Once again Republican leaders tell us we didn’t see what we saw.
We saw a punk squadron with badges pepper-spray a man for helping a woman. Then the lawmen Rodney King-ed him on a Minneapolis sidewalk. Then they shot him dead.
Following, as before, administration officials stepped to the microphone, a bird-call contest of farcical claims and equivocations.
Self-defense, they said. The victim had a gun (registered, for the record, and it stayed holstered until the goons took it).
The only thing menacing the masked assailants was his cell phone.
Then Fox News took the party lie – er, line – and ran with it, per normal.
So many falsehoods.
Has anyone noticed that our military hasn’t blown little boats out of the water since kidnapping Venezuela’s president?
That concisely sums up the “threat” our military was addressing with this murderous gambit.
But understand: Like Minnesota, Venezuela didn’t vote for this president.
And neither did Greenland. Or was it Iceland? Our president confused the two four times in his slurring comments to western leaders in Davos. His pouty White House mouthpiece said he meant “ice land.”
Hoo boy: These people would not know truth if placed before them on fine china.
At Davos, our felonious leader reserved time in his rant for the Big Lie about the 2020 election, just what leaders wanted to hear at a tense economic conference.
Fox Spews has yet to fully pay the piper for advancing that lie – particularly the one about “rigged voting machines.” The suit by Dominion Voting Systems cost the MAGAganda Channel $787.5 million. Next up: Smartmatic.
Have you noticed that almost no talking head at Fox Spews lost his or her job for that?
Along with the president, his favorite cable channel has shown lying to be an exceedingly good business model.
Speaking of lies, Republicans in Congress the other day tried to convey to all observing that on Jan. 6, 2021 — as with the videotaped bloodshed of Jan. 14 and Jan. 24, 2026, in Minneapolis — we didn’t see what we saw.
They tried to diminish the work and stature of Special Counsel Jack Smith in the criminal cases he built against their leader. They didn’t inflict a wound.
Smith had a slam-dunk fusillade against the MAGA king. Five grand juries agreed:
(1) The president knowingly inspired the riot that caused death and destruction, and he did nothing to tamp down the violence.
(2) He tried to bully state election officials to lie for him. Some refused. Some signed on as fake electors.
(3) He tried to get Justice Department officials to lie for him in order to seize voting machines.
(4) He libeled election workers who ultimately were his targets because they were black.
(5) He absconded with highly sensitive documents and ignored FBI requests to return them.
They want to put Jack Smith on trial; for what? Reportedly the Justice Department wants him tried for violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits politicking on our payroll.
What a joke coming from schemers who have made hash of Hatch — who used the White House South Lawn for their man’s accepting the 2020 nomination — maybe the most blatant violation of the law ever; who plastered the Great Leader’s face and name on public buildings; who blasted political propaganda during the government shutdown from airport TVs.
The point here isn’t just that we are in the throes of one man who is a felon and pathological liar, but of a political party’s moral and ethical rot. Following his example, the GOP has made bald-faced falsehoods its crypto currency. Add media that have furthered those lies — and profited.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
