Donald Trump. The Nation’s Great Liar. Photo: Gage Skidmore–Flickr.
While the Trump shutdown enters its third week, certain Republicans seem more offended by the recent comments of Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a new member of the 116th Congress, than with the negative impact Trump’s shutdown is having on 800,00 Americans.
Grandstanding Republicans, and the usual Fox News phonies, wasted no time decrying the “foul language” Rep. Tlaib made calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. Aren’t these the same Republicans who remain mute as the most profane president in the history of the republic repeatedly spews offensive insulting slurs at those who don’t bend over for him?
On Thursday, after she was sworn in as the first Palestinian-American elected to Congress Rep. Tlaib spoke to supporters about a conversation she had with her son after she was elected. Tlaib told the crowd “when your son looks at you and says ‘Mumma, look, you won, bullies don’t win.’ And I said ‘Baby they don’t, because we’re going to go in there and impeach the motherfucker.”
Not long after this caustic comment was aired some objected to Tlaib’s verbiage.
Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) denounced Tlaib’s comments as “wrong” and talked about the need to “put a resolution together to actually work with one another, to not use foul language.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in response to the controversy stated “I’m not in the censorship business. I don’t like that language, I wouldn’t use that language, but I wouldn’t establish language standards for my colleagues.” Pelosi rightly pointed out that Tlaib’s utterance was “nothing worse than the president has said.”
Minority Leader McCarthy, who apparently just suddenly found out about the importance of political politeness and etiquette, stated his disapproval with Pelosi’s stance. “We watched a brand-new Speaker say nothing to her,” McCarthy complained. “That action should not stand. Somebody should stand up to her. She’s the speaker. That individual sits in her caucus. I would hope if she wouldn’t, others in her caucus would.”
McCarthy was also unhappy about the essential issue Tlaib was articulating: impeaching Donald Trump. According to McCarthy: “How do you work with anybody if this is what they really have planned? That they go down into a place, they have the MoveOn, they think others aren’t watching it, they’re using foul language. They introduce that they just want to impeach the president. Over what basis? We have government shutdown right now. Where are their priorities?”
For one thing, somebody should remind McCarthy Trump is the reason we have a shutdown.
It’s interesting Rep. McCarthy, all of a sudden, cares about decorum and the use of “foul language.” Is “foul language” somehow outside of the political norm now? Words do matter—so where has Mr. McCarthy been for the last two years, when his party’s new standard-bearer was busy breaking every rule on political behavior?
By not condemning Trump for the never-rending, far worse, outrageous statements he continues to make Republicans like McCarthy have zero credibility to criticize anyone about what is acceptable language. Trump has used the most viciously vile verbiage to attack those who don’t agree with him. Because of racist Republican politics, minorities are often targeted by Trump. He has indulged KKK elements like those who killed Heather Heyer, in Charlottesville—and we hear nearly no condemnation from Republicans.
Where was McCarthy when President Trump referred to African nations as well as Haiti as “shithole countries?” Where was he when Trump said if Nigerian immigrants were given visas they would never “go back to their huts?” Why wasn’t McCarthy, and the GOP, outraged by Trump’s claim that Haitians “all have AIDS?”
Why didn’t these despicable attacks on Black people upset Republicans, and those hypocritical hyperventilating frauds over at Fox News—like Judge Jeanine Pirro—who are now so upset, over what Rep Tlaib said? Judge Pirro complained that Tlaib called Trump “an ‘mf’er’ because you don’t like the way he talks.”
Judge Pirro, a disgrace to the legal profession herself, pretends opposition to Trump has something to do just with “the way he talks,” rather than the foul filth flowing from the cesspool that is his mouth. But since she is from the same slimy swamp as Trump, often making the same racist attacks on immigrants and minorities, we should expect no better from her. Moreover, Pirro is part of the right-wing propaganda media pushing the same putrid policies as Republicans.
Trump no doubt gets his xenophobic inspiration from the likes of Pirro, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingram, Ann Coulter, etc. The same non-White “others” they attack he attacks. The current shutdown is rooted in the right-wing media hysteria that steadily broadcasts bigotry to that segment of America yearning for the nostalgia of the “good old days,” when White supremacy clearly ruled.
Last May, Trump in an attack on undocumented immigrants said “these aren’t people. They are animals.” Trump has made many slanderously shameful statements about Latino immigrants at various times calling them “drug dealers,” and “murderers.” Most interestingly, he has also called them “rapists.”
One wonders what the 22 women who’ve accused Trump of sexual assault think about this?
Trump’s hatred of Muslims is also clear. During a campaign speech, in 2015, in Birmingham Alabama, he told supporters a bold-faced lie about 9-11. He claimed he saw, on TV “a heavy Arab population,” in New Jersey, “cheering as the building was coming down.” Of course, these statements were easily proven to be false.
The one unimpeachable truth we do know about Donald Trump is that he is an abominable liar.
We all remember the viciously racist attacks Trump launched against NFL players who were protesting police brutality and institutional racism. The protests were sparked by the brave example of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick who boldly decided he would start taking a knee to protest police violence and murder.
During a 2017 September speech, also in Alabama, Trump said, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, get that son of a bitch off the field.” Calling Black NFL players sons of bitches apparently didn’t upset Republicans at all. Then Trump—who doesn’t seem to see the need to celebrate things like Veterans Day—said that unpatriotic Black NFL players who don’t “stand proudly for the national anthem…maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.”
I suppose in Trump’s mind these Black players should be deported to “shithole countries” where they can be confined to their mud “huts.” The time can’t come soon enough where we banish this bigoted buffoon to the opulent rathole from whence he came—assuming he escapes prison pinstripes.
Donald Trump has been a putrefying presence as president, in various ways, not the least of which has been with his mouth. Even before he was elected, we all heard language unbecoming of any politician—much less a presidential candidate. Pretentious Republicans, like Mr. McCarthy, seem to have forgotten all the women this contemptible charlatan has verbally defamed.
On the now infamous Access Hollywood tape, we all heard Trump bragging about sexual assaulting women—saying because he is a rich celebrity he can just “grab them by the pussy” and “do anything.” Those who find Tlaib’s comments so objectionable, should remember Trump, on the tape, also talked about assaulting a woman that “I did try and fuck her…I moved on her like a bitch… And she was married.”
Unfortunately, in the eyes of 53 percent of White women voters these sexually scandalous statements about assaulting women, including this married one, weren’t a deal-breaker.
Because Donald Trump was elected to the White House, and not bounced to the trash-bin of history, this bully has been emboldened. He is a disgrace to all that is good and decent.
This man, if you can bear to call him that, has defiled everything once deemed sacred to the American Presidency. Because of the fear of being “primaried” Republicans pretend not to see. Republicans should be putting country before party, by denouncing—like Senator John McCain did—this scandal-plagued scalawag.
