As long as there’s a Florida, we will never have a shortage of insane stories. And as long as there is a Congress, we will never have a shortage of colorful candidates.
The following is a marriage of the two: It’s the insane story of a Florida congressional candidate who claims she was abducted by aliens.
This is a real thing.
Miami congressional candidate Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera, a Republican, claims she has been aboard an alien spaceship, McClatchy reported Monday.
“Three blond, big-bodied beings — two females, one male — visited her when she was 7 years old and have communicated telepathically with her several times in her life,” the report continued, citing a 2009 television interview in which Rodriguez Aguilera described her supposed extraterrestrial encounter.
“I went in. There were some round seats that were there, and some quartz rocks that controlled the ship — not like airplanes,” she said in the interview.
She also said the aliens told her earth’s “energy center” is in Africa, and that God is a “universal energy.”
Rodriguez Aguilera, who launched her campaign in August, released a statement this week following recent questions about her abduction story. Her response is about what you’d expect from a candidate who’d like people to forget her past statements.
“For years people, including presidents like Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter and astronauts have publicly claimed to have seen unidentified flying objects and scientists like Stephen Hawking and institutions like the Vatican have stated that there are billions of galaxies in the universe and we are probably not alone,” she said.
“I personally am a Christian and have a strong belief in God, I join the majority of Americans who believe that there must be intelligent life in the billions of planets and galaxies in the universe,” she added.
But wait! There’s more. There’s a wild twist to this story.
As it turns out, Rodriguez Aguilera is not just some random person from Florida who decided to take a crack at national politics.
Her daughter is Bettina Inclan Agen, the former Republican National Committee Hispanic outreach director. Rodriguez Aguilera’s son-in-law, Jarrod Agen, is Vice President Mike Pence’s deputy chief of staff.
So there’s that.
On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the weirdest recent congressional candidate story, we’re not sure where this alien abduction episode stacks up next to the Christine O’Donnell “I’m not a witch” incident.
