Mayorkas Impeachment Is Just More Republican Hypocrisy

 

The following is part of a response by Rep. Dan Goldman (D-New York) to the Republican's attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas.

On Tuesday, House Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee completed their rushed, baseless and legally flawed impeachment “investigation” of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for trumped-up, never-used charges relating to the secretary’s efforts to secure our southern border. The irony here, of course, is that the ones who have failed to secure the southern border are, in fact, those same Republicans, operating at the behest of Donald Trump. 

As one senior congressional aide recently put it: “It’s very clear that a large group of Republicans in the Senate and the House no longer want to do border security. … Trump wouldn’t have his issue to run on. That’s what’s going on here: They don’t want to give up that issue.”

Keep in mind, that aide who so succinctly summed up the ongoing border legislation negotiations is a Republican, not a Democrat. 

Democrats, led by Mayorkas and President Joe Biden, have been working around the clock for the past two months with a bipartisan group of senators to address the issues at the border through bipartisan legislation — which Republicans have insisted on as a condition for providing aid to our democratic allies around the world. As Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., has recognized, the border policy package that is near agreement in the Senate would include more Republican priorities than have ever been passed or would ever be achieved under a Republican administration.

In a recent closed-door meeting with his Senate Republican colleagues, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky reportedly shared “that the party used to be united in finding a solution” but that the politics “have changed” and Trump “wants the issue [of border security] for his 2024 campaign more than an actual solution.”

This goes beyond your regular election-year political cynicism. For the entire 118th Congress, I have witnessed firsthand House Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee using security concerns at the southern border as a political cudgel without making any effort in a divided government to reach across the aisle to actually solve problems through bipartisan legislation. And make no mistake, legislation — not executive action — is the only way to fix our broken immigration system.  

Even within its limited executive authority, the Biden administration has taken several actions to address the situation at the border by streamlining the asylum process while expediting eligibility decisions, preventing unlawful entry between ports of entry and reducing the pressure on the system by allowing people from specific countries suffering from acute humanitarian problems to gain lawful access under certain limiting conditions.   

In response to these efforts, Republican attorneys general around the country sued the Biden administration to prevent the implementation of these policy changes designed to stop the unlawful entry of migrants across the southern border and stem the flow of migrants seeking asylum.

Think about that: The Republicans are working to create and perpetuate the very problems upon which they are basing their impeachment effort of Mayorkas. . . .

To put it simply, Republicans would prefer to have chaos at the border than actually solve our border problems —because they care more about winning elections than finding solutions for the American people.

Trump Tries To Mitigate His Authoritarian Statements

Trump's recent authoritarian statements are evidently starting to hurt him, because he now wants to turn the tables and accuse President Biden of doing that - while posing as the savior of democracy. It won't work. His statements are clearly the statements of a wannabe dictator, and in this age of television and tape, they can't be taken back. Here is part of how The Washington Post covered his recent attempt though:

Republican polling leader Donald Trumpmoved to deflect from criminal charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election and from his own pledges to take revenge on his opponents if he returns to the White House, seeking to parry warnings that he presents a danger to democracy.

His speech on Saturday was an effort to turn the tables on rising alarms from Democrats and some Republicans that Trump’s return to power would imperil free elections and civil liberties. As candidates ramp up appearances in Iowa ahead of the caucuses on Jan. 15, the former president, who refused to accept his 2020 election loss and inspired his supporters to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, responded by comparing President Biden to a fascist tyrant, and the campaign distributed signs reading ‘BIDEN ATTACKS DEMOCRACY.’

“Biden and his radical left allies like to pose as defenders of democracy,” Trump told a raucous crowd of a couple thousand supporters here. “But Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy. Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy. … This campaign is a righteous crusade to liberate our republic from Biden and the criminals and the Biden administration.”

The speech showed that Biden’s framing of the 2024 election as democracy versus authoritarianism is resonating with voters, according to Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political rhetoric at Texas A&M University. . . .

