Surprise, the GOP decided to hit the Sunday shows to lie about President Biden's American Rescue Plan. To refresh yourself on how awesome that COVID relief bill really is, check this out.

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," GOP Senator John Barrasso regurgitated House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's bullshit talking points about how it isn't really a COVID relief bill at all!

BARRASSO : Look, to call this COVID relief is really false advertising. Only nine percent of the money actually goes to defeating the virus. Only one percent of the money goes for vaccines.

This is already been debunked, but here is the simplest answer: nine percent of the American Rescue Plan funds actions that directly combat the virus itself through vaccinations, distribution and other containment measures. However, that doesn't mean the rest of the bill isn't COVID-related. Republicans are just unwilling to acknowledge the fallout the yearlong pandemic has caused in lost small business jobs, lost wages, closed schools and other related side effects. For people who say they love capitalism, Republicans sure don't understand how capitalism works.

Barrasso doubled down.

BARRASSO: This is a Nancy Pelosi payoff to the liberal left. This is something she's been working on a long time.

Where would a "Who is the fairly elected President is a 'gotcha' question" senator be without a new unfounded conspiracy theory about Speaker Nancy Pelosi?

Barrasso continued with some slight pushback from George Stephanopoulos:

BARRASSO: So, you know, today we see her taking a victory lap to what is now known as the most progressive bill in the history of the United States, according to the White House, and the price of it shows that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say it's a payoff to the liberal left. I want to --

BARRASSO: It didn't need to be this way. We've done -- we've done five bipartisan coronavirus bills. [...] We are not going to stand with the Democrats as they try to exploit a crisis to send lots of money to big cities and to blue states and to really failed pension plans. This is not supposed to be a bailout, it's supposed to be about helping get the disease behind us.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say blue states and big cities. I want to show the front page of the Casper Star-Tribune. It shows $1 billion going to your state of Wyoming.

BARRASSO: Yes, absolutely. And there's $350 billion going to states that even the 22 governors, including our own governor, said that the formula they used to send this out was biased and unfair, focused at California, New York, Illinois. It punished the states that opened earlier and it rewarded the states that stayed closed the longest.

Barrasso is doing what many GOP politicians have already been caught doing: decrying the bill they voted against while quietly trying to take credit for the funds passed solely by Democrats. To the GOP, it's only pork or waste spending when it goes to blue states and cities. Money for their states is A-OK.

Like Florida GOP Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar:

Or Mississippi GOP Senator Roger Wicker:

The interview concluded when Stephanopoulos asked Barrasso to comment about his GOP colleague Senator Ron Johnson's sonic dogwhistle about feeling safe during the Capitol riots because the insurrectionists were the white kind:

Just as always: John Barrasso is a profile in cowardice. Also an asshole. The end.

Have a week! And OPEN THREAD!

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