IMHO, the reason you guys are having difficulty watching all the sneering on Fox News is because these guys are actually causing misery to millions of people, and they’re enjoying doing it. When they were snarking at President Obama, they were frustrating but usually ineffectual – up to the moment that they cheerled the theft of a Supreme Court seat. Now they’re just vicious about gloating over each moment that the Pence White House throws an Obama White House program in the trash or deliberately attacks another Middle Class group.

The lies about abortion procedures are frankly obscene. In reality 99% of these procedures are handled very early in pregnancy, and that is temporarily still legal throughout the US. After the Supreme Court rules on June Medical Services within the next year, that will likely no longer be the case, as Red States will almost certainly be given the latitude to restrict and ban abortion procedures at will. The “Late Term” procedures discussed in New York and Virginia were nothing about “infanticide” and the trolls at Fox News are well aware of this fact. The procedures in question have to do with a pregnancy that goes wrong near the end, or where other serious issues have developed that compromise the situation. The rule changes have already been summarized as simply making it more reasonable and humane for a woman to make a difficult decision with her doctor rather than have angry Right Wingers try to shame her into doing something even worse.

For every one of these questionable stories about “abortion survivors”, there are plenty of stories about young women forced to give birth to babies who could not survive outside the womb, simply because angry Right Wingers would not allow them to end the pregnancy before the fetus was forced into that situation. One significant example was a high-school student who was raped by a classmate and who could not bring herself to discuss this with anyone or even acknowledge what had happened to her until her pregnancy was well along. Given her ability to hide herself (and her unhappy mental state), nobody realized she was pregnant until a lot later than normal. She was told she would be forced to give birth to her rapist’s child – and that the tests were showing that the resulting baby would be born blind, deaf and without the ability to survive very long. She went through a traumatic scenario where she indeed gave birth to a baby who proceeded to suffer for about a year, with both the mother and baby in terrible pain, until the baby finally died. The woman was thus scarred twice – first by the rape and then by the pregnancy and resulting situation caused by the rape, because she was not given the ability to terminate the suffering. This is a story that Fox News doesn’t want people to hear, and there are many, many more just like it.

The fact that the Right Wing would play games like this and sneer at women in this kind of situation is, again, obscene. I would say that the people at Fox News and on AM radio fomenting these lies should be ashamed of themselves, but it would appear that they have no shame.

Hannity caved on this because he realized he’d forgotten to check with Rush Limbaugh before making these kinds of bold statements. Limbaugh of course waited a day or so and then played the card of saying that the Pence White House should go ahead and sign this budget and then immediately declare the non-existent National Emergency. This left Hannity high and dry, and he wasn’t about to stay out on that limb by himself. So, coward that he is, he immediately slunk back to supporting exactly what Limbaugh was espousing and then acted like that was his idea the whole time.

Moments like this are instructive toward showing people the difference between a vicious clown like Limbaugh and a copycat like Hannity. One is the guy who tries to bully the other kids in the schoolyard. The other is the little pipsqueak that stands next to the bully. Not hard to see which one is Limbaugh and which one is Hannity.

Gowdy’s hypocrisy is staggering. And yes, the Right Wing is now trying to obstruct the House, particularly Schiff.

I find it interesting that Gowdy was all-in for investigating any and every thing he could spin about President Obama’s White House, and that before this, the GOP was all-in to investigate any and every thing they could spin about Bill Clinton’s White House. But for some reason these guys went silent about the criminality in the W/Cheney House, and they’re frantically trying to gaslight anyone who mentions the venality of the Pence White House.

BTW – wasn’t Gowdy supposed to be going back to his community and working there, rather than taking big money to opine on a Right Wing propaganda network? One could get the impression that he’s going to try to run for another political office. But he wouldn’t be thinking of doing that, now would he?

There was one major area where Abrams needed to step up and she didn’t do it. She needed to call the Right Wing out for their boldfaced lies about the New York and Virginia state laws – because it is shameful for the Right Wing to try to get away with this nonsense.

