CBC Editorial: Friday, March 1, 2019; Editorial #8396

The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

Since taking his oath of office, President Donald Trump has made at least 8,780 false or misleading statements. That is a fact.

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Michael Cohen, a lawyer and the president’s “fixer,” testified Wednesday before the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee to acknowledge his lies and offer up (with corroborating documentation) what he contended was a more truthful portrait of Trump and his actions.

Republicans on the committee – including North Carolina’s Virginia Foxx and Mark Meadows – focused exclusively on attacking Cohen’s credibility. The tactic was certainly understandable. Their tolerance of Trump’s constant falsehoods – averaging 13 a day since he’s been in office – left them little choice. They made no effort to defend Trump’s credibility or veracity. They know they were defenseless.

But it backfired. Meadow’s theatrics in particular emerged as news just as big – and another embarrassment to North Carolina politics – than Cohen’s testimony.

Meadows, one of Trump’s most reflexive defenders finds himself along with Cohen, a not-so-flattering focal point.

At one point silently standing behind Meadows was Lynne Patton, a black woman who’s worked for the Trump family and now in the White House. Meadows demanded that her statement vouching that Trump was not a racist, be made part of the committee record.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, who is black, called the display racist and insensitive – using Patton as a “prop.” She clarified her comments to say she was not calling Meadows personally a racist.

Not only did this incident become an emotionally-charged moment in the hearings – it turned the focus on Meadows. A 2012 video of Meadows saying “2012 is the time we are going to send Mr. Obama home to Kenya or wherever it is” was unearthed.

To Tlaib and Meadows’ credit, the two met on the House floor Thursday and embraced in a genuine display of collegiality.

Why do Trump loyalists allow themselves to: be sacrificed at his excesses; tolerate his unrelenting deceit and lies; look the other way as he cozies-up to foreign dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un while ignoring U.S. intelligence agencies?

Does Trump get a pass for his serial dishonesty because he:

Delivers right-wing ideologues to lifetime judicial appointments;

Cuts funding to Planned Parenthood and ends abortion rights;

Tows the National Rifle Association line on gun rights and the Second Amendment?

Meadows, Foxx, others in North Carolina’s congressional delegation and the others in Congress should demand that our president ALWAYS tells the nation the truth and ALWAYS works in the best interest of all Americans not just his self-interest.

Tolerating – even benefitting -- Trump’s lies and deceits isn’t absolution, it is abdication. History won’t remember Meadows, Foxx and the others for the fleeting decisions of courts. It is their partnership in dishonesty that will be recorded for posterity.

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