reflectivepundit

My Future Representative in Washington is a Liar and Crook

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Filling in for Fox News host Tucker Carlson, former Representative and former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard tore into Republican Congressman-elect George Santos for lying during his campaign about his education, job history, religion, and properties. She did not let him get away with the excuse that he merely embellished his resume “a bit”—and that Democrats are far bigger liars. “Do you have no shame?” she scolded him. She mentioned the people who will be represented by Santos in the lower chamber of congress, “If I were one of those in New York’s 3rd District right now, now that the election is over, and I’m finding out all of these lies that you’ve told, not just one little lie or one little embellishment — these are blatant lies…”

I am one of those people in New York’s third congressional district and disgusted that I will be represented by a liar and crook in the U.S. House of Representatives. There is no doubt that Santos will be sworn in on January 3^rd. While I did not vote for Santos but for Democrat Robert Zimmerman, I have no doubt that the GOP candidate won the election in the formerly Democratic but redrawn 3^rd district fair and square. Lies are no crimes. Only pressure from party leaders could perhaps derail Santos’s path to Washington.

But that will not happen.

The GOP House leadership has remained silent since the New York Times revealed details about Santos’s falsified biography. Minority leader Kevin McCarthy wants nothing more than become Speaker of the House and will welcome any member who promises to vote for him.

That’s what Santos has already done. He pledged to vote for McCarthy who has no vote to spare in his struggle with MAGA fanatics in his caucus.

Forget about MAGA Party leaders. They will not stand up for truthfulness, ethics, moral principles--and not for the ideals and ideas of our democracy.

That did not happen, when Donald Trump lied every day as candidate, as president, as ex-president, and now, again, as declared candidate for the 2024 presidential race.

George Santos indicated in interviews that what he calls “embellishing” his biographical information is a common practice among politicians. Everyone does a bit of it, he claimed.

In other words, he calls politicians collectively fellow liars and crooks.

That’s what is the legacy of the Trump years in the GOP.  

After Trump’s Call for the Suspension of the US Constitution…

By Brigitte L. Nacos

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that former president Donald Trump used his social media platform last weekend to call for the suspension of the U.S. Constitution. He wants to scrap laws and constitutional articles that are the foundation of our democratic system because he still claims falsely that the 2020 presidential election was rigged in favor of the winning candidate.

Obviously, he does not want to wait for voters to decide in November 2024 but rather tries to sell the idea of a second coup to his hardcore supporters. Many of them, most of all the QAnon conspiracists, believe all along that he must and will return to power well before the next elections.

Although Mike Pence, the former vice-president, and Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the US Senate, had a few critical words for Trump’s attack on constitutional democracy, the bulk of GOP officials responded once again by remaining silent.

A shocking silence and proof that the power-hungry master of Mar-a-Lago continues to hold his grip on the GOP, if only, because the GOP’s elected officials fear the influence of the MAGA movement in their party’s primaries.

By now it is crystal clear: For the GOP, Trump cannot go too far with even the most extremist words and actions that were unthinkable for presidents or ex-presidents until this performance artist moved into the political arena.

Trump does not hide his hostility to democracy and his preference for strong-man rule. He publicizes his outrageous ideas and acts on them.

More recently, he displayed his preference of far-right extremism in several cases.

• He does not make a secret of his support for the organized terrorists and MAGA insurrectionists who supported his coup attempt on January 6, 2021 (1/6) by an unprecedented violent attack on the US Capitol. And he has promised the convicted 1/6 participants pardons once he returns to power. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, a Trump disciple, plans GOP hearings into the Department of Justice’s “unfair” treatment of violent 1/6 offenders once her party takes over in the U.S. House of Representatives.

• He hosted the White Supremacist, neo-Nazi, and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and the anti-Semite Kanye West for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. If that was not a clear message of support to far-right extremists, among them violent ones, what would be? While Trump signaled his support for these elements among his supporters before, his get-together will Fuentes and West was an overt embrace and brought Trump a blast of the media attention he seeks.