She needed to say directly to the camera that matters of life and health deserve better than for Right Wingers to throw words like “infanticide” around without even knowing what they are talking about.

Trump inflicted a truly snore-inducing diatribe of his usual viciousness, with a couple of perfunctory nods to things that everyone could support. He stumbled constantly and seemed extremely uncomfortable. The frantic rush by Right Wingers to declare this to somehow be a great speech is frankly laughable.

The hypocrisy of these people is staggering.

So not applauding for a terrible and dreary recitation of mostly vicious statements is somehow un-American?

Even if we were to go with Fox News wanting to get on a high horse about partisanship, how do they explain their support for all the GOP legislators who sat on their hands for all 8 of President Obama’s State of the Union addresses? How do they explain the Right Wing’s love for Joe Wilson’s pipsqueak scream of “You LIE!” during one of them?

The fake outrage coming from the Right Wing about the various states trying to anticipate these moves is intended to help make a public case for flat-out banning medical procedures, with the overlay being that the Right is pretending they have a moral high ground about it. Except that they don’t – their bans will actually result in lower-income women being put into a position where they must either be publicly shamed and punished for having a pregnancy they cannot bring to term, or be subject to illicit procedures what will endanger their lives. Because a lower-income woman living in Mississippi or Louisiana does not have the resources to travel to New York to have a medical procedure – it costs a lot of money to do this, not counting the fact that they’d need to take time off of work when they’re not earning that much in the first place. (Wealthier Right Wing women will of course be able to travel wherever they need in order to have these procedures – and even after Roe is completely overturned, they’ll just fly up to Canada.)

The Right Wing is hoping to plant the seeds for their next big move on medical procedures, which will be to say that a fertilized egg is actually a fully-formed human life, with the status of “personhood”. That will be about two or three Supreme Court rulings down the road, after the new precedent of state’s rights and then of public safety have been established. Once they get away with that one, Roe will be effectively erased. And that will lead to the Right Wing’s next step to follow – banning contraception as once again some kind of moral high ground issue. If people think that the Right Wing won’t try this, take one look at the Pence White House and their behavior over the last two years. Yes, they really will do it if they get the chance. It’s why they’re openly salivating at the prospect of replacing Justice Ginsburg.

Segments like Carlson’s as shown above are just another part of their approach here – to chip away firmly at even the notion that a woman should have any choice about how to handle her medical issues. And by playing these games around Northam’s racism issues, they’re just trying to establish a talking point that he’s an immoral person. So if he’s immoral, then his position on medical procedures must also be immoral, and therefore the medical procedures themselves must be immoral, and therefore they should be opposed. Anyone discussing this with a Right Winger should be prepared to note that the two ideas have nothing to do with each other, and to note that it’s shameful for anyone to be trying to score cheap political points as if this was a game.

Amazing to see angry Right Wingers getting up early to say untrue things on this matter. More Whack-a-mole while we wait for the Supreme Court to potentially gut Roe v Wade with the June Medical Services decision.

One more time, Monica Klein was aware of the obvious – that Tucker Carlson wasn’t interested in a conversation about women’s reproductive rights. He just wanted to try to “gotcha” her with his cherry-picking of out-of-context remarks that have already been debunked. Her point to Carlson was apparently lost on these posters: Namely, that we are aware of the games that angry Right Wingers are playing to portray reproductive rights laws as some kind of atrocity. And that’s not going to fly, period. Klein absolutely presented her position – that women are not going back to unsafe conditions in silence.

These are laws intended to deal with women and doctors handling medical emergencies without suddenly getting hit with uninformed Right Wing prosecutions from people like the Pence White House. Right Wingers trying to play games around this should be ashamed of themselves.

And here we go with more Whack-a-Mole! These angry Right Wingers are just relentless with the lying and dissembling.

