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This week, America was treated to two of the most absurd pieces of political theater that have possibly ever happened in the world, ever. Both incidents occurred in Congressional hearings, and both involved prominent members of the Donald Trump administration, and both showcased the truly breathtaking ease with which the Trump administration brazenly lies about everything and anything.
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This week, America was treated to two of the most pathetic pieces of political theater that have possibly ever happened in the world, ever. Both incidents occurred in Congressional hearings and both involved prominent members of the Donald Trump administration.
Kristi “Gestapo Barbie” Noem appeared before a House committee to ostensibly discuss threats to America’s national security but soon found herself defending the administration’s appalling deportation regime.
Noem was asked one simple question: “Madam Secretary, how many United States military veterans have you deported?”
Noem effortlessly and reflexively lies through her teeth: “sir, we have not deported U.S. citizens or military veterans.”
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She knows this isn’t true. Everybody knows this isn’t true, because journalists have documented multiple cases in which American veterans have been deported. But she lies anyway.
In a truly stunning scene that could have been penned by Aaron Sorkin, an aide appears holding a tablet showing a videocall.
“Madam Secretary, we are joined on Zoom by a gentleman named Sejoon Park. He is a United States Army combat veteran who was shot twice while serving our country in Panama in 1989. He is a combat veteran, a Purple Heart recipient. He has sacrificed more for this country than most people ever have. Earlier this year, you deported him to Korea, a country he hasn’t lived in since he was seven years old.”
Noem is forced to thank the man for his service and begrudgingly agrees to “look into” his case.
The second incident happened the same day, in a different Congressional hearing, when FBI Special Agent Michael Glasheen was challenged by Rep. Bennie Thompson about the Trump administration’s completely bullshit narrative that the biggest threat to US national security is “antifa,” or anti-fascists.
Thompson called their bluff by asking “Where is antifa’s headquarters? Where in the United States does antifa exist?”
Glasheen responded with a full on deer-in-headlights, busted by a teacher for not doing the reading, hand caught in cookie jar freeze. He was silent for several seconds before weakly muttering that “we are building out the infrastructure right now.”
“What does THAT MEAN?” responds Rep. Thompson. “I’m just trying to get the information. You say antifa is a terrorist organization. Tell us as a committee. How did you come to that? Where do they exist? How many members do they have in the United States as of right now? If you said antifa is the number one domestic terrorist organization operating in the United States, I just need to know: where they are, how many people? I don’t want a name. I don’t want anything like that. Just how many people have you identified with the FBI that antifa is made of?”
All Glasheen can do is say “the investigations are active right now.”
Thompson grows visibly irritated at this. “So you wouldn’t come to this committee and say something you can’t prove, I know. I know you wouldn’t do that.”
But he did do that, because of course he did, because all that matters to these people is forcing their twisted fiction to become real enough to justify their fascistic crackdown.
This is just the tip of the ICEberg, and all the lying serves their purpose on multiple levels. The damage from this constant avalanche of completely obvious and shameless lies will shatter the public’s faith in government, making our jobs of fixing things that much harder once we do get back in government.
But it does expose the fatal flaw in the Trump administration’s approach to ruling. The shamelessness of their lies is a mark of the utter contempt they feel for Democrats, for the media, and for their own voters. This contempt is manifest in every single thing they do; it’s the reason that Trump has no problem telling his voters that affordability is a hoax and that prices are going down and that the economy is the greatest it’s ever been in the history of numbers.
When the lies are this blatant, it’s hard to “both sides” the fallout, and even harder to ignore the truth in front of your own nose.
They lied their way into power, and as we head into a midterm year, they are lying their way out.
So, keep documenting their lies, keep calling them out, and let’s be sure we’re ready to make things right for the Trump administration’s countless victims once we get back into power.
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