“Trump’s Iowa speech continues his use of fascist rhetoric: it’s us versus them, he tells his supporters, and ‘they’ are enemies who cheat,” she said. “Authoritarians have a lot of rhetorical tricks for explaining away anti-democratic actions as actually ‘democratic.’”

The Biden campaign called the speech an attempt to distract from Trump’s own promises to punish his political opponents, and a renewed push in recent weeks to repeal the 2010 health care law commonly known as Obamacare.

Throughout Trump’s political career, he has often responded to attacks by accusing his opponents of the same.

The Hamas/Israeli War Has Exposed GOP MAGA Hypocrisy

 From Ja'han Jones at MSNBC.com:

 I’m beginning to think MAGA GOPers aren’t the pacifists they’ve proclaimed themselves to be ever since Russia invaded Ukraine last year. 

Their response to the explosion of conflict in the Middle East over the weekend is adding to my theory.

In February, several Republicans signed on to a bill, introduced by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that was aimed at ending U.S. military and financial aid to Ukraine. The “Ukraine Fatigue Resolution” was part of a broader push among Russophilic Republicans to slow or stop such defense aid in the face of Moscow’s deadly invasion.

“America is in a state of managed decline, and it will exacerbate if we continue to hemorrhage taxpayer dollars toward a foreign war,” Gaetz said in a statement at the time. “We must suspend all foreign aid for the War in Ukraine and demand that all combatants in this conflict reach a peace agreement immediately.”

To which I say, in my exaggerated hippie voice: “Yeah, totally, man. Peace, love, and save the whales.”

Of course, the GOP’s foreign aid charade has just been exposed — by Republicans’ reactions to the eruption of war in the Middle East. 

“The reason we have this multibillion-dollar commitment each and every year to Israel is because we want Israel to have a qualitative military edge over everyone” in the region, Gaetz said Sunday on “Meet the Press.” 

Keep in mind here that Gaetz and other Republicans have threatened to shut down the federal government over aid to Ukraine. In other words: MAGA GOPers are willing to grind the government to a halt to stop Ukraine aid, but say aid to Israel should continue no matter what.  

Among other prominent Republicans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia pushed a conspiracy theory involving Ukraine in her call for the U.S. to provide aid to Israel. 

Appearing on Fox News on Sunday, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio — who has repeatedly tried to end aid to Ukraine — preached about the need for the U.S. to help Israel:

We need to give Israel the time, the space, the resources so that they can win and win decisively and send a message to these evil people who did this to our great friend and great ally, the state of Israel.

It’s hard not to see the issue as indicative of GOP love for Russia, as well as a matter of Republicans choosing whom they want to protect from military might. 

Aiding Ukraine means arming a fight against Russia, which MAGA GOPers evidently don’t want. But aiding Israel, in this case, means arming a fight against Hamas — or, more plainly — arming a fight against Palestinians, a largely Muslim group of people who havefaced derision from conservative leadership in the U.S.

Even with Israel being a U.S. ally, there is reason to be wary of how we help its government, which has been sliding toward autocracy under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership. But MAGA Republicans seem gung-ho on providing Israel’s government everything it needs to quash its enemies.

As for the Ukrainians — that’s another story entirely.

Abortion Bans Are Not Meant For Republicans (A Satire)

The following bit of brilliant satire is by Alexandra Petri in The Washington Post: 

Ah! I see the confusion! Did I say total abortion ban? I apologize. I did mean “total,” of course, for you. But I intended it to be implied that the law would not be binding to all. I thought that would be audible — as most of my remarks are these days — as a kind of dog whistle?

All the particularly deserving were to be exempt from the ban — no, not children, necessarily; I think forced birth might be a powerful growth experience for them. No, not those for whom it is medically necessary, although I certainly would like voters to feel that probably the law was not a death sentence, whether or not that’s true. Victims of rape, or incest? No, no, I meant: Republican politicians.

