The Fantabulous Lies of One Kellyanne Conway
It's your Sunday show rundown!
It's been a while but this Sunday saw the return of counselor to the President and what would happen if Tomi Lahren drank from the wrong Grail, Kellyanne Conway.
Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Conway was determined to make up for time lost away from the Sunday shows, filibustering Chris Wallace for all 12 minutes and 47 seconds of her time.
Wallace began by asking what Trump thinks of the Justice Department's decision to drop the investigation into former FBI official Andrew McCabe , and Conway sped through the bullshit like an eager stallion at the Kentucky Derby ( Bowling Green Massacre, Never Forget ):
CONWAY: Well, the president recognizes, as many people do, that it feels like there's a two — two-tiered criminal justice system. If you're President Trump or people associated with him, this prosecution would have gone one way. If you're someone like Andy McCabe, who wasn't just a garden-variety FBI agent just starting out, he was the number two and for a while the acting director of the whole FBI after Comey was fired.
Wallace tried to press the question again but encountered the same stream as before:
WALLACE: -- does the president think the McCabe case should be reopened and he should be prosecuted?
CONWAY: The president appreciates the fact that this Department of Justice and Attorney General Barr works on any number of issues at this White House that doesn't get any kind of coverage. Sanctuary cities, Texas versus Azar --
WALLACE: Please answer my question.
CONWAY: -- trafficking drugs, humans and guns, for example. Any number of issues you work on with the Department of Justice, this is small potatoes. But people see it from what it is.
WALLACE: The McCabe case is small potatoes?
CONWAY: He is small potatoes. He will always be seen as a serial liar and a leaker, as will those who covered for him.
Small potatoes? Where have I heard that phrase before regarding Trump...
OH, RIGHT!! It's that time Trump killed the USFL by suing the NFL and won ... $3.76, total, and bankrupted it. Poor choice of phrase, Conway.
You could analyze Conway's monologue for a lifetime and still find new levels of her lack of shame. From the total hypocrisy of calling others liars when her boss's lie tally is still off the charts to the white woman complaining about the inequities of justice towards (checks notes) a powerful and privileged white (orange?) man who happens to be the "leader" of the free world. Somewhere, there's a Latinx or POC in jail for "resisting arrest" who WISHES he could have Trump's experience in the criminal justice system (for now).
Anyway, Wallace managed to get an answer from Conway when she stated that Trump thinks McCabe should have been punished. Wallace then asked about Bill Barr's protestations about being "independent" while Trump insists he hasn't interfered or ordered Barr to do anything, BUT he TOTALLY could if he wanted to:
WALLACE: What does the president think is his legal authority to intervene in criminal cases and to order who should be prosecuted and who should not be prosecuted?
CONWAY: He didn't say he's ordering who should be prosecuted and who should not be prosecuted. Article II --
WALLACE: I didn't say he didn't. I'm saying, what does he think is his authority?
CONWAY: Article II provides our president, yes, ladies and gentlemen, including President Trump vast powers. And the president is making a point, and the Attorney General Bill Barr is backing him up on this, that he has not interfered in any criminal case.
Time is a flat circle and we are back to arguing if Trump has ABSOLUTE power and is free to interfere with justice because of Article II of the Constitution! If only we didn't JUST go through an impeachment about this. Somewhere Lamar Alexander , Susan Collins , and Lisa Murkowski are "deeply troubled" that Trump proved them wrong.
Wallace pressed again and Conway confirmed something we've long suspected:
WALLACE: What does he think is his authority to get involved in criminal cases under Article II?
CONWAY: The president could weigh in, but you see how the president weighs in. The president weighs into the whole world. He didn't have a conversation with Bill Barr about the Roger Stone case. He had a conversation with the whole world. He put it, as he is want to do, on his Twitter feed, on social media.
It is no longer " if the president does it, it's not illegal ," but if done IN PUBLIC and in social media it's NOT A CRIME. Somehow, obstruction of justice in plain sight is totally fine for the "law and order" party. Conway then tried to not only say it's fine IF Trump wanted to interfere, but it's ok because other presidents have. Wallace pushed back as he could on this ... slightly:
CONWAY: Well, a couple things, very different to pick up the phone and ask your attorney general to do something in a criminal case, the president hasn't done that. He had —he says he hasn't done it, Bill Barr said he hasn't done it, he hasn't done it.
WALLACE: But Barr said the tweets are making it impossible to do his job.
CONWAY: But no — and let me say something. It's not correct to say that presidents have not interfered. Bill Clinton pardoned a relative. He pardoned someone who refused to testify against him, that's involving yourself in criminal matters —
WALLACE: Wait, pardoning is different. Wait. It's different, it's after the criminal process has been completed and clearly the —
CONWAY: President Obama spoke up in the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore. President George Herbert Walker Bush, Bush 41, I think commented on the case in L.A., probably the Rodney King case. So, it's not —it's disingenuous to say that people — presidents don't comment on criminal matters. [...]
WALLACE: Policy is different than criminal cases. Policy is different than criminal cases.
There's a huge difference between public opinion on news events (Rodney King, Freddie Gray) or using the actual pardoning power, for better or worse, after justice has been independently administered, and openly asking for your criminal co-conspirators like Roger Stone and Mike Flynn to get leniency. That's Obstruction of Justice.
Then the conversation moved to the Democratic Party primaries with even more lack of self-awareness. You can watch it if you want to see Kellyanne Conway, stander-upper-for-African-American-justice. We're done.
Here is the full interview:
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I am an avid reader of the Constitution and I need someone to point out SPECIFICALLY where in Article II these unchecked powers are detailed. I keep reading it over and over, and nope, can't find me no unchecked power.
They are all such bad liars. It's just so obvious as the words come tumbling out that these people are saying things that they know are not true. At least with the previous repub administration, you had some professional liars, people who could say shit like, "the Iraq war will pay for itself" or "the economy is just having a hiccup" with a straight face and enough fake sincerity that they could actually fool some of the people most of the time. These clowns, even their deplorable baser knows they are getting bullshit from them.