All The President's Liars
Purges and Tariffs and DOGE, Oh my.
Welcome to February.
In just the last few days, Donald Trump has spread chaos and confusion at home and abroad; slapped billions of dollars in new taxes on Americans consumers; jacked up the cost of living; made air travel less safe; gutted the nation’s premier law enforcement agency; demagogued a national tragedy; stripped the Department of Justice of what’s left of its independence; and turned over the keys of the Treasury to Elon Musk. And we haven’t even gotten to the Great California Water Scam.
Yeah, it’s bad. But, as PG Wodehouse might put it, we do not succumb — “Our eyes, like stars, do not start from their spheres, nor do our knotty and combined locks part and each particular hair stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine.” Plus, I have dog pictures, so there’s that.
Happy Saturday.
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The Trump Effect
This week, at least three presidential nominees were caught lying under oath. But curious minds want to know: Is that still a thing? Does anybody care? Or is that just one more once-upon-a-time disqualifying thing that we shrug off… because Trump?
Let’s start with Kash Patel, the MAGA troll set to take over an FBI already hollowed out by Trump’s Vengeance Purge.1 Here’s what he said under oath: “Trump’s FBI chief pick, Kash Patel, insists he has no ‘enemies list’ and won’t seek retribution.”
I know that word “literally,” is often misused badly, but there is literally no sentient creature — in this world or next — who believes that is the truth.
Why? Because Patel wrote a whole fuqqing book about his enemies list. He wrote it down. And published it. And I still can’t get over this.
Patel’s list names what would for a MAGA activist be the obvious purported cabalists: President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former CIA chief John Brennan, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and former or current FBI directors Chris Wray, Robert Mueller, and James Comey. (Patel doesn’t explain why Comey, a supposed anti-Trump Deep State player, torpedoed Clinton’s presidential bid in 2016 when he reopened an FBI inquiry into her handling of State Department emails in the final days of the campaign.)
This line-up also includes a number of Republicans and onetime Trump appointees.
These include Bill Barr, who served as attorney general for Trump;
John Bolton, one of Trump’s national security advisers in his first White House stint;
Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel;
Mark Esper, a secretary of defense under Trump;
Sarah Isgur Flores, who was head of communications for Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions;
Alyssa Farah Griffin, the director of strategic commissions in the Trump White House;
Stephanie Grisham, former chief of staff for Melania Trump.
But, wait, there’s more.
There are other Republicans on Patel’s Deep State inventory:
Robert Hur, the US attorney who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents;
Cassidy Hutchinson, the twenty-something aide who worked for Mark Meadows, the final White House chief of staff during the first Trump presidency;
Charles Kupperman, a deputy national security adviser for Trump;
Ryan McCarthy, a secretary of the Army under Trump;
Pat Philbin, a deputy White House counsel for Trump;
Rod Rosenstein, a deputy attorney general for Trump; and Miles Taylor, a Department of Homeland Security official under Trump.
**
Exit take: If Senators are not actually potted plants, they also might want to ask Patel about this weekend’s massacre at the FBI.
Tulsi Gabbard’s evasions and dishonesty were also notable. This one stood out:
In her confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, senators repeatedly pressed Tulsi Gabbard on her highly scrutinized trip to Syria in 2017, where she met President Bashar al-Assad and others, including a Syrian cleric who had previously threatened to unleash suicide bombers in the United States if the American military intervened in his country.
When asked by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) whether she was aware of the threat made by Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, who was then grand mufti of Syria, Gabbard — President Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence — answered: “I was not and had not heard that until today.”
But documents reviewed by The Washington Post indicate that Gabbard was aware of Hassoun’s threats soon after she returned from her controversial visit to the country in January 2017.
The documents, which appear within a larger trove from Gabbard’s former congressional office, show that Hassoun’s comments on suicide bombers were flagged as problematic by one of her aides in early 2017 and were identified in an external vetting process as the likeliest source of negative publicity about the trip.
Well this is awkward. But, once again, we are about to find out whether lying under oath is still a problem in the Age of Trump?
Then, of course, there is RFK, Jr., who defies every standard of normalcy imaginable. In his hearing this week, the sad son of the Kennedy dynasty told so many whoppers that it was nearly impossible the keep up. His first lie — and maybe biggest one — came in his opening remarks.
Six minutes into his opening statement at his confirmation hearing Wednesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lied. President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services brazenly repeated a statement that has been cited as false multiple times.
“News reports claim I am anti-vaccine…I am not,” he said in his opening statement to the Senate Finance Committee.At that, a protester in the audience, shouted, “You lie.” She was removed from the hearing room by Capitol Hill police.
The protester was right. In July 2023, Kennedy told a podcaster, “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” That same month, during an interview on Fox News with Jesse Watters, Kennedy said, “I do believe that autism comes from vaccines.” That notion has long been scientifically debunked. In 2021, he told a podcaster that people should “resist” guidelines from the Centers for Disease and Control on vaccines. He added, “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated.” And the non-profit that he led promoted an anti-vaccine campaign with the slogan, “IF YOU’RE NOT AN ANTI-VAXXER YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION.”
But, but, but….
It was clear throughout the first hours of the hearing that none of Kennedy’s falsehoods and misrepresentations mattered to the Republican members of the committee. He was not meaningfully challenged by any of them. That was not surprising, for, as Kennedy displayed thoroughly, when it comes to adhering to the truth, his record on this front is similar to that of the fellow looking to hire him.
Nota Bene
The journalists at CBS News are livid at Paramount Global boss Shari Redstone over the company's move to engage in settlement talks with Donald Trump.
Paramount, which is trying to complete a merger with David Ellison's Skydance Media, is now in active discussions with the Trump team to strike a settlement that would put an end to an absurd lawsuit the then-candidate filed against the news network, as first reported by The New York Times Thursday evening. Trump filed the lawsuit in October over a "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris, preposterously alleging that the newsmagazine program engaged in "deceitful" editing that disadvantaged him in the race.
Most legal experts swiftly dismissed Trump's lawsuit as nothing more than a naked attempt to bully the news network. That is still the overwhelming position of the legal community. As the well-respected First Amendment attorney Theodore Boutrous Jr. told me Thursday evening, "There is absolutely no reason, from a legal perspective, for CBS to settle — this is a ridiculous case."
Saturday dogs
Lest we forget:
Ruth Marcus: Kash Patel is a dangerous and unqualified pick for the FBI - The Washington Post
“A New Trump Administration Will ‘Come After’ the Media, Says Kash Patel - The New York Times
Why Kash Patel May Be Trump's Scariest Pick Yet — Rolling Stone
Tom Nichols: Donald Trump’s choice for FBI director speaks volumes about his real second-term agenda.
For Trump, naming Patel to the post serves several purposes. First, Trump is taking his razor-thin election win as a mandate to rule as he pleases, and Patel is the perfect nominee to prove that he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks
Hillary's server was the crime of the century until Musk hooked up his own servers to the Federal Government mainframe. I'm shocked, shocked that the GOP isn't more concerned about this.
It's only been 11 days and I feel that Trump and his minions are working hard to destroy the US. It almost feels like Putin is directing him. Thanks for helping us sift this shitshow out.