When You Get Caught Lying, Stop Digging
Another former ally inadvertently demonstrates why MAGA needs to be purged.
Last month, I offered some free advice to righty media grifters who want conservative holdouts to vote for Donald Trump: instead of denial, snottiness, and performative outrage, man up and work to answer the reasons why we we’ve decided four more years of Joe Biden and congressional gridlock is worth it if it helps fumigate the conservative movement.
This week, we got a shining example of one of those reasons, from a fundraiser held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago for one of MAGA’s many gifts to Democrat Senate prospects, Kari Lake. The guest list was full of scum and villainy, including Roger Stone, Roseanne Barr, Brendan Dilley, and Laura Loomer, the last of whom was the first to catch my notice Thursday morning thanks to a video clip of Trump giving her a shout-out from behind the podium:
We have a lot of great friends and a lot of great people, Laura, how are you? You look so beautiful as always. That’s a woman with courage. You don’t wanna be Loomered. If you’re Loomered, you’re in deep trouble. That’s the end of your career, in a sense. Thanks, Laura.
This made me recall an especially preposterous claim made by author, Townhall columnist, and retired Army colonel Kurt Schlichter (one of the pundits I was talking about in the piece referenced above) on March 14:
I’ve learned to ignore the mean tweetisms, and I’m completely indifferent to what the babbling halfwit crew of internet weirdos, meme-makers, and mutants who supported 45 online in the primaries have to say – and I also think it’s hysterical how the Trump campaign is now sidelining these freaks. [emphasis added]
The claim did not link to any substantiating examples, though I believe it was referring to an incident from January in which Dilley whined about the Trump campaign not giving him recognition he felt he was owed. The matter was apparently so insignificant that when I tried to go back and find it I came up empty, and clearly it wasn’t enough to get Dilley bounced from MAL or to make him stop shilling and smearing for MAGA.
So I guess @KurtSchlichter wasn't being exactly honest with his audience when he said Trump was sidelining the freaks.
Kurt, who can dispatch critics with the best of ‘em when he’s on the side of the angels but has no idea how to handle getting called out on legitimate grounds—in this case, getting caught in a bald-faced lie—like an adult professional, replied:
A RANDOM MENTION AT A THIRD TIER EVENT IS EVIDENCE THAT I AM WRONG ACCORDING TO LOCAL GUY.
And:
My claim is correct. Where your sole evidence that I am wrong is one off-hand mention of one of these mutants at a minor event in the last couple months supports my contention.
I get that you’re sad, but A) I don’t care how you feel and B) you should have some dignity and not embarrass yourself.
Ignoring the juvenile attempt to belittle a writer he favorably retweeted for years and still follows as just a “local guy,” I replied:
The fact that you can't reply without strawmanning about sadness and feelings is a tell at your comfort with dishonesty -- and that your snark about dignity and embarrassment is projection.
In fact, I don't think anybody reading this buys for a minute that if Biden had praised by name anyone as comparably vile as Loomer, you'd accept "oh, it was just one off-hand mention at a third-tier event" as an adequate answer to make criticism go away -- least of all when the president has a pattern of praising her.
And the truth of the broader situation is the exact opposite of your spin. Where's the evidence that Trump has sidelined any of them beyond snubbing Dilley? That's the one-off. Where's the firing and/or disavowal of Cheung, Miller, LaCivita, Stone, Flynn, Loomer, Posobiec, Kassam or any of the other scum and villainy he's elevated?
If the real root of all this is that you don't care about any of the outright evil Trump legitimizes because Biden is worse, then just argue that. You'd at least have a defensible, coherent case to make. But don't pad it out with Democrat-style lies and apologetics just because sticking to the only valid case for Trump you've got is unsatisfying on its own.
For good measure, I also made an offer:
If anyone is aware of any examples of the Trump campaign firing or disavowing any of the smear merchants it employed or promoted all during the primary, beyond an isolated incident of Brendan Dilley whining about being snubbed for something, please share them here and I will devote my next opinion article to acknowledging it and apologizing to both Kurt and to the Trump campaign.
Shockingly, no examples were submitted, by Kurt or anyone else. In fact, Kurt retreated from the exchange entirely.
As readers can see from perusing the above links, the replies from everyone else who came across our skirmish were overwhelmingly against Schlichter. Numerous fine Americans confronted him with numerous examples of the supposedly-sidelined “freaks” still being welcome in Trumpworld. He didn’t address any of those, either.
As satisfying as the whole thing was, the problem remains: while certainly eye-opening for those who take politics seriously and want to be able to trust conservative media figures, there will be no discernible consequences for Kurt’s dishonesty. Townhall won’t care. None of the shows that have him on as a talking head will care. Truth simply isn’t valued in conservative media anymore.
The grifters can’t be bothered to even try to address our fears of what the MAGA influence is doing to conservative media. But they can almost effortlessly vindicate them.