Have You No Sense of Decency?
The GOP response to the assault on Paul Pelosi is not surprising ... but it's still shocking.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
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I’m working on a longer piece for MSNBC on the assault against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, but a few quick thoughts here.
This is the state of the Republican Party today.
(Clay Higgins is a Republican congressman from Louisiana. This is from his personal Twitter account, and he has since deleted the tweet).
Right now, if you check in on conservative Twitter, the dominant narrative about an assault on an 82-year-old man by a hammer-wielding assailant is that this was an interlude with a gay prostitute that went awry. It hardly matters that we have eyewitness testimony from San Francisco police showing that none of these lurid accusations are true — especially when we have politicians like Cruz winking and nodding at that possibility. As long as Republicans sow doubt, their supporters will do everything possible to avoid the type of introspection that an attack like this should breed.
Other Republicans, like Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas, are blaming the attack on liberal criminal justice policies that allowed Pelosi’s assailant to be out on the streets (never mind that he wasn’t on bail and hadn’t recently been arrested). Meanwhile, Texas Senator John Cornyn is using allegations that Pelosi’s attacker is in the country illegally to criticize the Biden Administration’s immigration policies.
Still, other Republicans have responded to the Pelosi attack with whataboutist defenses. What about the fact that a Bernie Sanders supporter shot up a congressional softball practice in 2017, seriously wounding Republican Rep. Steve Scalise; what about the man arrested outside Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home with a loaded weapon; and whatabout the assault of New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin earlier this year. Republicans would have you believe that “both sides” engage in political violence and inflammatory political rhetoric, but we know that’s not true. The threats and the actual violence are coming far more from Republicans than Democrats. In this particular case, Pelosi’s assailant was spouting false assertions about the 2020 election and hateful rhetoric about congressional Democrats that is practially de rigeur for Republican politicians.
None of this is even remotely surprising. Republicans will never acknowledge that years of incendiary and demonizing rhetoric about Pelosi might have contributed to the attack on her husband. With a midterm election next week, it’s hardly a shock that they’d use the assault as an excuse to trot out their law-and-order and anti-immigration rhetoric. Since the attack took place in San Francisco, which might as well be the modern equivalent of Sodom to their rank-and-file supporters, no one can be truly amazed that they’d throw a little homophobic dog whistle into the mix.
But what is shocking is the stunning inability of Republican politicians to act with even the most basic sense of decency. Indeed, one of the few GOP leaders to do so was Mitch McConnell.
When Mitch McConnell is a party’s beacon of moral clarity … well, that really is something. In 2017, after the shooting of Scalise, Speaker Pelosi was quick to condemn the attack and avoid divisive rhetoric. “On days like today,” she said at the time, “there are no Democrats or Republicans, only Americans united in our hopes and prayers for the wounded,”
Apparently, for the vast majority of Republicans, it is too much to ask for them to simply condemn political violence and wish Paul Pelosi a speedy recovery.
Indeed, here is Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake making a joke about an 82-year-old man having his skull fractured by a deranged man wielding a hammer.
Why aren’t these people embarrassed to act so terribly in public? Lake is in a close race for governor. Even if Lake lacks basic decency, you’d think she would at least try to fake it for political reasons. But she — like many other Republicans — lives in a constricted political and ideological silo. Their supporters and those with whom they interact think this is funny. They exist in worlds where Democrats — and Pelosi in particular — are constantly and ostentatiously demonized. I have little not doubt that many Republicans believe that mocking Pelosi’s injuries and spreading misinformation about his assault IS in their political interest — and that there is no political benefit in demonstrating civic or personal virtue.
Their supporters will lap it up (look at the laughs Lake got in the video above), and liberals will be triggered and angry, which for many modern conservatives, is an essential goal. From their perspective — and it’s certainly a lesson they would have gleaned from Donald Trump — decency, generosity, and kindness are for suckers. As long as the political incentives point in the direction of acting like a jerk … Republicans will continue to act like jerks.
Me On Michael Cohen
Last week my editor at MSNBC asked me to write a review of the other Michael Cohen’s new book “Revenge.” For seven years, Cohen, who used to work as Donald Trump’s lawyer and fixer, has been the bane of my existence. On a near-daily basis, people confuse me with him. So I figured it would be a fun piece to write. But as I wrote in the review, after reading his book, I no longer view Cohen as a nuisance but rather as another example of the cynicism that pervades the cottage industry of Trump-haters.
What has helped Cohen stand out from the coterie of Trump acolytes who have sought to cash in on their public change of heart about the former president is a tale of redemption and repentance. Cohen paid a significant price for his association with Trump — a year in federal prison after pleading guilty to eight felonies. Having truly hit rock bottom, and owning up to his mistakes in enabling Trump, Cohen now seeks forgiveness through self-flagellation.
On the surface, Cohen’s road to Damascus awakening appears refreshing. But “Revenge” is the story of a man who can’t stop feeling sorry for himself, and who is far more focused on retribution than personal rehabilitation.
Cohen, who previously spent years grifting for Trump, has simply found a new way to cash in. And for his claims that he is seeking repentance and wants to make amends … I don’t buy it. “Revenge” is 297 pages of whining, pointing fingers, and refusing to take responsibility for his actions. In Cohen’s telling, he pled guilty to eight felonies … but did nothing wrong. The investigation against him, his plea agreement, and his subsequent jail time resulted from a government-wide conspiracy organized by Trump to make him a scapegoat or punish him (it’s never apparent to me why Trump has such animosity toward Cohen).
It all feels like yet another scam.
Perhaps the most telling moment in “Revenge” comes when Cohen asks himself, “Would I still be in the Donald Trump cult if I hadn’t paid for my experience with time in prison?” In a rare moment of candor, he admits, “Had I not been thrown under the bus, I cannot, with any honesty, say that I would be out of the cult of Trump.”
But in his indomitable one-step forward, two-steps back approach to penance, Cohen writes, “what I can emphatically state is that I would not be touting the bulk of the statements Donald Trump has spewed. I wouldn’t be touting his agenda of racist, sexist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic crap that has further divided this country. This I am certain of and I hope that’s explanation enough.”
We know this is not true. Did Cohen leave Trump’s orbit after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape? Did he protest when Trump’s campaign ran a closing ad in November 2016, widely criticized for its antisemitic tone? Did he complain when Trump proposed banning Muslims from entering the country or push back on his boss’s incessant calls to “build the wall”?
Of course not. The racket was too good, and Cohen was more than happy to toil for Trump so long as he could turn a profit.
After the former president threw him out of the cult, Cohen needed a new path to fame and notoriety — and he has clearly found it. “Revenge” is not a redemptive tale of a man who has learned his lesson. It’s simply another grift — by a man who learned from the best.
Read the whole thing here.
What’s Going On
Yet more evidence that Democratic Senate candidates are holding their own:
Pennsylvania: John Fetterman (D) 49, Mehmet Oz (R) 44.
Arizona: Mark Kelly (D) 51, Blake Masters (R) 45.
Nevada: Adam Laxalt (R) 47, Catherine Cortez Masto (D) 47.
Georgia: Raphael Warnock (D) 49, Herschel Walker (R) 46.
Smart point by Monica Hesse that it’s a mistake to underestimate how much Republicans hate Nancy Pelosi.
After all, Republicans have spent years demonizing her.
Great campaign trail dispatch from Ben Mathis-Lilley on JD Vance’s run for the US Senate.
Musical Interlude