Joe Wilson (American politician)

In December 2020, Wilson was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated incumbent Donald Trump. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on the basis that Texas lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution to challenge the results of an election held by another state.

In 2018, a segment with Wilson aired as part of Sacha Baron Cohen's Showtime series, Who is America?. Wilson endorses "Kinderguardians", a nonexistent program to teach and arm schoolchildren as young as 3 to protect themselves in the classroom. Advocating toddler carry, he says on camera, "A 3-year-old cannot defend itself from an assault rifle by throwing a Hello Kitty pencil case at it".

Wilson supported President Trump's 2017 executive order to impose a temporary ban on entry to the U.S. to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, saying that the order would "secure our borders and keep American families safe from terrorist attacks."

On April 10, 2017, a Wilson town hall meeting at Aiken Technical College in Graniteville, South Carolina was interrupted by activists chanting "you lie" as Wilson asserted that the Affordable Care Act was causing people to be denied health services.

In 2015, Wilson cosponsored a resolution to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

As of the 113th Congress, Wilson served on three standing committees and various subcommittees overseeing specific areas of legislation. He serves on the Committee on Armed Services and chairs the Subcommittee on Military Personnel; he also serves on the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. He serves on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, for which he also is a member of the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions. As a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Wilson serves on the Subcommittee on Europe and Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia. Wilson is a member of the Republican Study Committee and the Tea Party Caucus.

After the incident, Wilson and Democrat Rob Miller, his 2010 general election opponent, experienced a significant upswing in campaign donations. In the week after Wilson's outburst, Miller raised $1.6 million, about three times his 2008 donations, while Wilson raised $1.8 million.

In September 2009, Wilson interrupted a speech by U.S. President Barack Obama to a joint session of Congress, shouting, "You lie!" The incident resulted in a reprimand by the House of Representatives.

On September 9, 2009, during a nationally televised joint address to Congress by President Barack Obama, Wilson shouted "You lie!" after Obama, while outlining his proposal for reforming health care, said, "There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false—the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally."

In November 2009, the New York Times reported that Wilson and Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer made identical written statements, reading, "One of the reasons I have long supported the U.S. biotechnology industry is that it is a homegrown success story that has been an engine of job creation in this country. Unfortunately, many of the largest companies that would seek to enter the biosimilar market have made their money by outsourcing their research to foreign countries like India." The statement was originally drafted by lobbyists for Genentech, now a Swiss biotechnology firm, but founded and still headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Wilson has sponsored and co-sponsored a number of bills concerning teacher recruitment and retention, college campus fire safety, National Guard troop levels, arming airline pilots, tax credits for adoptions, tax credits for living organ donors, and state defense forces. As of January 2006, eight bills he co-sponsored have passed the House, including H.R. 1973, the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act of 2005, making safe water and sanitation an objective of U.S. assistance to developing countries.

Wilson is a staunch advocate of a federal prohibition of online poker. In 2006, he co-sponsored H.R. 4411, the Goodlatte-Leach Internet Gambling Prohibition Act, and H.R. 4777, the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act.

In a 2005 guest article on Rediff.com, Wilson wrote that his father, Hugh, was a member of the Flying Tigers in World War II. The Wilson family attends First Presbyterian Church in Columbia.

Wilson was mentioned as a possible candidate for retiring Senator Fritz Hollings's seat in 2004, but decided to run for a second House term. He defeated Democratic nominee Michael Ellisor and Constitution Party nominee Steve Lefemine with 65% of the vote. Wilson got 181,862 votes to Ellisor's 93,249 and Lefemine's 4,447, with 312 write-ins.

In 2003, Wilson voted for the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, including its Section 1011 authorizing $250,000 annually of taxpayer money to reimburse hospitals for treatment of illegal immigrants. In 2009, he changed to his current position of opposing public funds for health care of illegal immigrants.

Wilson has cited as one of his proudest congressional achievements the Drafting Business Expensing Act of 2003, which allows businesses to immediately write off 50% of the cost of business equipment and machinery. This bonus depreciation provision was extended for 2008 and 2009 in two separate stimulus bills. He also spearheaded the Drafting Teacher Recruitment and Retention Act of 2003, which offers higher education loan forgiveness to math, science and special education teachers in schools with predominantly low-income student populations. He cites as his most important vote the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003.

In 2003, Essie Mae Washington-Williams revealed she was the daughter of Wilson's former employer, Senator Strom Thurmond, and Thurmond's black maid. Wilson was among those who publicly doubted her assertion that Thurmond had a child out of wedlock. Wilson said even if her story were true, she should not have revealed it because "it's a smear" on Thurmond's image and was a way to "diminish" Thurmond's legacy. After Thurmond's family acknowledged the truth of Washington-Williams's revelation, Wilson apologized, but said that he still thought that she should not have revealed that Thurmond was her father.

On a 2002 live broadcast of the C-SPAN talk show Washington Journal, Wilson and Representative Bob Filner were discussing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. When Filner noted that the U.S. provided Iraq with "chemical and biological weapons" in the 1980s, Wilson stated that this idea was "made up" and told Filner, "This hatred of America by some people is just outrageous. And you need to get over that." Wilson apologized for his remarks in statements to the press.

Wilson won election to a full term in 2002 with 84% of the vote, facing four minor-party candidates.

Wilson was elected in 2001 in a special election caused by the death of Floyd Spence, his former boss. Wilson once said that a dying Spence called him from his hospital bed and asked him to run.

During his tenure in the South Carolina Senate, Wilson was the primary sponsor of bills including the following: establishing a National Guard license plate, providing paid leave for state employees to perform disaster relief services, and requiring men aged 18–26 to register for the Selective Service System when applying for a driver's license. In 2000, Wilson was one of seven senators to vote against removing the Confederate battle flag from being displayed over the state house.

Wilson was elected to the South Carolina Senate in 1984 as a Republican from Lexington County and reelected four times, the last three times unopposed. By this time, Lexington County had become one of the most Republican counties in the state. He never missed a regular legislative session in 17 years. After the Republicans gained control of the chamber in 1996, Wilson became the first Republican to chair the Senate Transportation Committee. He was a member of Columbia College's board of visitors and Coker College's board of trustees.

In 1981 and 1982, during the first term of the Reagan administration, Wilson served as deputy general counsel for former governor Jim Edwards at the U.S. Department of Energy. Wilson is also a graduate of Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute in Arlington, Virginia.

From 1972 to 1975, Wilson served in the United States Army Reserve. Thereafter, he was a Staff Judge Advocate in the South Carolina Army National Guard assigned to the 218th Mechanized Infantry Brigade until retiring from military service as a colonel in 2003.

Wilson was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of Wray (née Graves) and Hugh deVeaux Wilson. In 1969 he obtained a bachelor's degree in political science from Washington and Lee University, where he joined Sigma Nu. He obtained his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1972.

Wilson was active in South Carolina Republican politics when the party barely existed in the state. He took part in his first Republican campaign in 1962, when he was 15 years old. He served as an aide to Senator Strom Thurmond and to his district's congressman, Floyd Spence.

Addison Graves "Joe" Wilson Sr. (born July 31, 1947) is an American politician and attorney serving as the U.S. representative for South Carolina's 2nd congressional district since 2001. A member of the Republican Party, his district stretches from Columbia to the Georgia–South Carolina border. He served as the South Carolina state senator from the 23rd district from 1985 to 2001.