Would it shock you to find out that many Republicans are backing up Donald Trump, no matter what? Of course not, so you won’t be surprised to hear that’s happening in Congress right now. Many senators are loud and proud that they’re not reading the latest round of indictments of former President Trump, who is still the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination. Gee, I love living in a two-party system where one option is fascism and the other option is people who want to make things better, yet somehow they lose to the bad guys way more often than they should.
So why are some senators not keeping up to date with what laws their party’s front-runner has been indicted for this week? Well, if you’re Joni Ernst from Iowa, it’s a humdinger. Per MSNBC:
The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone published an interesting report on this yesterday afternoon.
When he asked Sen. Joni Ernst, for example, whether she’d read the indictment, she responded, “I have not.” The Iowa Republican added, “I have been on the road, thank you very much.” Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska said she hasn’t read it because she had “work to do.”
One might argue that reading the indictment of the man who will most likely get your party’s nomination for President should be considered work for the senator, but who am I to judge?
Here are the other weak excuses senators gave. Per the above source:
Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma said he’d looked at the document, though he hasn’t “gone through every page of it.” Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana said he hadn’t read it, and when asked why not, “he responded with a silent, frozen half-laugh.”
Ok, that last part is the stuff of nightmares. Someone reboot Senator Daines; his software is malfunctioning.
You would be right if you’re sensing a trend amongst the senators. Although according to one MSNBC Op-Ed writer, Steve Benen, a producer of The Rachel Madow Show, not reading is the whole point and trend they’re hoping voters will copy. Per MSNBC:
Or put another way, an amazing amount of the GOP’s strategy, especially since the dawn of the Trump era, is based on a simple assumption: Their base won’t actually read relevant documents, which makes it vastly easier for them to lie more or less with impunity about documents party officials haven’t read, either.
Look, there’s a reason why the saying is “knowledge is power,” and not “knowledge is useless,” so this tracks. There’s also precedent here among the GOP. Per MSNBC:
Take former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia scandal, for example. It’s easy to forget that one House Republican — former Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan — publicly endorsed Trump’s impeachment in 2019. Asked why, the then-congressman said that he, unlike most of his GOP colleagues, actually read Mueller’s findings.
OK, I’m starting to think that Republicans are the sole reason sites that once had the written news pivoted to video because holy cats! Did none of these people grow up watching Reading Rainbow?! Reading is essential, and yet it seems like Republicans hate to do it. Wild. Per MSNBC:
By all appearances, Trump and many of his allies and supporters didn’t read the Durham report. Or the Senate Intelligence Committee’s findings on the Russia scandal. Or the Justice Department inspector general’s report on the investigation into the Russia scandal.
I’m so glad those Republicans who hold elected office are scared of the written word (and of doing their job competently). I guess it makes organizing against them that much easier. Just write it down, they’ll never know! Obviously, this is a sad indictment of how useless the Republican Party is. They would rather stick their heads in the sand and refuse to read a 44-page indictment of the man entrusted with national secrets. The very same man then ended up storing them in the bathroom at his gaudy Florida compound. Well, not seeing that as part of your job when you’re an elected official is wild. All those tedious hearings the GOP forced Hillary Clinton to participate in over Benghazi made so much more sense now: they were afraid to read, so they had to be told like a toddler demanding a bedtime story.
If you’d like to read the contents of Trump’s latest, but probably not last, indictment, you can do so at this link. Do it, if only because the Republicans are hoping you won’t.
(featured image: Rob Carr/Getty images)
