The Buck Stops Where? Not With The C-Team

Yesterday, Chris Christie-- who isn't likely to be invited to any Mar-A-Lago (or Bedminster, for that matter) buffets any time soon, was eager to tell George Stephanopoulos that the 1/6 insurrection was Trump's doing. As though we didn't all know that by 1/7. Stephanopoulos asked him "what was going on inside the White House in those days leading up to January 6, most recently, this week, this PowerPoint presentation that was sent Mark Meadows detailing all of the ways the White House could interfere in the investigation. It may explain why the president, former president, and his allies are working so hard not to cooperate."

Christie: "Well, look, all the things that you see were driven from the top, George. I mean, the president made it very clear that he did not want to concede the election, that he would not concede the election. And you got a bunch of people around him by the time we got to the end, with very few exceptions, that were C team players, at best, on their best day. So, C team players get in there, and they tell the boss what he wants to hear. There were plenty people on the outside who were telling him, this is over, and you need to concede. He didn't want to hear that. So he went to the C team players and got that. And I think that the [select] committee is doing important work. I go back to making one point, though, which I wish Nancy Pelosi would have done differently. If, in fact, she would have let Kevin McCarthy put the people on the committee he wanted to put on the committee, with Democrats in control, it wouldn't have made any difference anyway. And it would have given the committee more credibility with Republicans. The problem now is that, because she dictated for, the first time in my memory, who the minority party can have on a committee, it does affect to some extent, among people in my party, the credibility the committee has. In the end, the facts are going to come out, but let's not kid ourselves. This was a driven-from-the-top process executed by C team players. And that's why it looks like a Keystone Cops operation, because it was."

Over the last month or so Christie has consistently tried to say everything was the fault of Trump and his inner circle. He desperately wants to shift the blame away from his party. And yet... Today Georgia' Senate president, Butch Miller introduced a toxic, probably unconstitutional bill to ban the use of ballot drop boxes in the state. It's part of a national Republican Party jihad against voting rights and democracy. And Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw, last week's "hero", got called out by the NY Times this morning for bombarding his constituents with partisan misinformation (lies). He claimed Build Back Better included Medicare For All... if only!

It doesn’t, and never has. But few noticed Mr. Crenshaw’s lie because he didn’t say it on Facebook, or on Fox News. Instead, he sent the false message directly to the inboxes of his constituents and supporters in a fund-raising email.

Lawmakers’ statements on social media and cable news are now routinely fact-checked and scrutinized. But email-- one of the most powerful communication tools available to politicians, reaching up to hundreds of thousands of people-- teems with unfounded claims and largely escapes notice.

...Both parties delivered heaps of hyperbole in their emails. One Republican, for instance, declared that Democrats wanted to establish a “one-party socialist state,” while a Democrat suggested that the party’s Jan. 6 inquiry was at imminent risk because the G.O.P. “could force the whole investigation to end early.” [That is actually 100% true and something Trump and the GOP are counting on by, presumably Maggie Astor was trying to do the "both parties" thing that the NY Times is so famous for.]

But Republicans included misinformation far more often: in about 15 percent of their messages, compared with about 2 percent for Democrats. In addition, multiple Republicans often spread the same unfounded claims, whereas Democrats rarely repeated one another’s.

At least eight Republican lawmakers sent fund-raising emails containing a brazen distortion of a potential settlement with migrants separated from their families during the Trump administration. One of them, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, falsely claimed that President Biden was “giving every illegal immigrant that comes into our country $450,000.”

I dunno... maybe Stephanopoulos can ask Christie about what separates the GQP from Trumpanzee next Sunday. Cause I sure don't see much anything that does.