Elise Stefanik’s appearance on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ is a great example of how Trump’s hangers-on also lie, distort, and obfuscate with impunity.
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If Donald Trump really wants to put a woman on his ticket this time around, then potential running mates like South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) have done their part to ingratiate themselves to their potential boss by praising the former president at every opportunity. On Sunday, it was Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (NY) turn to go on national TV to demonstrate her blind loyalty to Trump and parrot some of his greatest hits.
Her interview on NBC’s Meet the Press is a great example of how it is no longer just the former president who lies, distorts, and obfuscates with impunity, but also many other Republicans.
What Trump has shown them is that you can get away with it because interviewers either do not fact-check their guests in real time or can be so overwhelmed by a torrent of falsehoods that even when they try to do so it becomes an exercise in futility.
To her credit, host Kristen Welker at times tried to correct the record when Stefanik lied too much, especially early in the interview.
When the New York lawmaker claimed that President Joe Biden is involved in efforts to keep Trump off the ballot this year, Welker pointed out that there is no evidence that the commander in chief is coordinating with the Justice Department regarding the criminal cases against Trump.
Stefanik responded that she wanted to “correct” Welker and then delivered a nonsensical word salad that obfuscated the issue.
Here is it in its entirety, just so nobody can claim her statement was taken out of context:
And I want to correct another statement you made that there is no coordination with Joe Biden and the Department of Justice in prosecutions against President Trump. We just saw Hunter Biden defy a congressional subpoena and the White House admitting it was in coordination with Joe Biden the morning of. That is coordination, and I believe that Joe Biden will be found to be the most corrupt president in our nation’s history.
Obviously, Hunter Biden’s legal problems are in absolutely no way related to Trump being charged with stealing classified documents, obstructing justice, or staging a coup. So, when Stefanik claims that there is “coordination,” she is conflating two completely different things. Furthermore, there is also no evidence that the president is “coordinating” anything with regard to the prosecution or actions of his son Hunter.
Then, referring to the people jailed for participating in the violent attack on the Capitol as “January 6 hostages,” Stefanik charged that the Biden administration is weaponizing the government against Trump and other conservatives.
“[The American people] understand that, as you look across this country, there seems to be two sets of rules,” Stefanik said. “If your last name is Clinton or it’s Biden, you get to live by a different set of rules than if you’re an everyday, patriotic American.”
That is, of course, nuts. As Welker pointed out, several Democrats have recently been indicted, including Hunter Biden twice.
A complete lack of evidence also didn’t stop Stefanik from claiming that the president “sits atop” the “Biden crime family,” and that the 2020 election wasn’t fair.
Finally, immediately after blasting former Harvard University President Claudine Gay for failing to protect her Jewish students, Stefanik defended Trump for saying that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” which is something Nazi leader Adolf Hitler wrote in his book, Mein Kampf.
In other words, her appearance was a full success…. if only Trump watched.
