If You’re A Republican Liar Named Mike, Go To The Sunday Shows!

We watch so you never have to.

Tell ‘em, Joshua Jackson!

Sunday was not a good day to be a right-wing douchecanoe.

Brazil decided to tell the failson of its former authoritarian president and current prison inmate, Jair Bolsonaro, to get fucked as it reelected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to a historic fourth term. (Although it seems Flavio Bolsonaro wants to follow in his election-denying father's footsteps right into a future prison stint.) A student-led movement defeated Serbia’s authoritarian leader Aleksandar Vučić, ending the Vladimir Putin-endorsed strongman’s fourteen-year reign of absolute power. These global election results have provided a brief preview of the GOP’s very possible future.

Meanwhile, the MAGA stooges on the Sunday shows seemed desperate and shaken, even before those results started rolling in. So let’s all take a moment to savor their attempts to deny reality, either as an amuse-bouche for the November 3’ reckoning or a treat in case it goes sideways.

Mike Rogers

Let’s start once again with former Michigan Republican congressman Mike Rogers’s desperate, racism-tinged attacks on his Democratic Senate opponent, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.

Appearing on NBC’s Meet The Press, Rogers began flailing almost immediately upon host Kristen Welker’s very first question.

WELKER: [P]resident Trump is going to be out in Michigan campaigning with you a little bit later on today. Let me ask you, Congressman, is a vote for you a vote for the Trump agenda?

ROGERS: I’m — I’m apologizing, I’m having some difficulty in my earpiece, but I — is a vote for you? I’m not sure. […]

How weird blessing that Mike Rogers’s earpiece suddenly went out immediately after the initial greeting and his introduction? It’s like the remote studio just somehow drove Rogers into a very useful tunnel.

Welker did a live mic and audio check. After Rogers confirmed he could hear and answer clearly, Welker asked Rogers if he would repeal the Trump tariffs that are hurting his constituents in Michigan.

ROGERS: Well, again, the best way to do this is walk in and say, “Can we work this out?” And I’ll give you a great example how I’ve done that, and I’m not even in office yet.

Rogers then proceeded to filibuster about his “achievements” of stopping the flow of Canadian trash (which in this instance was not some kind of likely Trump epithet euphemism, but literally garbage), and GM reshoring production of the Chevy Silverado in Michigan from Mexico. While we sympathize with dealing with unfinished poutines and empty Tim Hortons boxes, we fail to see how this actually helps Michiganders hurt by Trump’s tariffs that Rogers once seemed really into, in comments to Breitbart. Or how GM deciding to build one of its vehicle models (and an expensive one) will offset its anticipated total $2.5 to $3.5 billion costs in 2026.

Rogers spent the second half of his segment being unable to square his previous defenses of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012 with his constant Islamophobic attacks on his opponent.

During the final minutes, having confirmed there were no audio issues with Rogers’s earpiece now, Welker returned to the very first question by asking Rogers multiple times if he considered himself a “MAGA Republican.”

ROGERS: Listen, I’m going to tell you something, this is — I get you guys on the national press, but this is a little bit disgusting to me. […]

WELKER: Are you a MAGA Republican?

ROGERS: I’ve already answered the question, Kristen.

WELKER: That’s just what I want to know. Do you consider yourself to be a MAGA Republican?

ROGERS: Kristen, let me — I’m going to go right back through this. […] Nobody wants to talk about that on national press.

Rogers’s terrible attempts to avoid a very simple answer while attacking the press in a Trumpian manner kinda answer Welker’s " MAGA Republican " question, despite his attempts to dodge it.

Brendan Carr can’t silence Jimmy Kimmel here!

Mike Johnson

On Fox News Sunday, another wormy republican named Mike, namely current House Speaker Mike Johnson, was trying a different way to deal with this: lethal levels of denial cope.

From trying to convince host Shannon Bream that it’s not Republican policies but the old “it’s the media” causing all their polling problems.

JOHNSON: Look, it's a hostile media environment. Most of the mainstream media of course is advancing the false narrative of the other side — the Democrats and the Marxists. They're on the other team.

That’s a very funny thing to say when right-wing oligarchs own CNN, CBS, Fox News, One America News, Newsmax, and most social media platforms.

Johnson then used an anecdote to discredit polling that shows his party headed for a seismic loss this midterm.

JOHNSON: When I'm in these big arenas, I ask for hands — 'Show me your hand if you've answered a poll in the last six months.' There will be like three hands among 300 people. I'm telling you, these polls are off. All of them.

This is called confirmation bias, Mike. (It’s also called an unscientific poll.) This denial of objective reality is not gonna help Republicans cope if they lose in November. Nor is trying to pull a Bolsonaro move (both of them) to steal an election (again) gonna work when their party loses, and Johnson’s speakership comes to an end.

Have a week.

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