When the facts are damning, do anything you can to detract attention from those facts. Three experienced Republican leaders — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Freedom Caucus-founder Jim Jordan, and Senator Lindsey Graham, always ready to flatter the President with contortions and contrivances — demonstrate how to avoid offering a simple, straightforward answer to an inconvenient question.
Watching the videos (linked to the tweets) is a lesson in subterfuge as practiced by a Republican Party too fearful of the President to acknowledge wrongdoing. Observe Congress’s most vocal defenders of Trump in action on mainstream television:
1. Leader McCarthy listens to Scott Pelley read one of the most talked about exchanges from the memo on Trump’s phone call to President Zelensky.
McCarthy responds: “Well, you just added another word.” Pelley assures him that the word “is in the White House transcript.”
McCarthy pivots and begins a reply, “When I read the transcript …,” by repeating talking points that Republicans distributed last week to Members of Congress. While McCarthy denies having seen those talking points, it’s obvious from his comment about the “added” word that he hasn’t read the transcript — or hasn’t retained what he read. (Not ready for prime time.)
2. Jake Tapper interviews Congressman Jim Jordan, one of the most aggressive practitioners of deflection and whataboutism in the House.
Tapper: I understand you want to change the subject, but the President was pushing the president of Ukraine to investigate a political rival. I cannot believe that that is okay with you. I can’t believe it’s okay with you.
Jordan: It’s not okay because — but he didn’t do that.
Tapper: … It’s in the transcript. We all read it.
Jordan: I read the transcript.
But of course, if he has, he doesn’t want to talk about it. Instead, he throws out accusations against the Bidens, whines about Trump’s victimhood at the hands of the FBI, but — talking fast and loud — won’t acknowledge the simple facts related straightforwardly in the White House transcript. (Finally Tapper has had enough and concludes the interview.)
3. And, last but not least, the Senator from South Carolina: Among the highlights of the interview with Margaret Brennan, is Graham’s complaint about hearsay (“a second hand account,” as the GOP talking point puts it).
Bennan points out that the whistleblower’s account has been confirmed by the White House transcript of the call. The facts don’t matter to Graham. He invokes hearsay multiple times, makes the false claim that “they changed the rules” about hearsay and whistleblowers, and — like Jordan — offers a long diatribe about Trump being persecuted. (And nary a glance at the facts that have been confirmed already.)
(Image: Steely Dan’s Pretzel Logic album cover.)