Lying Eyes
I remember watching the NBC Sunday News Show, Meet the Press, the week after the Inauguration in January of 2017. It was right after the Trump Administration took office, and one of their first “little lies” was from Press Secretary Sean Spicer (later of Dancing with the Stars fame). The day after the inauguration, Spicer stood in front of the press and the Nation and said that Trump’s Inaugural crowd was the biggest in American history. It wasn’t; we saw that with our own eyes.
We knew what the largest inauguration looked like. It was only eight years before, the swearing in of the first Black man as President of the United States, Barack Obama. The Mall, two miles of green space from the Capitol Building to the Lincoln Memorial, was completely filled. Trump’s crowd hardly made it to the Washington Monument, about halfway. But Spicer stuck by his lie regardless of the facts.
Kelly Ann
Trump’s Campaign Manager and Senior Advisor Kelly Ann Conway was the “Queen of Spin”, able to counter any criticism with a “what-about” (we would hear a lot more of that as Trump went on). Chuck Todd, the moderator of the show, asked why Spicer came out and lied. Conway did her best to change the topic, to “what-about” other issues, and to attack the press. But Todd stuck to his question, and in the end, she simply said that Spicer had “alternate facts”.
At the time it was laughable. What we didn’t know then, was that much of the Trump Administration, and his movement, MAGAism, would accept lies, intentional falsehoods, as facts. There were so many lies that the news media, notably the New York Times, stopped calling them “lies” because they said the word lost its impact. And they were lies much more significant than the size of crowds. The biggest lie of all; that the election of 2020 was corrupt, and that Trump should have won the Presidency. That lie created the Insurrection of 2021.
Revising History
Actually, Kelly Ann Conway was prescient. “Alternate Facts”, lies, became common for much of the Republican Party. It is “standard” Republican rhetoric that Americans shouldn’t be taught “real” American history; just a version “cleansed” of all controversy. And elections are corrupt. And that the Covid pandemic precautions were unnecessary. All are “alternate facts”.
MAGAism now sees the Insurrectionists as martyrs to the cause. And they are still going back to erase “real history”. That was the goal of the Durham Report, to “erase” the findings of the Mueller investigation of the Trump campaign. Yesterday demonstrated how far they would go to get that erasure done.
It began with Durham himself, testifying in front of a “friendly” Congressional Committee chaired by one of the leaders of “revisionism”, Republican Congressman Jim Jordan from Ohio. (Jordan his personally “revised” his own history, “forgetting” the sexual abuse the wrestlers under his care received from a team doctor). Democrats on the Committee asked Durham basic questions about the Trump Campaign’s interactions with Russia during 2016. Durham dodged the questions, appearing not to know well accepted facts (real facts, not alternate ones).
The lead questioner was Adam Schiff, Congressman from California, and the former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff led the Congressional investigation of Trump and the Mueller Report. He led the first impeachment of Donald Trump for blackmailing Ukraine. Adam Schiff was the face of Democrats trying to hold the former President accountable for his actions and his lies.
Censure
There are three levels of Congressional punishment. The first is a “reprimand”, a basic scolding. The second, a Congressional “censure”, is a scolding that requires the Congressman to stand in front of the entire House while the censure motion is read. Neither reprimand nor sanction restrict a Congressman’s authority or impact, but they still are a big deal. The final level of punishment is expulsion, requiring a two-thirds vote of the Congress.
Historically, twelve Congressmen have been reprimanded by the House. Only twenty-five Congressmen have been censured in the 235 year history of American Government. Five were expelled.
Yesterday, after Durham was done, the Congressional Republicans got their revenge on Adam Schiff. It was personal: they publicly “censured” Schiff for “lying to Congress and the American people about the Trump Campaign”. But Mr. Schiff’s “lies”, really weren’t lies. They simply weren’t the “alternate facts” that the Republicans want Americans to believe. MAGA had to “erase” Schiff, or at least discredit him, so that there “alternate facts” would become “truth”.
Just like the pictures of the 2017 inauguration, Republicans don’t want us to believe our “lying eyes”. We lived through the election of 2016. And we read the Mueller Report, and sat through the long hearings in both the House and the Senate about Russian involvement in the 2016 election. We know what we saw. No amount of “revisionism” by Durham, or erasure, or censure, will change that. Facts remain facts, regardless of the “spin”, or the “what-about” or the alternates. What’s happening in our politics isn’t just about ideology or power.
It’s about truth.
