After several days of delicious schadenfreude watching Fox News melt down, I spent the last Sunday in September curled up on the couch watching a parade of Republican clodpolls attempt to argue that up is down, apples are oranges, and clowns aren't scary.
The biggest clown of the day had to be Kevin McCarthy, the blockhead from Bakersfield, the hairdo who's currently House Minority Leader. Kevin is not exactly known as Kierkegaard around the capitol—he said in 2016 he suspected Trump was on Putin's payroll (Paul Ryan "immediately interjected" to tell him to STFU)—but McCarthy's appearance on 60 Minutes last night was one for the record books.
McCarthy keeps saying that the impeachment inquiry "would never have moved forward if the Speaker of the House would have simply waited 48 hours to actually READ the transcript." But it sure sounded like McCarthy is the one who's never read the transcript.
Kevin McCarthy again displays his unique brand of incompetence and dishonesty. pic.twitter.com/KAijpPMk6R
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) September 30, 2019
Congressman Justin Amash, by the way, the person who tweeted this clip to demonstrate McCarthy's "incompetence and dishonesty," is a Republican.
Meanwhile, on Face the Nation, Lindsay Graham said about the transcript in which Trump asked the president of Ukraine for an illegal "favor": "I have zero problems with this phone call." As for the whistle-blower complaint, he said, "It's all hearsay. You can't get a parking ticket conviction based on hearsay."
The "zero problems" is at 1:24. The parking ticket business is at 2:58.
Graham says "hearsay" almost a dozen times in this interview, and keeps mentioning that rules for "hearsay" changed a few weeks ago—attempting to get a conspiracy theory going in that direction—but he fails to mention that, um, hey, Lindsey? Are you in there? Do you know what year it is and who the president is? Did you think about this before you went on TV?
The only reason it would matter if it were "hearsay" is if the information weren't true, but Trump already confirmed that it's true! We don't have to rely on what the whistle-blower said about the contents of the call because Trump released the transcript of the call himself.
At 6:35, Graham says he didn't think the Mueller investigation was a witch hunt—but guess what he does think is a witch hunt? This! This HEARSAY!!
You know... Mueller wasn't a witch hunt. But Salem Witch Trials have more due process than this. "How do you know she's a witch?" "Somebody told me she's a witch." "How do you know she's a witch?" "I read articles thinking she might be a witch."
Ohhh-kaaay.
Meanwhile, on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Rudy Giuliani made an appearance to deny that he has been working with Ukraine on investigating Joe Biden while also confirming that yes he has been meeting with Ukraine about investigating Joe Biden, and also to deny that he's been working to prove that Ukraine was actually behind the 2016 election interference while also confirming that yes Ukraine was behind the 2016 election interference and that Ukraine colluded with Hillary Clinton and George Soros and he can prove it!
Got that?
If you don't have the intellectual bandwidth to toss your brain in a blender right now, just watch the opening seconds of the clip—watch Rudy's face the first time the camera cuts to him—to get a read on how, uh, hinged this guy is.
On Fox News Sunday, senior advisor and barely animate pool of slime Stephen Miller attempted his version of spinning about the whistle-blower complaint—or as he calls it, the "seven-page little Nancy Drew novel that the whistle-blower put together"—and it got... contentious.
"I asked you a specific question, I’d like a specific answer," Chris Wallace says at one point. A moment later, Wallace says, "How about answering my question?" A moment later, "Stephen, I'm asking you a direct question." And so on and so forth.
At about 9:04, Miller starts shouting:
The President is the whistle-blower here! THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IS THE WHISTLE-BLOWER!!!!
For the first time in my life, I can't wait to see what's on Fox News tonight.