Dishonest Brokers

Your negotiated Sunday show rundown!

Diplomacy and negotiations, abroad or at home, require “honest brokers” who will at the very least negotiate in good faith. The Sunday shows demonstrated how a lack of honesty can impede progress, on crises real or manufactured.

Republicans Won’t Take ‘Yes’ For An Answer

Oklahoma Senator and Conan O’Brien tether James Lankford urged his fellow Republicans to take the deal on a bipartisan border security bill they’ve convinced President Biden to possibly sign.

Republicans have screamed so much about a “crisis” for so long that they convinced political media to accept this as reality despite border stats.

Lankford couldn’t hide his glee (or what passes for such for him) over what Republicans are getting on CBS’ “Face The Nation.”

LANKFORD: Yeah, this is similar to what we had to under Title 42, during the pandemic time period […]

Yep! GOP is getting all the immigration enforcement of Title 42 without pretending it has anything to with a pandemic. They can be xenophobic without having to pretend it’s altruistic.

But there is one major gag-inducing complication: Donald Trump.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Lankford tried explaining to its audience this is what they wanted, despite it coming from Biden, in rare moment of policy consistency and disbelief at his own party.

SHANNON BREAM (HOST): Why give Biden this in an election year? […] He gets to take a victory lap. […]

LANKFORD: […] Republicans four months ago would not give funding for Ukraine, Israel and for our southern border because we demanded changes in policy [...] and now a few months later, when we are finally at the end, they’re like, “Oh just kidding, I actually don’t want a change in law because it’s a presidential election year.” […]

But mere minutes later, Florida Senator and wrong grail chalice drinker Rick Scott came on to deflate Lankford’s efforts.

SCOTT: […] Democrats don’t want to secure the border and [Mitch] McConnell has told Lankford that he cannot put accountability measures in there to require Biden to secure the border today. […]

The idea that McConnell — of all the evil scum to have ever been a powerful Republican — would cede anything to Biden or any Democratic lawmaker is a hilariously sad lie from Scott.

See, the bill actually outlines that the border can be totally shut down if certain thresholds are met. A “total and complete shutdown […] until we can figure out the hell is going on,” you will, but without need of SCOTUS this time. But Scott now wants to add a poison pill so Trump can run on this. McConnell and other Republicans are freaking out that Trump is about to ratfuck their argument on the border.

Couldn’t happen to a better set of scumbags.

Even Lower Bar Achieved

While McConnell worries about independent voters in a presidential election and Pelosi takes progressive voters for granted, the GOP can still count on Republican voters to be easily impressed by an ever-lowering standard.

A perfect example of this Pennsylvania voter Jim Vinup on ABC’s “This Week” when asked by Martha Raddatz what drew him to a rich, thrice-married, toxic man like Trump.

VINUP: Has he made mistakes? Oh, my goodness, yes. But I do believe that his heart’s in the right place for me. How many — how many presidents, how many politicians have come out on stage and hugged the American flag? That really means something to me. […]

Maybe the “patriotism” of hollow and performative hugging of the American flag, for voters like Vinup, blind them. Or at least that’s what you would think until Raddatz probed further into this “patriot” by asking how he reconciled this with the way the people like John Kelly or James Mattis or Mark Milley say he treated patriotic sacrifice.

VINUP: Yes, things — things he has said bother me. Am I giving him carte blanche, he can do anything he wants? No. No. Absolutely not. I mean I’ve said many times, geez, I wish he’d have said that. But Kelly, I lost respect for Kelly. Mattis. I lost respect for Mattis. Milley. I lost respect for Milley. And these were people that he put his trust in. And you know what, they stabbed him in the back.

No matter what they say, it’s Trump’s cruelty they like. It’s a cult of personality and not even the good kind.

Have a week.

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