Politics

Kash Patel talking bestiality leaves social media stunned

Win McNamee/Getty Images

After the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) relaxed hiring standards earlier this year to consider applicants who have engaged in bestiality (so long as the act – which mostly illegal across America – took place before they turned 18), when they were previously automatically disqualified, Kash Patel found himself talking about the bizarre subject at length in a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

We wish we were joking.

Explaining the previous rules, Patel told Republican senator John Kennedy: “It automatically disqualified any individual who participated in either side of it.”

“So you disqualified the animal,” asked Kennedy.

Laughing, Patel replied: “We have great canines, but we’re not going to disqualify.”

After the FBI director stressed “we are not into bestiality”, Kennedy ran through a hypothetical involving a fictional man named Joe who engaged in the act and asked if he out to be disqualified from working in the intelligence services.

“If he voluntarily did it, sure, but if he was trafficked into it … In a lot of these cases, when human traffickers – who are some of the worst individuals on planet Earth – they don’t just traffic you for prostitution, they traffic you for degrading acts of all kind [sic] and they force you into that type of conduct.

“Some of these individuals are going to be law enforcement officers who qualified to be law enforcement officers and later applied to the FBI,” Patel said.

Needless to say, X/Twitter users were stunned by the exchange and Patel’s remarks:

MeidasTouch tweeted: “This has to be one of the most wild exchanges in a senate hearing of all time”:

Conspiracy theory expert Mike Rothschild simply responded: “I’M SORRY?”:

“What the f*** are we doing here,” asked political commentator Jo Carducci:

And another user wrote: “Imagine explaining to someone 20 years ago that in 2026 they’d turn on a Senate hearing and watch a Republican senator and the FBI director debate whether a hypothetical bestiality participant was actually a trafficking victim. What happened to us?”

No, we can’t believe it, either…

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