) had some choice words for his former colleague, the disgraced Matt Gaetz, after the former Florida Republican congressman baselessly suggested that the Wisconsin school shooter was transgender.

Gaetz was responding to a statement from President Joe Biden calling for Congress to enact gun safety laws in the wake of so many school shootings. Anti-LGBTQ+ hate influencer Chaya Raichik posted the statement and said Biden wanted “gun control.”

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“What about trans control instead?” Gaetz responded. Many on the right on social media – as often happens after school shootings now – have baselessly claimed that the shooter was transgender. She was not, there is no reason to believe that she was, and local police have asked people to stop saying that.

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This set off Pocan, who chairs the LGBTQ+ Congress Equality Caucus. The shooting in Madison occurred in his congressional district.

“To all the idiots who claimed the shooter was trans with no information whatsoever to believe that, f**k off,” Pocan wrote. “Your ignorance speaks volumes. Your hate is consuming your brains (or what’s left of them).”

Gaetz resigned from the House of Representatives last month just days before the House Ethics Committee was scheduled to release the findings from its investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use – which included accusations of child sex trafficking – against Gaetz. Since he quit the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has said that the committee will not release its report.

Gaetz was announced as the nominee for attorney general for the next administration, but he withdrew from the nomination process, saying that his nomination had become a “distraction” to the incoming administration.

The Wisconsin shooter has been identified as 15-year-old student Natalie Rupnow, who allegedly pulled out a handgun around 11 a.m. local time and began shooting students in a study hall. She killed herself along with a teacher and a student and injured six other people, including two students who remain hospitalized in critical condition.

There have been at least 83 school shootings in the U.S. so far this year, according to CNN. Following recent school shootings in early January, transphobic billionaire Elon Musk, Raichik, and other right-wingers began spreading misinformation about recent mass shooters identifying as trans.

At the time, Raichik also posted misinformation claiming that five recent school shooters have identified as nonbinary or trans. Her image claimed that the 2022 Uvalde, Texas school shooter was trans — they were not, and the supposed shooter posing with a trans flag in Raichik’s image wasn’t the actual shooter.

Musk boosted Raichik’s misinformed image, writing “!!”

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