Step right up and see the right wing hate clowns spew venom in all three rings before your amazéd eyes!
That was sort of the way it was on Vapidol Hill yesterday as the Democratic grownups tried to question various right wingers, two of them senior Cabinet officials. And, considering their, well, deplorable conduct, it'd be very difficult to imagine them not getting their marching orders beforehand from one Donald J. Trump, who never met a
national landmark he
didn't hate.
"Stick to your guns an' don't let them uppity black women scare you into sayin' somethin' that'll embarrass me or get me in trouble," one can hear Donald Trump saying in Alec Baldwin's voice. So let's start with the
third and final confrontation of the day: Failed B movie producer and kleptocrat extraordinaire Steve Mnuchin vs House Finance Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters.
24 hours before his so-called hearing, Mnuchin had sent a letter to the committee telling them how much time he'd actually be able to give them as he had a very pressing engagement at 5:30. Chairwoman Waters began by telling the Treasury Secretary that in all times his predecessors had testified before the pertinent committees, none of them had ever specified how much time they would give in testimony.
They had a testy give and take that lasted for several minutes, with the rich Jewish white man mansplinin' to the uppity little old black woman how it should've gone down. Finally, after being told he wasn't being held against his will and thereby thwarting his persecution complex, Mnuchin then told Waters that, "You're supposed to take the gravel (sic) and bang it, that's the appropriate ..."
Dutch Auntie Maxine wasn't amused and told Mnuchin just before he fled for his important meeting, "Please do not instruct me as to how I am to conduct this committee."
By the way, Mnuchin's "important meeting" was with "Bahrain’s Interior Minister, H.E. General Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al
Khalifa, to discuss important cooperation in the fight against terrorism
and illicit finance." Which,
as I helpfully reminded Mnuchin on his Twitter account, "Two billionaires getting together to discuss how to combat 'illicit
finance' is like a butcher and a big game hunter talking about animal
rights. Btw, Maxine owned your arrogant ass. Maybe you should go back to
producing B movies, Fort Knox."
Mnuchin was supposed to testify before Waters' committee about releasing Donald Trump's tax returns. So, please, put your considerable money where your big mouth is and help us combat "illicit finance," Steve.
Simply the Worst, Barr None
Stepping into the second ring of this right wing Republican Klown Show, we see the recycled William Barr, another white man whose sole remit and purpose in life has been shriveled down to defending a felonious freak named Donald Trump. Like Mnuchin after him, Barr decided to white mansplain to another African American Congresswoman, Rep. Brenda Lawrence of Michigan. The optics, to put it mildly,
were horrendous.
Barr was there to testify about a wide variety of topics, including the Mueller report that he's furiously redacting even as we speak, Trump's obsession with repealing the ACA and which one he really serves: The American people or Donald Trump?
Lawrence fought mightily to square what Barr was saying before the committee with what he'd piously promised the Senate during his dog and pony show confirmation hearing. During his confirmation he assured the gullible right wing senators that he would enforce and follow the letter of the law, obviously with two pudgy sausage fingers crossed under the table. Since being repurposed and reinserted into the Attorney General's office, Barr essentially told Lawrence that, no, his job was to give the President what he wants (provided it's Donald Trump).
In other words, as long as the psychopath Pretender is still in the Oval Office in between rounds of golf, we are a nation not of laws but of one profoundly disturbed man who makes George W. Bush look like George Washington.
At one point (see image above), Barr made an emoji face plainly designed to convey that he didn't give a shit what the mouthy black woman was telling or asking him. But at least he held out his pinkie as he swilled from his plastic water bottle to show that he is, after all, not the hatchet man as
some have characterized him but as a man of sophistication.
These two performances by Mnuchin and Barr put on full display the sheer level of arrogance and contempt these Republican operatives feel toward the new Democratic-led House that, unlike their Republican predecessors, are actually tasked with, and pursuing, the rule of law and its enforcement. Mnuchin was there to discuss releasing the six years of Trump's tax returns the Democrats have demanded. Barr was there, again, to ensure the Mueller report would never be seen and that the ACA will be repealed if one man wishes it so.
But there was a sliver lining in the dark clouds gathering around women of color and one fought back. Unfortunately, that one was token...
Nazi History Major Candace Owens
Candace Owens is part of a breed that never seems to die out, regardless of an abundance of facts that should make their existence impossible- The black token Republican. People like Owens and the occasional Uncle Tom trotted out by Fox "News", are used for one reason and one reason only- That such human window dressing proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that they don't hate black people and can actually stand being in the same room with them provided they think like them, i.e. if they're one of the "good ones."
Owens is the comms director of Toilet Paper USA or some other right wing advocacy group. She was called to testify before the Judiciary Committee during a
hearing on violence caused by white nationalism. And at some point, Rep. Ted Lieu of California, a Democrat who's as tech and media-savvy as AOC, played a 30 second clip of Owens' speaking at a conference in London, a city that had the shit bombed out of it during the Blitz early in the second world war, in which she seemed to extol Adolph Hitler.
This was the look on her face when she heard her own words, in her own voice, played back on Lieu's cell phone held up to the microphone. Understandably, she wasn't pleased, nor should she have been. However, Owens wasn't displeased because of her ignorant blathering on about Hitler and how he wasn't a nationalist, the precise platform that got him elected Chancellor of Germany in 1932 because a nationalist wouldn't kill his own people as Hitler had (even though history informs us they do all the time, with Trump but the latest example).
She spat some words back at Lieu that came thisclose to calling him a racist for thinking black people "were too stupid" to listen to the rest of the speech, even though everyone is free to do so and that her own words were taken completely out of context. This is what Owens in fact had said in London last December:
"Whenever we say 'nationalism,' the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler. You know, he was a national socialist, but if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine."
Owens seemed to have admitted that Hitler was a nationalist and that, if he'd confined his ambitions to Germany, everyone should've been hunky-dorey with it. And that, for better than his first six and a half years as Chancellor, is pretty much what he'd done. In fact, these were some of the major accomplishments of Hitler's first six years and eight months of his dictatorship:
Forcing Jews to register as Jews. Sending out the Bund to vandalize and close down Jewish-owned businesses (the
Kristallnacht). Gutting the German judiciary from the top on down and packing it with Nazi ideologues. Removing or executing journalists who weren't onboard with the Nazi agenda and replacing them with, again, Nazi ideologues. Doing the same with German radio. Reducing German President Hindenburg to a mere puppet.
This was all before Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Everything that Hitler did, including his plans for a Holocaust, were done during those non-Nationalist years in which everyone should've been like Neville Chamberlain (who adopted a ruinous and spineless policy of appeasement exactly one week after the Kristallnacht) and let him do whatever he wanted as long as he kept it confined to Germany.
These were all things Owens should've and would've known if she'd but consulted even the always-dodgy Wikipedia.
These are the people who, while praising Hitler, show their contempt for the rule of law in a democratic republic that Hitler also held in complete and utter contempt.
Like their ringmaster, one Donald John Trump.
