We begin the Sunday Show Rundown this week at CNN's "State of The Union" with counselor to the "president" and sentient Hillary Clinton-slur speak-n-spell Kellyanne Conway. Conway, it seems, was there to make her usual rounds of propaganda, when Jake Tapper questioned her about rising white nationalism and her boss's lack of concern about it:
TAPPER: Let me set the stage here. It was called the Unite the Right rally, and it was formed by people like Richard Spencer, who is a white -- white supremacist. Friday night was the tiki torch march and "Jews will not replace us."
CONWAY: With horrible people.
TAPPER: Right.
CONWAY: People could see them... (CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: Saturday, Heather Heyer was killed. Who -- who are the -- who are the very fine people he's talking about?
CONWAY: Heather Heyer was -- Heather Heyer was murdered. And her murderer...
TAPPER: Right.
CONWAY: ... has been brought to justice.
TAPPER: But who were the very fine people?
CONWAY: He's talking -- he was talking about the debate over removing statues and renaming... (CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: So he wasn't talking about the weekend at all? He was just talking about...
CONWAY: He's not talking about white supremacists.
TAPPER: ... the theoretical discussion?
Well, that's not exactly
how it went, Conway. In fact here is a clip and transcript:
TRUMP: I'm not putting anybody on a moral plane. What I'm saying is this. You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and it was horrible. And it was a horrible thing to watch. But there is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left. You've just called them the left -- that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that's the way it is.
QUESTION: ... on both sides, sir? You said there was hatred, there was violence on both sides. Are…
TRUMP: Well, I do think there's blame -- yes, I think there's blame on both sides. You look at -- you look at both sides. I think there's blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it, and you don't have any doubt about it either. And -- and -- and if you reported it accurately, you would say …
QUESTION: started this (inaudible) Charlottesville. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest…
TRUMP: Excuse me, excuse me. (inaudible) themselves (inaudible) and you have some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group -- excuse me, excuse me -- I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
QUESTION: George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same (inaudible)…
You know who thinks Robert E. Lee statues are shitty? His own descendants
When Conway couldn't give a better answer, she then wanted a better response from The New York Times for an antisemitic editorial cartoon that was printed in the international edition:
CONWAY: And they're -- and they didn't even apologize for it. Apologies usually include words like regret, sorry, and apologize.
TAPPER: Well, you say this, but...
CONWAY: And they didn't do that.
Set your clocks, everyone. Conway, in fact, wasn't wrong! It was a shitty cartoon, and there's antisemitism swirling around all over the place -- led by the president of America.
But when her heretofore untried strategy of "not lying, once" didn't work, Conway then resorted to the white conservative's favorite weapon: blaming people of color.
CONWAY: I see officials who get a lot of airtime and ink, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, congresswoman, who tweets many times about the mosque and never once about the...
TAPPER: But, Kellyanne, you brought up Charlottesville.
CONWAY: ... in Sri Lanka.
WALLACE: A few quick questions, did North Korea demand money for the release of Otto Warmbier?
BOLTON: It appears that they did. This occurred before I came into the administration, but that's my understanding, yes.
WALLACE: Did the US official who was there to get him out of the country, Joseph Yun, did he sign a document pledging the money in order to get him out?
BOLTON: That is what I'm told, yes.
WALLACE: And I guess the bottom line question is, did the US pay any money to North Korea however it was disguised, after he was released?
BOLTON: Absolutely not, and I think that's the key point. The president has been very successful in getting for 20-plus hostages released from imprisonment around the world and hasn't paid anything for any of them.
WALLACE: So basically we signed the document fully intending not to honor it?
BOLTON: Well, I don't know the circumstances.
Wow -- John Bolton confirms US govt signed doc pledging to pay North Korea millions for Otto Warmbier's medical expenses, but says they never paid.
"So we signed a document fully intending not to honor it?" Chris Wallace asks.
"I don't know the circumstances," Bolton replies. pic.twitter.com/ZVFfp6DKvp
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 28, 2019
So worst case scenario, Trump agreed to pay a brutal regime (whose leader he "fell in love with") $2 million for medical bills for a hostage who was returned brain dead. Best case scenario, Trump agreed to pay a bill and, just like he's done to everyone, just never paid.
Both of these scenarios are on-brand for Donald Trump. Have a week!
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