I don’t think there is anyone in televised political commentary that bites harder, nails it better, and cuts to the quick with more razor-sharp verbal devastation better than Nicole Wallace, former White House Communications Director for George W. Bush. Today she featured former Virginia GOP Congressman Denver Riggleman to talk about the new low of spinelessness Republican leadership in congress is displaying. In her own words, the intro:
“Maximum idiocy. For all of the hard-to-follow twists and turns in the mindblowing web of lies that is the George Santos story, Maximum idiocy sums it up perfectly. But of course, with someone all of us know very well, former Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman, who is a veteran of the Republican Party that knows just how much a new low the George Santos story really represents. As a former advisor to the Jan 6 Committee, he is uniquely positioned to speak to just how insidious misinformation and bald-faced lies are in the hands of elected officials. How what George Santos, would have us believe our embellishments are in fact a normalization of deceit by the disgraced ex-President and his enablers in the GOP. Welcome to the show. I’m so glad you broadened it out to a picture of the Republican Party completely enthralled by the tool kit relied upon by not great confident leaders of democracy but by weak terrified leaders of autocracies. Tell me how the Santos story fits in…..”
Riggleman of course offers some sharp commentary of his own but Wallace goes on, and I love this part: “You know Denver, I couldn’t have been a staffer in the White House if I’d told these lies, you fill out the SF286, I couldn’t work at my current company if I’d told these lies. I’m trying to think of other jobs I’ve had, I worked at a power company that had a nuclear power plant and if I’d lied like that I wouldn’t have been able to work there. I don’t know where you can work and draw a pay check (and lie like that), let alone one paid for by all US taxpayers other than the Republican Party in Congress. What does that say?”….
Damn, mic drop.