Hypocrisy in politics is as old as politics itself. People who preach to others about how things should be or what others should do rarely live up to those standards themselves. What I’ve always found odd about public hypocrisy is how these hypocrites act as though no one will ever pick up on it. Notice who or what they’ve done before doesn’t match with what they’re preaching now.
In the past, hypocrisy was easier to get away with. Before the Internet, much of what someone in the public eye said was long-forgotten by the time they’d done their 180, relegated to microfiche or video archives in the loneliest wing of the public library.
But the Internet does exist and barring an electro-magnetic attack, it is forever.
That’s why it’s so curious to see so many liberals feigning outrage over everything President Trump does, says, or tweets, when anyone can easily find a video of them contradicting themselves from years, months, or even days earlier.
The latest talking point from the left is that the president is a dictator now, thanks to the failure of impeachment to remove him from office.
Sitting next to his current wife, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said, “Would Donald Trump not do whatever he could do if he could get away with it? Seriously. If he could arrest every journalist he didn't like, if he could arrest us tomorrow; let me ask you a question: do you think he would arrest us tomorrow? Do you think he would arrest the editor of the New York Times? The editor of the Washington Post? Jeff Bezos? Do you think he’d arrest them tomorrow and throw them in jail to silence them? If you say he wouldn't, you're just lying to yourself.”
First off, nothing Joe or current wife Mika do resembles journalism; their show is closer to ideological daily snuff film for reality on a perpetual loop than even a “news discussion” program.
Second, not only has Joe not been arrested, no journalists have been arrested or spied on under the Trump administration. This is a far cry from the Obama administration, where journalist spied on with shocking regularity, something people of Joe’s persuasion would prefer people didn’t know.
But the dictator mantra continues, likely because some focus group found it has traction with liberals.
So what set off this latest in a long string of lies? The Justice Department believing sentencing 67-year-old Roger Stone to 7 to 9 years in prison for lying to Congress, a likely death sentence, was a bit much for a non-violent, first-time offense.
Indications are the four lawyers working the case, holdovers from the Mueller investigation, misled their DOJ bosses on what their sentence recommendation was going to be, so they were taken aback by the request for a term longer than the average for rape, assault, and many cases of murder. For example, just this week a 23-year-old in Arizona who shot and killed a 20-year-old college student and wounded three others on campus received six years in prison. You read that right, SIX YEARS. Lying to Congress is wrong, but no one died.
Yet these “heroes of the First Amendment” think the better part of a decade is too good for Roger Stone? These cable news warriors must be furious when they see James Comey or James Clapper in their green rooms, people who lied to Congress walking free and booked on their shows.
Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, himself fired for lying to FBI investigators (the exact thing for which retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is currently awaiting sentencing for), is a highly paid CNN contributor who was brought on air this week to, unironically, wax poetic about the president tweeting his anger over the idea of a sexagenarian being sent to prison for the rest of his life for lying to Congress.
As you can see, these people operate in a different world, a different reality. Laws are for other people, and nothing they’ve done is ever remembered or relevant. Nothing they cheered or ignored exists when they find it politically convenient to take the opposite position to attack the president.
The whole thing seems like a set-up, to be honest. The four Mueller prosecutors dramatically all resigned from the case after their bosses stepped up to rein them in, and immediately calls for investigations began bouncing off the walls of the liberal echo chamber. “Trump has interfered in this case and it’s an outrage,” cried people who’d cheered every Obama pontification about Ferguson, Trayvon, police in Cambridge, and any number of other cases.
“He’d better not pardon Stone, that would be a miscarriage of justice,” sang the chorus of people who hope you don’t remember Barack Obama setting traitor Bradley Manning free after unrepentantly serving only seven years of a 35-year sentence.
These people hope you don’t remember anything they’ve said or done. For them, history starts anew every morning. But the Internet is forever, and we do remember. And we understand the only difference between that which they accept or cheer and that they condemn is whether or not Donald Trump is doing it. It is the ultimate in hypocrisy.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show onWCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.