One more time – the New York legislation is not about “celebrating” medical procedures, nor is it about someone having a “recreational” procedure. It is about protecting life and not putting dogma over medical care. And if anything, the legislation is meant as a pre-emptive move to protect New York women from the upcoming overturning of Roe v Wade, potentially starting as early as this week with June Medical Services v Gee. (If the SC refuses to stay the Louisiana TRAP law, it will immediately signal that all Red States that wish to outlaw all abortion procedures are free to go to it.)

The smugness of people like Katie Pavlich and the other Fox News hosts in the face of what this is going to do to women’s health around the country is frankly shameful.

This is getting to be like Whack-a-Mole with all these Right Wing lies and deceptions. It frankly gets tiring, but we can’t let these people get away with playing these games.

Let’s be straightforward. Both Pavlich and Hamada are openly, blatantly LYING. Hamada’s claims about abortion procedures, which really just echo other Far Right pundits, have been thoroughly debunked. It’s not just that his claims are questionable – it’s that he’s making FALSE statements and he’s doubling down even when called out on it. For example, the absolute tweet he threw up there he’s happily opining that there is not a single condition to justify a procedure in the third trimester – that one got a pile of responses, including multiple OB/GYN doctors noting that he was both wrong and lying about this. I also call foul on his claim that anyone wanted to make death threats to him – he’s most likely referring to the dismissals he was receiving for having made such a ridiculous statement under the cloak of his medical license. Pavlich, for her part, never even noted that Hamada’s statements are knowingly false – she just made a disingenuous remark about having invited Governor Cuomo onto her show, something that she knew would never happen.

I say again that it is extremely offensive that Right Wingers are deliberately trying to smear this New York law, which is intended to protect lives in the event of late term medical distress, and in the face of the now-inevitable overturning of Roe v Wade within the next few years. (There’s actually a case pending RIGHT NOW – June Medical Services v Gee – that will effectively gut Roe as of next week if the current SC refuses to stay an extreme Louisiana anti-choice law within the next three days.)

And I say again that the offensive arguments these people are raising are not just about overturning the idea of state-by-state access to pregnancy procedures. Their arguments are about redefining human life to the exact second that the egg is fertilized. This is something that we have never done – it is only extreme Right Wing fanatics who have tried that approach. Modern science follows the precept that during the initial months of a pregnancy, this is more of a chemical/biological process. If the Right Wing gets their way, the current Supreme Court would make that redefinition and assign personhood to a fertilized egg. The second that happens, all pregnancy management procedures would be considered criminal and this situation goes from terrible to nightmarish. (And that’s before they get to banning all forms of contraception, which will be next)

It’s bad enough that the current Supreme Court is going to make it nearly impossible for women in at least half of the country to have any choice in their reproductive situations. But the current Right Wing is not satisfied unless they get the full Monty on this – meaning a nationwide ban on any procedure. If they succeed at their intentions here, we’ll see a scenario where women who are not wealthy will essentially be told they must either bear children they cannot afford or raise (and even in the face of risks to their lives), or where those women will go back to underground procedures that will absolutely risk their lives. Meanwhile, the wealthy Right Wing women will go right along having procedures outside of the US.

Pavlich should be ashamed of herself for peddling this nonsense.

Fact check: That’s not what the New York legislation is about and it’s deeply offensive that Right Wingers keep playing games about it. NOBODY is arguing to “kill a late-term, viable baby”.

Doctors do not perform late-term procedures frivolously, and they always work to protect life. The notion that the goal is to kill a baby is one that Right Wingers seem to want to invent here. There are multiple scenarios where a late-term pregnancy gets into serious medical trouble, and they don’t involve a viable baby. They can involve a situation where the baby is in fact already dead or where something catastrophic has happened and there is no way to save both.

The Right Wing has no moral high ground to presume to lecture anyone on this subject.

A few things to note here.

Hamlin is repeatedly lying about the incident and the Fox & Friends bunch is openly encouraging her to do so.

