Brad Garlinghouse Confused That Money Can’t Always Buy Politicians

WASHINGTON, D.C. — While valiantly fending off the latest legislative witchery from Senator Elizabeth “Smoke Signals” Warren—who, in her twilight crusade against crypto, has taken to tilting at stablecoins like a drunk Don Quixote with a gender studies degree—Wyoming’s Senator Cynthia Lummis found herself dodging another, smaller, shinier projectile: Brad Garlinghouse’s feelings.

Garlinghouse, CEO of XRP/Ripple (yes, they’re the same thing) and amateur martyr for synthetic liquidity, was last seen flailing on social media, mourning the fact that Senator Lummis wouldn’t meet with him, despite his clear qualifications: bags of cash, a LinkedIn page, and an illustrious track record of dumping unregistered securities on retail bagholders.

“Heading to DC to champion pro-crypto legislation,” Garlinghouse typed nobly into the void, unaware that the term “pro-crypto” does not mean “make XRP number go up.” He proceeded to lament that Senator Lummis, Chair of the Digital Assets Subcommittee and proud Bitcoiner, had declined to reschedule a meeting that had been canceled—presumably to tend to more pressing business, like not legitimizing his $20 billion pretend bank.

“I hope you will reconsider and be a leader for all of crypto,” he wrote, deploying that slippery little syllogism beloved by every Web3 grifter: If you don’t support my pre-mined garbage, you must hate all crypto.

What followed was an outpouring of support from the usual suspects: XRPeons with dog avatars, bots programmed by interns in Singapore, and a handful of “financial experts” who have confused “market cap” with “merit.”

One account, aptly named @cowboycrypto313, offered a theory so conspiratorial it made Alex Jones sound like a stenographer: Senator Lummis is secretly undermining XRP because her son-in-law works for a Bitcoin company. That son-in-law, Will Cole, was caught in the act of liking a tweet that mocked Garlinghouse—a modern-day Watergate, if the burglars had been armed with memes and a four-figure IQ deficit.

Garlinghouse pounced. “Certainly enlightening,” he tweeted solemnly, before going on to claim that Ripple has tried to meet with Lummis for six years. Six years! The poor man’s been trying to get a coffee date with someone who clearly prefers not to sip with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Most Wanted.

Senator Lummis, for her part, responded with characteristic Wyoming bluntness. “I said digital assets are the future, not digital ass hats like Gargledeeznuts,” she quipped, reportedly while field-dressing a mule deer and passing a bill in the same afternoon.

Industry insiders suggest that Lummis’s refusal to meet with Garlinghouse may have less to do with family ties and more to do with a little thing called principles. As the Senate’s most vocal Bitcoin advocate, Lummis has long championed decentralization, proof-of-work, and monetary sovereignty—concepts as foreign to Ripple as personal accountability is to the Federal Reserve.

XRP, after all, is a “cryptocurrency” in the same way Olive Garden is “Italian.” Ripple controls the supply, the narrative, and the marketing budget. It’s not a network; it’s a vending machine dressed up as a democracy. If Bitcoin is a sovereign republic, XRP is a Banana Republic outlet store with a side of lobbying.

Still, Garlinghouse insists he merely wants a conversation. “I invite you to join me on an X Space,” he offered, presumably unaware that “X Space” is not Latin for “legislative legitimacy.” Rumors swirl that his next move may involve offering to send Lummis a personalized NFT—perhaps a JPEG of him shrugging in front of a pile of vaporware.

Asked to comment on the dust-up, one Senate staffer chuckled: “Brad thinks this is a high school prom, and Cynthia didn’t RSVP to his dance invitation. This is federal policy, not prom season.” When pressed, he elaborated, “the Senator was busy with real business, you know, actually getting cloture on the GENIUS Act. She was too busy doing real things to have to deal with these CBDC wannabes.”

In the end, Garlinghouse’s public tantrum only served to remind everyone why serious policymakers prefer dealing with code and consensus, rather than coin-flipping CEOs who think money entitles them to airtime. If he wants to be taken seriously in Washington, perhaps he should try something radical: start mining Bitcoin. He should also maybe stop donating to Democrats and tell his business partners to stop trying to #ChangeTheCode 💀.

Or at least stop tweeting like he just found out his fake ID doesn’t work at the grown-up table.