Dennis Young: Actual Paralympians say Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s supposed Paralympic career is a joke

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), the young congressman who told Republicans to “lightly threaten” their representatives before the Capitol riot, has built his political career on a series of oafish lies. The slightest scrutiny has turned up a rejection from the Naval Academy and a fake real estate business. (Cawthorn claimed he was accepted to the Naval Academy and that he was a successful real estate investor.)

An investigation by The Nation that applied the same level of attention to his claims about training for the Paralympics appears to have turned up predictably similar results.

Cawthorn, who was paralyzed from the waist down in a 2014 car accident, has hyped his supposed Paralympic career in campaign ads and on Instagram. One of his posts claimed that he was aspiring to break one of the 100-meter world records for disabled athletes.

That alone should have raised several red flags. There are dozens of classifications for disabled athletes in elite competition depending on the disability, and Cawthorn wrote that he was “a couple seconds too slow.” In other words, nowhere near the record. A person off the street could come within “a couple seconds” of any 100-meter world record; it’s only 100 meters.

Cawthorn’s staff told reporter Sara Luterman that the congressman “intended to compete in the 400-meter dash at the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo” before his disability recently became more severe.

But when Luterman spoke to disabled athletes and did a little bit of research, it became clear that Cawthorn’s athletic claims were completely fraudulent.

“It’s like a kid saying they want to play in the NBA when they’re on their fourth-grade basketball team,” wheelchair competitor Amanda McGrory told Luterman.

The Nation story shows that Cawthorn is a complete joke in the community of elite Paralympians. He is not registered with the International Paralympic Committee, the barest minimum required to compete.

Two-time wheelchair Paralympian Brian Siemann said that he and his teammates would gawk at Cawthorn’s posts. “Look at what bats--t thing he said about the Paralympics this week,” he says was a regular feature. “The claims he was making were just so absurd, you have to find some humor in it.”

At least one TV station still produced a package about how Cawthorn was a contender; despite Cawthorn winning his primary in June, no media reported on his Paralympic claims until Friday. It’s embarrassing evidence of how disabled sports are condescendingly covered. To be fair, though, Cawthorn has told a prodigious amount of lies about himself.