The Covington Catholic School kids were not just minding their own business being good, devout kids. They were participating in an angry partisan, political demonstration wearing MAGA gear, something that exposes Covington to a legal challenge as they’re blurring the line between church and state.

The “March for Life” demonstration is a specific Right Wing response to the annual Women’s March events that happen around the country, with the intention being to angrily counter women who stand up for themselves and their rights. What I’ve seen of the “March for Life” materials has regularly been a smug, angry and hateful attack on women, particularly non-White women and lower income women. The hatefulness of their event is even more charged today, given the viciousness of the Pence White House and the impending overturning of Roe v Wade by the current Supreme Court. If these guys get their way, no woman in this country would be permitted to have any reproductive rights, even if she were raped or if there were dangers to the life of the mother. They’re already trying to spin the New York legislation as some kind of sanctioning of murder rather than listening to the women who have had serious medical issues and needed to have a late term procedure.

So the Covington kids weren’t there on any cheerful Christian visit to the Capital. They were there to attack women’s rights and the school was sanctioning that activity.

Hamlin and the Fox & Friends gang dissemble when they play the victim card in discussing the Black Hebrew Israellites. As Priscilla has noted, the BHI are not “left wing activists”. They are a hateful wingnut outfit, along the lines of the Westboro Baptists, and they frankly don’t deserve further media attention. (If anything, all this nonsense from the Right Wing about this situation has only given them a bunch of publicity that they wanted.)

But Hamlin carefully doesn’t mention that the four guys from the BHI are only seen in video for the final hour of the day’s activities. There’s nothing to show what was going on for the prior 8 to 9 hours of fun, including what’s been discussed by other witnesses as earlier antagonistic comments back and forth between the large group of Covington Right Wingers and the four BHI guys. We have no way of knowing without video footage of that of how many provocations were hurled AT the BHI wingnuts before anyone started to record what material we do have. And we must remember that the BHI was present to feed on the hatefulness of the “March for Life”. Had the Right Wing not descended on the Capital, it’s likely that the BHI would not have been there. So both in setting up the event and in repeatedly engaging with counter-protestors like the BHI, the Right Wing lost any moral high ground they could have claimed. Yes, the BHI guys said offensive, hateful things that you wouldn’t want to hear anyone say to your teenager. But let’s not forget that the Covington teenagers were hurling plenty of insults back, and that this was going on for a much longer time than the Right Wing wants people to think.

I love this fictional notion that the Covington students asked for the chaperone’s permission to just do a school cheer to “drown out the hate”. Sure. That’s why the other guy ripped his shirt off. That’s why the kids were shouting back. And why were the chaperones keeping the kids in the middle of the confrontation rather than moving the kids to another area to get on their bus. That is, unless the chaperones were encouraging the kids to have this confrontation with the wingnuts. One would think that the responsible action of the chaperones would have been to avoid a confrontation, not feed it.

Doocy and Hamlin also bring up a Right Wing talking point about the school’s public apology for the shameful behavior of the students. Which is that the Right Wing wants everyone to think that some bureaucrat in the diocese issued this apology and that the school really doesn’t agree with it. Sure. In reality, one would hope that the school, now embarrassed by the way the students’ terrible behavior has made a public mess, would take the appropriate disciplinary actions.

I find it interesting and frankly despicable that Hamlin would like everyone to think that the Covington students were somehow acting heroically and decently. That’s a lie. The students spent the day engaging in a hateful partisan action and capped it off by exchanging shouted insults with a few wingnuts near the Lincoln Memorial. And to ice the cake, they proceeded to jeer and laugh at a Native American elder who was trying to diffuse the brewing confrontation between a large group of MAGA gear-wearing boys and a small number of angry counter-protestors. It makes sense that Nathan Phillips went to the Covington group to get them to stand down, given that there were far more of them than there were BHI counter-protestors. Except that he had thought that the Covington students would be respectful and move off with their chaperones, as was the point of his medicine chant. Instead, the main student refused to move and just smirked in his face, while the rest of the students surrounded them jeering and laughing and doing mock chants based on the Atlanta Braves. (Doocy blatantly lies when he says the kids were just doing their school cheer – the video clearly shows what they were doing.)

