Former Senator Trent Lott – who, as you might remember, walked into a political buzzsaw in 2002 over comments that effectively destroyed his Senate career – highly disapproves of this Senator Ted Cruz fellow. Not least because Senator Cruz said some awful, awful things about former Senator Lott’s good friend, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. It’s always interesting to see how a lobbyist defines ‘inappropriate behavior,’ really. Hoover up all the political pork you can? That’s Senatorial. Call Mitch McConnell a liar over the Export-Import Bank? Call out the Sergeant-At-Arms:

“Having been majority leader, I’ve never had someone stand on the Senate floor and call me a liar,” Lott said in an interview with The Hill’s Molly K. Hooper. “In fact, if I had been in the Senate at that time I would have moved to have him removed from the Senate chamber physically.”

A few things, here. First, note the on the Senate floor. That’s there because any number of people have called Trent Lott a liar over the years. Second: …I have been doing this gig since 2001, 2002. I am pretty familiar with how people operate in Washington, DC. And I can say this without much fear of contradiction: Trent Lott is absolutely lying, there. There is not a chance in Perdition that Trent Lott would have willingly provoked a confrontation on the Senate floor like that, pretty much because the inevitable result would have been twofold. First: Lott’s faction in the government would have had even more trouble shoving through the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank. Second (and much more importantly): Trent Lott would have been a dead man walking in his next Senatorial primary*.

I am going to do a favor for the guy who Trent Lott is endorsing for President: I will not type out that candidate’s name in this post. Because being Trent Lott’s friend probably won’t help him. But note that I am doing Ted Cruz a favor here, too; because being Trent Lott’s enemy will certainly help him. And that difference should tell you a good bit about the 2016 campaign. Shoot: Ted Cruz might even take the clip of Trent Lott’s remarks and run it as a campaign ad…

Moe Lane

*You should expect that Sen. Roger Wicker (the guy who replaced Lott in the Senate) will have a lively time of it in the 2018 primary, by the way. A HAFA score of 55 seems just a bit too low for a place like Mississippi. I don’t know if a primary challenge will work, but I have to assume that people are taking notes and learning from the ones that didn’t.