They are liars. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told Jake Tapper Sunday on CNN that he didn't know anything about Trump's crypto-grift bribe banquet last week, hadn't even heard about it. He also lied about the cuts to Medicaid buried in the--and I'm only going to write this one time because I believe words have meanings--One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Variously punctuated, weirdly redundant, and predictably aggrandizing, the Act is so bad that liars have a lot to choose from as they defend it.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that, if the Act becomes law, it will indeed require a cut of almost a trillion dollars to Medicaid and SNAP. For those keeping score, that's the opposite of what Mike "We are not cutting Medicaid in this package" Johnson lied on air this morning before following up with the hilariously accurate, "There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this.” Johnson is able to tell many lies in a short period of time, but he can't compete with serial liar, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
While not as slick as Johnson, Leavitt makes up for it in her passion for talking points and ass-kissing. For example, other features-not-bugs in the OBBBA include making 2017 Trump 1 tax cuts "permanent," expanding the deficit by almost four trillion dollars, thus requiring all those cuts and blowing a hole in whatever deficit rhetoric Republicans can still muster. All to give the top 20% of taxpayers a big, beautiful tax break while the bottom 20% gets less than bupkis.
Nevertheless, when asked about the deficit Leavitt flatly lied, "This bill does not add to the deficit," and cited the president's own Council of Economic Advisors, who fantasize that increased growth will offset the tax cuts. Sound familiar? Leavitt doubled down, asserting that not only was there no increase to the deficit, but "There's $1.6 trillion worth of savings in this bill."
According to the once-respectable Washington Post, Trump lied over 30,000 times his first go-round, and there are a gazillion more examples of the Trump 2 regime lying to the country. From DHS head Kristi Noem lying about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to Government lawyers lying to the courts, to Stephen Miller lying about due process and election fraud and a Supreme Court decision, to fill in the blank about fill in the blank. JD Vance lies about what he's told to lie about. And of course, Trump lies about everything. There are too many to count, let alone list.
I've written about this before. If they are breathing, they are lying.
Some of them might be fanatics devoted to their MAGA god. For some the lying may be a demonstration of loyalty because they're scared or ambitious. They want to please the boss. It's hard to know whether or not Stephen Miller or Karoline Leavitt really believe the things they're saying, but with others it's clear. In the end, it really doesn't make much difference. These people are lost, either delusionary or corrupted beyond redemption.
But what about us? What happens to a society, a country, to millions of people when nothing is true anymore? That's not quite right. There are still true things, but they're being rubbed out by the liars. The lies never stop and they hang in the atmosphere like sand in an endless storm. They choke us and stick to our skin as we move through the world and live our lives.
It's starting to get to me. I know they are lying. My friends know they are lying. Even most of them know they're lying. The media has become more forceful in pointing out the lies. But the storm never stops.
We can't get away from it. It's poisoning the air we breathe. But we have to breathe, don't we? We go on with our lives because what else is there to do? We pretend that it will stop, that something will happen. We pretend that someone will make them stop lying and just let us breathe.
I'm going to stop thinking about the liars. They're easy to figure out. It's the people who are being lied to that I worry about. What is going to happen to us? What should we do? Should we be angrier? Should we ignore it? How can you ignore something when every day you can feel it on your skin and in your throat?
They know they are lying. We know they are lying. We all know they are lying, but we just go along and pretend. And it's really starting to bug me.
No comments:
Post a Comment