Doocy also tries to stir the pot here by raising the notion of the attorney who’s trying to see if he can get away with a defamation lawsuit. (To which I would say “Good luck with that” – the video clearly shows the Covington students acting in a vicious and hateful manner. It’s not defamation if they actually can be seen doing what you’re accusing them of.) Hamlin, for her part, says she doesn’t know anything first hand, which exposes that this isn’t an organized idea but rather something Fox News would like to see happen.

The reality here is that these students are not heroes or innocent victims. They knowingly engaged in hateful and shameful behavior and now they are being held to account for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if these guys did this kind of thing at earlier Right Wing events, particularly after seeing photos of Covington students in blackface at school events, jeering non-white students from other schools and giving White Supremacy hand signals. The difference here was that the behavior was caught on video and shown to the public. Yes, it’s unfortunate that the public reaction has been angry toward them. Yes, it’s unfortunate that they now feel the scrutiny of everyone watching them. Yes, it’s unfortunate that they’ve angered some people enough for really angry things to have been said to them. But none of that would have happened if the Covington group hadn’t engaged with the BHI wingnuts and hadn’t openly jeered and disrespected a Native American elder. If they are having a tough day today, it is because of their own bad acts.

The proper course of action for the Covington students, their parents, and their chaperones is that they need to publicly and humbly apologize for what they have done. And I’d recommend that all the Covington students in those MAGA hats be required to do 100 hours community service at the closest Native American center they can, so that they learn their lesson.

Carlson is blatantly lying again. And I don’t buy his faux outrage here. He has no moral ground from which to say these things.

The Covington students were called out, appropriately, for their bigoted and vicious behavior. I cannot believe that anyone is falling for the frantic Right Wing attempts to respin the situation and rewrite the facts.

In reality, the Covington students were gleeful participants in the hateful anti-choice and frankly anti-female “March for Life”, which only exists as a Right Wing middle finger toward the annual Women’s Marches that go on throughout the US. The Right Wing has long hated that women gather together in solidarity against efforts to dictate to them, and has particularly been incensed that more women than ever are attending these marches in the miserable epoch of the Pence White House. As part of the Covington student’s fun for their day in DC, they were decked out in MAGA gear, as an additional and deliberate middle finger toward everyone else at the National Mall. They weren’t going there out of some quiet, dignified wish to pray. They were there to try to bully and intimidate. (And there is a strong argument that’s been made that the wearing of the MAGA gear may have opened up Covington to legal action, since they are now directly endorsing a political candidate and violating the entire notion of separating church and state…)

The various videos that have been circulated of the mess at the Lincoln Memorial are notable for not including the first 9 or so hours of the day, when the Covington students, along with other “March for Life” agitators, ran around the Mall and tried to intimidate anyone they could, including the tiny group of black “Hebrew Israelites” protestors. I note that these counter-protestors appear to have been present at the National Mall as a direct response to the “March for Life”. They knew that angry Right Wingers were going to be making hay on that day and they decided to raise a challenge. Granted, this group of counter-protestors are clearly wingnuts, easily as offensive as the Westboro Baptists. And clearly, they were shouting offensive things at the students. (And again, we’re not being shown the hours of back-and-forth that preceded what footage we do have, so who knows what the Covington students and other angry Right Wingers said to kick the whole thing off.)

Into the middle of the situation steps Nathan Phillips from the Indigenous Peoples Day March, something the “March for Life” Right Wingers were knowingly disrupting on the same day. Phillips saw the confrontation brewing between a small group of loud black counter-protestors and a large group of angry Right Wing students wearing MAGA gear. And since the Covington chaperones were doing nothing to handle the situation (such as, perhaps, telling the students to go to the other side of the Memorial and walk away from the mess), Phillips decided to try to use his medicine to calm the kids down. He was thinking in terms of following long-used Native American techniques, with the chants and the drum and a direct approach to the students to encourage them to respect their elders and walk away from this situation.