I understand your confusion. You think that because I am invoking a value, I believe in it for myself. Actually myself is the last person who should have to be bothered by it! And if you have any questions, please consult my T-shirt, which has a little arrow pointing at my chin and says “I’m With The In-Group The Law Protects But Does Not Bind.” No, I don’t have any more of those (they sold out almost immediately!), but I have lots of “I’m With The Out-Group The Law Binds But Does Not Protect.” What size do you wear?

Do not come to me with my own logic and reasoning and ask me to apply it to myself or my candidates of choice, as though I were of the sort who is bound by law! Law is for other people! You saw me complaining about state secrets being shared, or files being improperly stored, and thought you could repeat my own words back to me as a “gotcha,” when I seemed to fall short in the same way? No chance! I cannot be gotten!

Don’t you understand? To me, everything is permitted! Judging myself by my own standards sounds, frankly, exhausting and impossible.

Do not think for a fraction of a second, though, that I will offer you any of the same leniency. I’m sorry, but you simply don’t have the leeway, given that you have to uphold your values and mine — and some other ones you probably didn’t even know I have you upholding!

Hypocrisy? For this to be hypocrisy, I would have to profess one thing and do another. So let me take this opportunity to apologize: If I have appeared to profess anything other than the raw desire for power, that was not my intention. If I at any point seemed to espouse values, that was a huge misunderstanding. I am very, very sorry!

See? No hypocrisy here! What a relief! Now, back to this ban. And, next, if we’re lucky, my plan to seize control of elections so I can weed out the votes with which I disagree. Remember, if I do it, it’s solving voter fraud, not committing it! Then, will I show my intense concern for the deficit by making it bigger, with tax cuts? Who knows! I am hypocrisy-proof and free as the wind!

Republicans Take Hypocrisy To The Ultimate Level

In the 2016 presidential campaign, Republicans whined loudly about Hillary Clinton's home server. They were convinced that she had broken a federal law by using that server for government work. And "lock her up" became a rallying cry for them. Crowds at Trump rallies still chant the phrase when Clinton's name is mentioned.

They overlook a few facts. When asked to return the documents on the server to government control, she did so immediately. And according to the FBI, there were no classified documents on that server, and Clinton broke no federal laws by using it.

Fast forward to 2022, and we have a very different story. This time it's a Republican. Donald Trump took government documents to his home at Mar-A-Lago. Taking those documents was a clear violation of federal law. And making it worse, he lied when asked to return the documents. 

After his repeated refusal to return the government documents, the FBI finally got a search warrant and retrieved the documents themselves. Among those documents were over 300 documents that were classified -- many of them Top Secret.

But no Republican is yelling "lock him up" -- far from it. In fact, they are trying to excuse Trump's obvious law-breaking. They want to give him a pass -- not because he's innocent, but because he is a Republican. They want to put Trump above the law (apparently not realizing that such a precedent would then apply to all future presidents of either party).

The Republicans were overjoyed when the FBI investigated Clinton, but they are angry (and calling for the FBI to be defunded) because of the investigation of Trump.

Hypocrisy seems to be a Republican value these days -- and this latest example is the ultimate example of it.

Herschel Walker Did Not Practice What He Preached

The following op-ed is by Steve Benen at MSNBC.com: 

Candidates for powerful elected offices face all kinds of questions, but as a rule, there’s no reason to ask, “Exactly many children do you actually have?”

With Herschel Walker, however, it’s become unexpectedly relevant.

As of a few days ago, the public knew that the Georgia Republican had an adult son, Christian Walker, who maintains a relatively notable public profile through social media, and who the U.S. Senate candidate frequently mentions. On Tuesday night, Walker’s family grew a little more: The Daily Beast reported on “secret son” whom Walker hadn’t publicly acknowledged, and who “has apparently been estranged from his biological father since his birth a decade ago.”

The Republican acknowledged the accuracy of the report. His campaign’s statement specifically said that Walker “had a child years ago when he wasn’t married.” The statement went on to dismiss the idea that “Herschel is ‘hiding’ the child.”

As it turns out, the use of the phrases “a child” and “the child” apparently understated the case. The Daily Beast published a follow-up report this morning.

