Hours after his stinging failure on health care legislation, US House Speaker Paul Ryan found himself being teased by a more unlikely source — rockers Papa Roach.
Ryan came up short on votes Friday in his key goal of overturning former president Barack Obama’s signature health care program, in a major legislative setback for President Donald Trump.
As the news broke, a writer tweeted a fictitious line attributed to The New York Times saying that Ryan — an avowed fan of the 1990s “nu metal” genre — turned on the music as he left a White House meeting in defeat.
“Within moments, the muffled sound of Papa Roach’s ‘Last Resort’ were heard blaring from the car as it drove away,” it said.
The fake news item soon started trending on Twitter and the band itself weighed in.
“When we feel defeated,” the band tweeted, “we listen to Paul Ryan.”
In a likely sign the band realized the item was satirical, it also tweeted #RoachGate with a photo of Ryan, lifting weights while listening to music on earbuds, from Time magazine in 2012.
On a more serious note, Papa Roach said that “Last Resort” was about suicide and gave information for people seeking help.
Justin Halpern, the writer behind the original tweet, called the trending story “my greatest accomplishment in a career of incredibly mediocre accomplishments.”
He said he thought it was obvious that his mock anecdote was a joke, but added that Ryan was “such a tool it was believable.”
It was not the first time that the musical tastes of the 47-year-old Wisconsin congressman, known for his fervent belief in free markets, have aroused interest.
When Mitt Romney selected him as the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2012, Ryan raised eyebrows by recounting his love of the group Rage Against the Machine, known for its leftist politics.
The band’s guitarist Tom Morello at the time castigated Ryan, calling him the very sort of “machine” against which the group was raging.
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