The video footage that stirred this controversy is of what happened next – the one smug student refused to back off, and the other students surrounded them, jeering, mock-chanting, taunting and otherwise throwing a virtual wall of hatred at Nathan Phillips. It’s fairly clear that Phillips was taken aback by the sheer intensity of the students’ hatred for him, and he admitted later that he realized he’d put himself in an extremely dangerous situation. (Again, where were the Covington chaperones?)

The Right Wing would very much like to pretend that the earlier taunting between the students and the counter-protestors somehow erases the way the students expressed their hatred for Nathan Phillips. But that would require everyone to forget that the students were doing just that – expressing their hatred, and their smugness and frankly the ugliness of the typical Trump deplorable. The Covington students provided just the latest example of the continuing wave of hate crimes we have seen the Pence White House and Fox News embolden across the US. These students would have been right at home with the guys who terrorized Charlottesville in 2017, or with the guys who tried to terrorize Berkeley. Even if we were to say that they were angry at the counter-protestors, that does not excuse the behavior we clearly see in the video.

In a just world, the Covington students would be publicly disciplined by their school and by their parents. (Although the school bears the actual responsibility, given that the kids are minors) The correct and appropriate course of action is to insist that these students apologize for their behavior and do some community service, preferably to assist Native Americans. Otherwise, the Right Wingers will think they can get away with this behavior again. And that’s a lesson that should not be taught to these students.

I wouldn’t read too much into this. Ingraham is just having a tantrum over her manufactured outrage over things like the Right Wing smug teenagers being called out for their bigotry. She’s trying to pretend that it’s the Right Wing haters that are somehow the real victims. I’m not buying any of it.

And while it would be nice for Fox News to acknowledge that it isn’t a great idea to constantly hire bigoted and hateful people to put on their channel, they don’t seem to have learned anything about that over their entire unfortunate history.

Barr is an extremely Far Right man, known for his belief that Roe v Wade should be overturned and for having urged George HW Bush to pardon everyone he could from the Iran/Contra investigation and thus kneecap that entire process. His Right Wing bonafides go back to his days with the CIA in the 1970s and his happy work within the Reagan White House in the early 80s. He’s alternated between Right Wing law firms and Right Wing White Houses throughout his career.

He is more than comfortable with the idea of complete power resting with the Executive Branch. He isn’t a Trump puppet – he’s more of an expression of how the Pence White House views the law. I would not be surprised to see him pardon anyone he feels Mueller is targeting that is too close to home. And he’ll be just as draconian about everything that Sessions was – if not more so.

The Right Wing appears to be panicking now. They don’t know how to counteract the fact that Trump announced he’d be proud to shut the government down over this nonsensical “wall” middle finger idea.

The reality is that Right Wing media figures scared Trump into reneging on his commitment to sign a budget that included over a billion dollars in funding for Border Security. Trump himself doesn’t know how can get out of his public statements and is now flailing around trying to find any way he can somehow act like he didn’t “cave”.

My thinking is that we’ll have to wait for enough GOP Senators to feel the heat for the Congress to pass an actual budget past the Pence White House’s veto. The unfortunate part is that I have a feeling there will be several more of these tantrums before voters get a chance to make a change in 2020.

Hannity and Graham are being knowingly disingenous here.

The Pence White House is forcing Coast Guard, Border Patrol and TSA to work without pay while they have their temper tantrum. They need to stop behaving like toddlers and begin to comport themselves as adults. If they cannot do so, then they should apologize to the American people for the conduct and step down. A budget was already agreed upon, including over a billion dollars for border security, which everyone supports. Trump reneged on his commitment to sign it and walked away after being threatened by Rush Limbaugh and other AM Radio voices along with Fox News. There’s nothing to this mess more complicated than that.