A day after The Daily Beast broke the news that Herschel Walker had a secret 10-year-old son he fathered out of wedlock, the football star-turned-politician confirmed late Wednesday night that he has yet another son with a different woman that the public doesn’t know about — as well as a daughter that he had in college.

In a statement, the Republican acknowledged his children and said he disclosed their existence in 2018 paperwork when he was appointed to a White House fitness council. That's apparently true.

By all appearances, however, Walker did not share this information with the public. Indeed, it was literally two days ago when his campaign team suggested he only had one out-of-wedlock child, instead of three.

I’m not unsympathetic to the argument that Walker’s family life is a private matter. But as the Daily Beast’s original report noted, the problem is that Walker, who has no political record, has spent years making public condemnations “against fatherless households and deadbeat dads — specifically in the Black community.”

The New York Times highlighted several such examples, each of which will now be seen in an uncomfortable new light.

In a 2020 interview with the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, he called the absence of fathers “a major, major problem” in Black households and boasted of having been “like a father” to many young people in his hometown in Georgia. And in a 2021 interview with the Black conservative media personalities Diamond and Silk, Mr. Walker lamented that “the father leaves in the Black family. He leaves the boys alone so they’ll be raised by their mom,” comparing the dynamic to family separations during slavery.

“If you have a child with a woman,” Walker continued in that interview, “even if you have to leave that woman — even if you have to leave that woman — you don’t leave that child.”

This is has been a central message of Walker’s public persona for years, and it now appears he didn’t practice what he preached.

The Blatant Hypocrisy Of Republicans On Women's Rights

With the Taliban taking over in Afghanistan, Republican officials have been whinging about how the Taliban will take rights away from women in that country for religious reasons. That seems very hypocritical, since those same Republican officials have been engaged in trying to take rights away from women in the United States -- also for religious reasons.

Dean Obeidallah comments on this GOP hypocrisy in this article for MSNBC.com:

Over the last few days, the airwaves have been filled with Republicans voicing their deep concern over the rights of the women of Afghanistan. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., put out a statement sounding alarm bells that women “will suffer the most” from the loss of human rights under the Taliban’s rule. Rep. Steve Chabot, the self-described “dean of Ohio GOP congressional delegation,” appeared Sunday on NPR declaring that under Taliban rule, the lives of women and girls “are going to be reduced, condemned to slavery.”

And yet, I have to wonder where these voices were when extremists, based on a narrow reading of their religion’s beliefs, enacted a law that forces a woman who was raped to carry the fetus of the rapist to term? That same law makes it a crime for anyone to assist that woman in trying to abort the rapist’s fetus.

That law was enacted not by the Taliban in Afghanistan, but in Arkansas. Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed the GOP-controlled Legislature’s ban on abortion in all circumstances — except to save the life of the woman — in March. This law also makes it a felony to help a woman get an abortion — even in the case of rape or incest. Hutchinson didn’t hide that this law was about turning his religious beliefs into the law of the land, noting that he signed the legislation given “my sincere and long-held pro-life convictions.” (The law’s implementation is on hold while it is litigated in the courts.)

We all must be alarmed about what the future may hold for the women of Afghanistan. When the Taliban last ruled the country from the mid-1990s to 2001, they horrifically banned women from attending school, working or going outside without male chaperones, along with other oppressive measures — all enforced by beatings or worse. These grotesque rules are based on the Taliban’s “perversion” of Islam, as experts have noted.

Look, nobody is saying the GOP and the Taliban are equally bad. But in just the past few months, we’ve seen Republicans champion measures to deprive women of freedom over their own bodies, as well as oppose laws to protect women from violence and ensure that women are paid the same wages as men. And they’ve done so, at least in part, to impose their religious beliefs on all others.

Reps. McCarthy and Chabot had an opportunity to prove they are sincerely concerned with defending women’s rights in March by supporting the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. While 29 House Republicans voted for the law to protect women from domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, McCarthy and Chabot voted against it.

