Political Irony

Bill Barr, who is supposedly the US Attorney General but acts like Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, testified under oath to Congress on Tuesday. Here’s a list of lies and stupid things he said:

1. Could not answer whether the President has the power to move the date of the election (he doesn’t)
2. Wouldn’t acknowledge that if a person not suspected of committing any crime is detained, forced into a car where they are not free to leave (“in custody”), driven to an unknown location, and questioned, that the person is under arrest (they are)
3. Stated that law enforcement are allowed to use force — including pepper spray and tear gas — in a non-emergency situation to disperse peaceful protesters engaged in lawful assembly (peaceful protest is a constitutional right)
4. Could not immediately state that foreign assistance to a presidential campaign is categorically prohibited (it is)
5. Had zero evidence (and admitted as much under oath) to back up his statement that large numbers of people who cast their votes by mail could end up “rigging” the election
6. Unable to explain why the “antifa movement” — which he conceded are loosely-affiliated groups/individuals — are considered “terrorists” (also did not address why the same rationale would not apply to right-wing extremists)
7. Said he wouldn’t open an investigation even in light of evidence indicating that the president may have committed a crime (specifically in reference to the Stone commutation/quid pro quo)
8. Would not commit to following DOJ’s policy against releasing politically-sensitive information (i.e., Durham “investigation”) right before election
9. Declared that there is no such thing as systemic racism in policing
10. Offered “proof” that there is no systemic racism by noting that 8 unarmed Black people and 11 unarmed White people have been killed by police this year (ignores that the US population is 15% black and 60% white; if you add white Hispanics, it’s 72%)

I want to add some information about #6, where Barr calls anti-fascists terrorists, but won’t use the same label on right-wing extremists. In the last 25 years, anti-fascist attacks have not resulted in any victims killed. Zero. But white supremacists and other right-wing extremists have carried out attacks leaving at least 329 victims dead. (There was actually one anti-fascist attack that lead to a death, but it was the anti-fascist who died).

If you consider all violence (not just attacks) since 2010 comparing left-wing to right-wing violence in the US:

• Left-wing violence resulted in 21 victims killed
• Right-wing violence resulted in 117 victims killed
• For comparison, jihadist attacks resulted in 95 victims killed. So right-wing violence has killed more people than actual Islamic terrorists.

And let’s not even talk about the 150,000 Americans who have died because of Trump’s incompetent response to the coronavirus, the worst in the world.

Trump is a bully, but when you stand up to him, he backs down like the loser he is. Just this week, he’s retreated several times:

• He insisted that Congress cut payroll taxes, but his own party members in the Senate said no. Probably because Trump would have benefited more from such a tax cut than the economy would.
• He restarted the coronavirus briefings that he had earlier killed, but without real information from real scientists, nobody cared.
• He even admitted that the pandemic was going to get worse before it got better. Duh! So I guess he was either wrong (or just lying) when he kept saying that it would get better soon. Why would anyone believe him?
• He tried to get all schools in the country to open in the fall, even threatening their federal aid, but they said no, and he backed down.
• He claimed that wearing masks wasn’t necessary, until he did an about-face and not only wore one, but said they were a good idea.
• And probably worst of all, he kept demanding that he could stroke his own ego by giving a speech at the Republican National Convention to 20,000 people cheering for him. And then pretended to cancel it because he was too busy with the coronavirus. As if.

Trump absolutely hates to change his position. And as we are seeing, even when he does change his mind he can never admit that he was wrong. That makes him a loser.

The Democrats (especially Speaker Nancy Pelosi) figured out that they could stand up to Trump, and it now looks like the Republicans are figuring out the same thing. Thank goodness.

Once your victims stop being scared of you, being a bully stops working. And now everyone knows that Trump is weak.

And one last piece of late breaking news about Donald Trump being a loser. An hour before Dr. Anthony Fauci threw out the first pitch at the baseball season opener, Trump announced that he, too, had been invited to throw out a pitch for a NY Yankees game.

Except that Trump had not actually been invited. His announcement was a complete surprise both to White House staff and to Yankees officials.

According to the New York Times, Trump was so jealous of Fauci getting all this attention, he ordered his aides to call Yankees officials to arrange a pitch for Trump. But the whole thing fell apart, so Trump (again) falsely claimed “Because of my strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else, I won’t be able to be in New York to throw out the opening pitch”.

And then he went golfing.

The Trump campaign is running this ad on Facebook:

The image on the right is labeled “Chaos & Violence”, meant to invoke the protests against police brutality that have been going on around the US.

As I like to say, there’s just one problem. That photo is not from the US. It is a photo from a pro-democracy protest in Kyiv, Ukraine, taken in 2014. You can see the original (larger) image here, and the photographer has confirmed that it is his photo. So I guess the real message is that Trump is opposed to pro-democracy demonstrations (especially ones that succeed in ousting a tyrant and restoring democracy).

But wait, there’s more! The person who is in charge of sending federal agents to Portland, OR and other US cities is the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf. What’s hypocritical here is that Wolf is only the acting head of DHS. He was never confirmed by the Senate, and wasn’t even nominated by Trump. As explained in the Washington Post:

Trump has made use of acting Cabinet officials in ways with no apparent precedent. As I wrote back in February, by that point he had had acting officials in Cabinet-level jobs for more than 2,700 combined days across 22 jobs — about 1 out of every 9 total days. That compared to about 1 out of every 29 for President Barack Obama. (“I like ‘acting’ because I can move so quickly,” he told CBS’s “Face The Nation” last year, adding, “It gives me more flexibility.”)

This is problematic for several reasons: first, US law says that acting officials can only serve for 210 days. Wolf has served 255 days, which means that legally he cannot be in charge of the DHS. And second, this makes Wolf completely beholden to Trump, because unlike confirmed cabinet posts, Trump can dismiss an acting head at any time, for any reason. And third, the DHS has a legal order of succession, which was violated when Trump elevated Wolf to be the head.

So Trump is saying he is fighting lawlessness, when he is the person who is directly violating the law.

Oh, and incidentally, Facebook has refused to take that ad down, even though it is misleading. And the Trump campaign is still running it.