Mark Hamill Responds to Senator Using Star Wars Image

When it comes to thinks you expect to see on the Senate floor, any representation of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back probably isn’t one of them. However, that is exactly what happened Tuesday in a presentation opposing the Green New Deal. One senator opted to illustrate his point using an image of Luke Skywalker riding a tauntaun and Mark Hamill had some things to say about it.

Earlier today, Utah Senator Mike Lee made a presentation on Capitol Hill in which he displayed just how ridiculous he thinks the Democratic-backed Green New Deal proposal to be. In his presentation, Senator Lee openly mocked the Green New Deal, and used a variety of images as props in support of his trolling. He kicked off his presentation with one of Ronald Reagan riding a velociraptor, had one of Aquaman riding a seahorse, but the one that got Hamill’s attention was of that tauntaun. The whole thing was so odd that at first, Hamill thought the image had been photoshopped.

“Please tell me this is photoshopped,” Hamill wrote, adding a “weary face” emoji and the hashtag “#CongressionalTauntaunPawn.

But the image? It’s not photoshopped. Senator Lee really did use the image in his presentation, suggesting that tauntauns would make a good transportation option as, in his estimation, they are carbon neutral and are useful on a cold night. That in particular is a reference to a scene in The Empire Strikes Back in which Han Solo places Luke inside a dead tauntaun to keep him from freezing to death on Hoth — an effective, if not terrible-smelling solution.

Tauntauns weren’t Senator Lee’s only odd references in his presentation. Since tauntaun’s wouldn’t be particularly useful in Hawaii, the Senator suggested that those of the island state would make good use of seahorses as transportation. We can’t make this stuff up.

And it’s that reality — that a Senator really did use an image of Luke Skywalker riding a tauntaun in a presentation on Capitol Hill — that Hamill eventually was made aware of. He followed up his original comment accepting that the image wasn’t photoshopped and offered a new hashtag for the situation.

“I was foolish to think this was photoshopped,” Hamill wrote. “Had I recognized this guy was a Republican, I would have instantly realized this was his argument against Global Warming. #CongressSmellsBatOnTheInside”.

What do you think about Hamill’s reaction to this rather curious The Empire Strikes back reference in the Senate? Let us know in the comments below.