Same goes for Elise Stefanik of New York, the highest-ranking woman in the House GOP leadership. She issued a statement Friday slamming President Joe Biden for, in her view, turning Afghanistan over to the Taliban, saying it threatens “the safety and security” of the women of that country. But when Stefanik had a chance to protect “the safety and security” of America’s women, she also voted no on reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.

Then, in April, all three — along with almost all other House Republicans — voted against the Paycheck Fairness Act, which “aims to eliminate the gender pay gap and strengthen workplace protections for women.” Women overall still get only 82 cents for each dollar paid to a man — the gender pay gap is bigger for women of color. For example, Latinas are paid only 55 cents for every dollar paid to white men, according to the National Women’s Law Center. The GOP’s opposition to this is a blow to gender equality.

And just two weeks ago, McCarthy, Stefanik, Chabot and 225 fellow Republicans in Congress signed a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the seminal case that guarantees women in America reproductive freedom. The ability of women to control their own bodies should be a guaranteed human right, yet most of the GOP seems desperate to withhold it from them.

These Republicans know that if Roe is overturned, states could make their own laws about abortion access. As a practical matter, that means nearly half the states would be very likely to enact abortion bans like the repressive Arkansas law passed in March. Women’s rights can’t be a state issue.

If the GOP wants to show that it is sincerely concerned with the rights of the women in Afghanistan, it can start by first championing the human rights of women in the U.S. But instead, it is doing all it can to prevent gender equality while oppressing women based on its members’ extreme religious beliefs. Sound familiar?

It Seems Some Democrats Are Not Immune To Hypocrisy

 Donald Trump is not a nice person. He is a misogynist who regularly engages in sexual harassment, and even worse. And Democrats (including me) have repeatedly called him to task for it. Sadly, it didn't do any good, because the people in his party don't care what their politicians do. They accuse Democrats of wrongdoing, but hypocritically ignore worse behavior by their own politicians.

The same happened with the nomination of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Democrats opposed his nomination because of his sexual misconduct as a young man -- and Republicans ignored that conduct to defend him and put him on the court. Democrats said a woman should be believed unless it was shown she was lying, while Republicans demanded proof of any accusation by a woman.

Now the shoe seems to be on the other foot. It's a Democratic politician that has been accused of wrongdoing -- Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York. He has been accused of sexual harassment by several women, accused of creating a toxic work environment by several aides, and accused of hiding the number of nursing home deaths to make himself look better.

The charges are all being investigated by the New York Attorney General. I can understand my fellow Democrats wanting to wait and see the results of that investigation before criticizing Cuomo. That is a reasonable stance.

But I'm hearing something else from too many Democrats. They bring up Trump and Kavanaugh, and say Cuomo shouldn't be criticized because those Republicans got away with doing wrong. That's hypocrisy!

How can they criticize Republicans for misogynistic behavior, and then excuse that behavior from a Democrat because those Republicans weren't punished? How can they refuse to hold a Democrat to task for the same thing they criticized Republicans for? Do they really think a Republican getting away with doing wrong makes it OK for a Democrat to do wrong?

It doesn't! We ask voters to vote for our Democratic candidates because we think they are better than their Republican opponents. But they are not better if we allow them to do wrong things just like the Republicans do. We must hold our Democratic politicians to a high standard, even if Republicans fail to hold their candidates to that standard. We must be different. We must be better.

Why would anyone vote for our candidates if they do not meet a higher standard? To ask them to do that is nothing more than hypocrisy. We know the Republicans are hypocrites, but sadly, it seems that some Democrats are not immune to hypocrisy themselves.

The GOP Hypocrisy - Deficits Don't Matter When They Do It

(This photo of Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is from Time.)

When Barack Obama was president, the congressional Republicans thought the world was coming to an end because this country's government was running a deficit. But now that Donald Trump is in office, and deficits are ballooning because of the GOP tax cuts for the rich, their silence of a growing deficit is deafening.