As for the deaths caused by undocumented immigrants, there are always isolated cases of criminals and of drunk drivers and the wreckage they leave. But putting up a giant middle finger concrete wall on the southern border will not change those facts. Criminals will continue to evade any walls by tunneling or swimming into the country, or by simply going around wherever the barriers are, as they always have. The real victims on the borders are the refugees who the Pence White House has knowingly targeted, trying to make their lives as miserable as possible as a negative message for the thousands who wish they could come here. The sheer inhumanity of the Right Wing on this issue is breathtaking – and these are pundits who wish to play themselves as nice Christians who care about others.

Congresswoman Tlaib’s comments must be understood in context – something that the Right Wing seems incapable of doing. She was describing her emotional response to her son realizing that she had in fact won her seat in the House, which confirmed for him that “Bullies Don’t Win”. Which was huge for Tlaib and her son – and she exulted for her crowd by adding to that enthusiasm by saying "No, Bullies Don’t Win, and we’re gonna impeach the #%^@er!" This wasn’t some street threat. It was an expression of exultation – of enthusiasm about not being intimidated by childish goons like Pence and his spokesman.

I find it more than hilarious that somehow the Right Wing thinks her anti-bullying statement was somehow a problem when they had no problem cheering on the bullying. Weren’t these pundits the same ones who defended Pence’s spokesman when he referred to various foreign countries as "#$^#hole" or “#$%@house” countries? (And the same pundits who tried to equivocate about which word he used rather than acknowledge his vulgarity and bigotry?) And where were these guys when Dick Cheney infamously dropped an F Bomb on Senator Leahy on the Senate Floor a decade ago?

It looks like he’s planning to use tonight’s PR moment to immediately declare his “emergency”. Some Right Wing AM Radio guys (like Beck’s clan) are openly hoping he will somehow threaten the country and the Congress by telling them they have 7 days or whatever to give him everything he wants or he’ll do it. My thinking is that if he makes such a threat, Pelosi and Schumer should immediately respond with the note that if he attempts this action in 7 days, they’ll begin impeachment proceedings at that time, as well as beginning actions regarding the 25th Amendment.

The Pence White House does not seem to understand how weak their position here is. The reality should become clearer by the end of the week.

Again, maybe I’m completely wrong and Pence’s spokesman will instead apologize to everyone and demonstrate that he’s learned even a single lesson about his pointless attempts to bully the country.

Lewandowski was really just spouting his usual talking points. He seemed caught completely off guard by Konst’s grasp of most of the facts.

But to be very specific about the various lies that Lewandowski tried to sneak in: No, the Democratic primaries were not rigged against Bernie Sanders – he lost fair and square, as he himself acknowledged. No, the Democratic Party did not begin or fund the Steele Dossier (more and more of which has now been confirmed as factual) – this was opposition research initially sought by GOP opponents of Trump and eventually finished with final funds from the Dems after Trump won the primaries. And the notion that super-rich Americans are about to voluntarily donate millions to the IRS is complete nonsense.

But let’s not forget how Arroyo also snuck in a side shot at Hillary Clinton. He played a little game by just wondering if potential Dem candidates shouldn’t be avoiding Hillary Clinton and going instead to Michelle Obama, since her book sold better than Hillary’s. This is an old Fox News/Right Wing trope, which they’ve been throwing around for over a decade. (This began during the 2008 campaign when Right Wingers tried to stir up trouble by loudly insisting that a Michelle Obama quote about how she and her husband handled parenting was somehow a slap at the Clintons rather than an actual observation of their domestic life.) So Arroyo went for a cheap bank shot, where he essentially said (along with Lewandowski) that Clinton is a failure and anyone trying to get help from her would also be a failure. Not very subtle, but Konst didn’t pick up on it. (On the other hand, to be honest, Konst really isn’t concerned about Clinton other than the fact that she can definitely provide access to donors to the right candidates.)