Berl Falbaum
If we were to hold an Olympic-style competition to decide the hypocrite’s hypocrite in our national politics there are three favorites who would stand on the podiums.
In order on how I believe they would finish are: The Republican senator from South Carolina, Lindsey O. Graham; former Vice President Mike Pence; and taking the bronze medal would be former Trump White House aide, Stephanie Grisham.
We’ll examine them for the qualifications one at a time.
Graham, for the last five years, has been so fawning about the former president that the self-respect component of his character whispered in his ear, “Take it easy, this is embarrassing.”
I don’t believe that he wanted a Cabinet appointment; I think he wanted to be adopted by Trump and become a family member.
Most recently he warned that if Trump is indicted for storing classified documents at his resident, Mar-a-Lago, there would be riots in the streets.
Most Americans probably have forgotten what Graham thought of Trump during his candidacy and early in his presidency. To refresh memories, here are just some comments Graham made about Trump.
• He’s a “kook” and the “world’s biggest jackass.”
• He is the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican Party, and he is bad for the country.
• He called Trump a “race-baiting xenophobic religious bigot.”
• He “pisses me off to no end.”
OMG! (I learned that from my grandchildren). It is safe to conclude he did not like Trump very much. The turnaround is gold medal material.
Pence would give Graham a run for his money for first place. This is a man who for five years stood behind Trump, nodding affectionately with watery eyes as Trump told the most egregious lies and by his backing supported the most corrupt presidency in modern U.S. history.
In one Cabinet meeting, Pence praised Trump 14 times in just three minutes. That’s once every 12.8 seconds.
Now, as he campaigns to run for the presidency himself, he implies that the man who stood behind Trump with loving eyes was an imposter.
We are to accept that he never had any part in all the lying, corruption and the illegalities which led to two impeachments of his boss, and alienated the U.S. from the rest of the world.
Maybe he and Graham can share the gold.
Which leads us to Grisham, who served, as you may recall, as press secretary and chief of staff for Trump’s wife, Melania, and finally as press secretary and communications director for Trump himself.
She also is one of the few who lasted the full four years in the administration. She really needed to be a sycophant to accomplish that.
Her claim to fame as Trump’s press secretary is that she never held a press conference or briefing. Thus, she can claim, without lying, that she never told a lie herself.
But, of course, she facilitated countless falsehoods and coverups in her roles, and, undoubtedly, witnessed numerous immoral, unethical and illegal activities by her client and his subordinates.
Now, she frequently is a “talking head” on CNN, criticizing her former boss as if she were an outsider, and never served in the administration.
I wonder if CNN would have invited Al “Scarface” Capone as an expert analyst to discuss the evils of bootlegging, tax evasion and other crimes. Or would it have invited the late Bernie Madoff, who was convicted for investment fraud, to discuss the unsavory practices on Wall Street.
She resigned her post on January 6, the day of the insurrection, and published a “tell-all” book, “I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the White House.”
Since she did not take questions when she was press secretary, but will do so now, I do have one: Why didn’t you resign and speak out earlier and tell us what you saw when it mattered?
The book, 352 pages, was published by HarperCollins a mere nine months after her resignation, which told me that she either writes faster than covering up lies, or she was already working on it to make a fast buck long before she decided to quit. I would opt for the latter.
Surely there are others who would qualify for honorary — actually dishonorary — mentions. (For example, Rick Perry, the former Republican governor of Texas, said Trump was “a cancer on conservatism and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded.” He accepted an appointment from Trump to become Secretary of Energy).
There are many, many others who would qualify for the competition. Afterall, hypocrisy is one of the only constants — maybe the only constant — in our politics.
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Berl Falbaum is a veteran journalist and author of 12 books.
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