Here's part of what economist Paul Krugman has to say about this in The New York Times:

So the federal budget deficit just hit $1 trillion (actually $984 billion, but close enough). That’s about $300 billion more than the Congressional Budget Office was projecting in the summer of 2017, before the Trump tax cut was enacted. And basically everybody yawned. . . .

This lack of reaction to a deficit that would have been considered shocking only a few years ago is sort of the fiscal policy equivalent of Sherlock Holmes’s dog that didn’t bark in the night. It tells us a lot about economics, politics — specifically the utter hypocrisy of the G.O.P. — and the news media, which on economic matters has a de facto conservative bias. . . .

The budget deficit has now soared back roughly to where it was in 2012, when the unemployment rate was more than twice its current level, and the economy desperately needed deficit spending to sustain demand.

Back then, however, the inside-the-Beltway crowd was obsessed with deficit reduction. . . And those of us who argued that reducing the deficit shouldn’t be a high priority were treated like freaks.

But the deficit wasn’t a crisis then, and it isn’t one now. In fact, leading economists are now telling us that concerns about government debt have been greatly exaggerated all along. The Very Serious People were completely wrong, and those who opposed austerity have been vindicated. . . .

Republicans only pretended to care about debt as an excuse to hobble President Barack Obama and slash social programs. They were and are complete hypocrites when it comes to budgeting. . . .

When progressives propose new or expanded social programs, they face intense media scrutiny bordering on harassment over how they intend to pay for these programs. Republicans proposing tax cuts don’t face anything like the same scrutiny; they are seemingly able to get away with blithe assertions that tax cuts will pay for themselves by boosting economic growth, even though every single piece of evidence we have says that this is nonsense.

We’re talking about big numbers here. As I said, the Trump budget blowout, overwhelmingly driven by tax cuts, seems to have raised the deficit by around $300 billion, or around 1½ percent of G.D.P. Over the course of the next decade, that would amount to something like $3.8 trillion — substantially more than, for example, the combined cost of all of Elizabeth Warren’s proposals other than Medicare for All. . . .

And the truth is that proposals like universal child care are far more likely than tax cuts to repay a significant fraction of their upfront costs, partly by freeing up adults to work, partly by improving the lives of children in ways that will make them more productive adults. . . .

Let me be clear here: I’m not complaining about the lack of panic over our trillion-dollar deficit. We shouldn’t be panicked. The problem is the selectivity of deficit hysteria, which somehow kicks in only when a Democrat is president or progressives propose spending that would make American lives better.

That selective hysteria has done enormous harm. And those who propagate it need to be called out for their bias.

The Incredible Hypocrisy Of Congressional Republicans

(This caricature of the Republican elephant is by the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)

Just a couple of weeks ago, the House of Representatives voted 420 to 0 to demand that the Mueller Report be made public. Every Republican voting supported the idea, and none voted against it.

Why did they vote that way? Because they, like most other Americans, expected the Mueller Report to present mainly a negative portrait of Donald Trump. They thought that by making the report public they could cherry-pick some parts of it that might not be so bad for Trump -- and by trumpeting those parts loudly, they could obfuscate and confuse. It was their faint hope of covering for Trump.

But then came Attorney General Barr's four-page whitewash of the Mueller Report. This week, the House Intelligence Committee voted to demand the full Mueller Report from Barr. Barr wants to give that committee a heavily-redacted version, but the committee is against that. They want the whole thing.

How did the Republicans on the committee vote? Every one of them voted against receiving the full un-redacted report. They no longer want the report to be public, but only the whitewashed version by Barr to be seen.

Why did they change their opinion? Because they liked Barr's four-page whitewash. Now they are afraid that the report contains material that would be damaging to Trump, and they don't want that information to reach the public (or change enough congressional minds to make impeachment possible).

That shows an incredible degree of hypocrisy. When they thought they could use the full report to help Trump, they supported its release. Now that they think the full report would hurt Trump, they oppose its release. They have no interest in helping the American people to learn the truth.

