Year: 2019

Lara Trump’s as Clueless as the Rest of the Trumps

Buck Banks

“We get that this is unfair to you, but this is so much bigger than any one person. It is a little bit of pain, but it’s going to be for the future of our country and their children and their grandchildren and generations after that will thank them for their sacrifice right now.”

— Lara Trump, quoted by Newsweek, on the furloughed federal employees due to the government shutdown.

Colorado Lawmaker Asserts Racist, Revisionist History of Lynchings

Buck Banks

“We have come a long way on that arc since the Reconstruction, since whites and blacks alike were in nearly equal numbers lynched for the crime of being Republican.”

— Colorado state Rep. Lori Saine (R), claiming blacks and white Republicans were lynched in “nearly equal” numbers following Reconstruction and chastising the main sponsors of a resolution honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Day during a speech on the House floor, the Denver Post reports.

The Intelligence of Washington Politicians Is Overestimated

Buck Banks

“One of the first things you learn covering American politicians is that they’re not terribly bright. … The notion that Hill denizens are brilliant 4-D chess players is pure myth, the product of too many press hagiographies of the Game Change variety and too many Hollywood fantasies like House of Cards and West Wing. … The average American politician would lose at checkers to a zoo gorilla. They’re usually in office for one reason: someone with money sent them there, often to vote yes on a key appropriation bill or two. On the other 364 days of the year, their job is to shut their yaps and approximate gravitas anytime they’re in range of C-SPAN cameras.”

— Matt Taibbi

Trump’s Lies Tripled in Second Year of His Presidency

Buck Banks

8,158

“Two years after taking the oath of office, President Trump has made 8,158 false or misleading claims,” the Washington Post reports. “That includes an astonishing 6,000-plus such claims in the president’s second year. … Put another way: The president averaged nearly 5.9 false or misleading claims a day in his first year in office. But he hit nearly 16.5 a day in his second year, almost triple the pace.”