I'm Not Impressed By GOP Actions On Rep. Steve King

The Republicans in the House of Representatives has barred Rep. Steve King for his defense of white supremacy. This is not the first time King has showed his racism. He has a long history of racist statements. But this one made national news, and could not be ignored (as they have done so many times in the past).

Are we supposed to be impressed by this action by the House GOP? Are we supposed to believe the Republican Party has reformed, and no longer supports racism? I think not. They are just playing political games. They saw suburban voters leave them in droves in the last election, and they threw them a bone.

If they truly wanted to purge racism from the party, they would change their policies. They aren't doing that. If they truly believed white supremacy was evil and un-American, they would not support (or cover up the misdeeds) of the white supremacist living in the White House. They aren't doing that.
There's a reason why racists and white supremacists feel at home in the Republican Party, and the Republican officials aren't going to do anything to cost them those votes.

I'm not impressed by the House GOP caucus barring King from committees. It's just another flagrant display of Republican hypocrisy!

Another Example Of High Hypocrisy From Donald Trump

(This image of Donald Trump and Roger Stone is from CNN.com.)

Donald Trump is not a competent person. In fact, he has failed at most things he has tried -- both in business and in politics. But there are two things he's very good at -- lying and hypocrisy.

Back in 2016, Donald Trump had a very low opinion of anyone who took advantage of their Fifth Amendment right to avoid testifying. He said:

“The mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment? . . . I think it’s disgraceful.” 

Of course, he was talking about Democrats back then. It seems that he has a very different opinion when the person is an Republican associate. This week his longtime political ally has pled the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Trump's response was:

"Nice to know that some people still have 'guts!'"

Trump is very happy to see his friends and fellow Republicans use their constitutional rights. It's only Democrats (and mafia members) who he believes should not have those same rights.

Donald Trump has taken hypocrisy to new and dizzying heights.

McConnell Shows Himself To Be A Master Of Hypocrisy

(Caricature of Mitch McConnell is by DonkeyHotey.)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote an op-ed for Fox News a couple of days ago. In it, he bragged about how bipartisan the Senate had been under his leadership, and called for House Democrats to be bipartisan when they take control in January. Here is just part of what he wrote:

The Senate has proven its ability to reach bipartisan solutions to some of the most pressing challenges facing our nation.

And looking ahead to the coming year, there will be no shortage of opportunities to continue this impressive record of cooperation across the aisle and across the Capitol.

What we can make of those opportunities will depend on our Democratic colleagues. Will they choose to go it alone and simply make political points? Or will they choose to work together and actually make a difference?

Last week, the American people made it abundantly clear that they prefer that Congress focus on making a difference.

That message may have been lost on a few House Democrats, who have made clear their preference for investigations over policy results. After years of rhetoric, it’s hardly news that some are more interested in fanning the flames of division than reaching across the aisle.

All the ridiculous op-ed shows is that McConnell is a master of the art of hypocrisy. He evidently thinks the American people will forget his actions of the last 10 years. No one in Congress has been more partisan than Mitch McConnell since 2008.

He made it his objective to oppose everything President Obama tried to do -- with no regard as to whether it might be good for the country or not. It was enough for him to oppose it just because it was proposed by a Democratic president. That never changed throughout the full eight years of the Obama administration.

And when a Supreme Court vacancy occurred, McConnell refused to act on Obama's appointment of Merrick Garland -- delaying any action on the nomination until a Republican took the White House.

Once Trump took office, McConnell continued his partisanship. Never once did he invite Democrats to participate in creating legislation, and he blocked any effort to compromise -- refusing to bring any Democratic -supported bill to the Senate floor. He also made  sure the whitewash of Trump was successful in the Senate. Even after calling on Democrats to be bipartisan, he killed an effort to bring a bill to the floor that would protect the Mueller investigation.

There have been many majority leaders (of both parties), but there has never been one as blatantly partisan as Mitch McConnell. His claim of being bipartisan is absurd, and so is his call for Democrats to reach across the aisle -- something he never did!