Former regular readers of TWiA will recall that we went on more-or-less permanent hiatus early in the Trump era, having foreseen that news would be flowing with the force and volume of a firehose, and no part-time, unpaid effort to keep up with it would be satisfactory. That hasn't changed; in fact, just the opposite. We're only coming off hiatus here to report on an event last night with Trump toady Representative Andy Biggs (AZ/05), because it might shed some light on the thought processes--such as they are--of Cult 45, and the lesser cult of loyal lieutenant Biggs. (Film buffs might recognize the title as a play on the classic "My Dinner with Andre." We couldn't resist.)
Biggs is notoriously averse to meeting with any constituents who might challenge his far-far-faaaaar-right views. But Tuesday night at 6:30, he was to speak at the open-to-the-public Sun Lakes Republican Club. I wolfed down a quick dinner and raced over there, arriving a few minutes late, but was ushered to a seat in the fourth row. The large room was packed with maybe 200 attendees. Those without silver hair had no hair at all, and there were plenty of red caps on display, along with a cardboard cutout of Trump standing at the front.
As it turned out, I needn't have hurried. When I walked in, someone who I presume is the club's president was droning away at the microphone. Shortly after I sat down, he turned it over to a former teacher who wanted to warn about the evils of school bond issues. She explained that the schools only ran out of money because they spent it all on sex-education materials, the contents of which she wouldn't share with us because it would make us cry. Therefore, we should all vote No on any bond issue that comes before us. The crowd loved it, and loudly shared its agreement.
What she didn't mention was that Maricopa County's population has been growing rapidly. Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the country, and is surrounded by a huge metro area. But most of our school buildings are at least 20-25 years old, with years of deferred maintenance due to longtime, notorious underfunding (which resulted in a massive Red for Ed movement last year, gaining some new funding but not enough). And we still have teachers making $38,000 a year, working long hours, and paying for vital classroom supplies out of pocket.
But those crazy sex ed curricula--they're the real problem.
After her, we had an extended--and I do mean extended--if the musicians playing for the crowd at the bar outside had been available, they'd have been brought in to play the guy offstage; instead, the club prez had to do it--talk by Mike Crawford, Republican candidate for Sheriff. Crawford's a portly guy who worked hard to demonstrate sincerity by nearly bringing himself to tears when he mentioned the Constitution. He didn't say what it was he liked about the Constitution, except for the Second Amendment, which he said you could understand by reading, then reading again. "It doesn't need to be interpreted!" he added, in his moment of greatest passion.
A reasonable interpretation of his statement would be that, if it's meant to be understood as-is and not interpreted, then the right to bear arms applies only to those enrolled in organized militias. That, after all, is how the courts understood it up until Scalia interpreted it in Heller v. DC. Somehow, though, I don't think that's what he meant. Which might mean he needs to read it one more time.
He also said that if he were elected sheriff, the flow of drugs through Maricopa County would stop, and therefore, drugs wouldn't make it to "other parts of the country, like Chicago and New York and Canada." I guess geography isn't necessarily an area of expertise that a sheriff requires, but it doesn't hurt.
He went on to complain that schools today don't teach anything about the Constitution (they do) or why you shouldn't take drugs (they do), and that sex-ed classes don't teach the birds and the bees, but they do teach "how to dress up like a drag queen." I'm not sure if that's what the former teacher was afraid would make us cry, but I am sure that's not taught in any public schools in Arizona. Which makes the guy who wants to be the county's chief law-enforcement officer--who specifically declared that he would never lie, under oath or otherwise--a liar. And what's with the Republican resistance to learning about sex? Aren't they getting any?
But his status as a liar should've been self-evident, because he's a Republican in the age of Trump. Speaking of whom, after Crawford had been ushered off the stage, he stepped back on long enough to embrace the cardboard cutout of 45, meaning his love of the Constitution was also a lie.
Finally, Rep. Biggs came on. But before he started to speak, the club prez came back with a gift. He complained that he'd never seen Biggs wearing a Trump hat, so gave him one. After some difficulty opening the plastic wrap, Biggs managed to get it on his head (though he never removed the tags, leaving some in the audience (me) in mind of the Grand Old Opry/Hee Haw comedienne Minnie Pearl).
I didn't take notes during Biggs's talk--I was too busy being outraged at the lack of respect he had for his audience, who he treated like not-very-bright children who needed to be constantly assured of their own worth, lest they attack.
He told them that the only people he trusts in America--the only ones who are educated and smart--are Trump supporters. The left, he said, are "not educated, they're indoctrinated." Which was only the first of many examples of projection to occur over the next 30 minutes or so, because it was clear from the crowd's responses and the buzzwords they shouted out that most of them are retired and do nothing but watch Fox "News" all day long. Biggs, of course, didn't address the fact that people with college degrees are more likely to vote Democratic than Republican, or that Trump's base is historically "whites without college degrees." Apparently earning a degree only means that you're less educated and more indoctrinated than those who get their information entirely from Fox.
He spent some time dishonestly attacking Democrats in general. He said all Democrats--not all Democratic candidates, or elected Democrats, but all Democrats, support open borders. This is not true.
He said all Democrats want to turn the U.S. into a socialist state. Also not true. The most extreme of the presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders, describes himself as a Democratic Socialist, which is a very different thing from a Soviet-style socialist. It's also true that some socialist ideas--such as Social Security and Medicare--are woven into the American fabric so securely that they're incredibly helpful and popular, so why not see if similar ideas can be effective in other areas? That's not turning us into a socialist state, that's working to help the American people. Biggs doesn't seem to grasp that.
He said Democrats "literally" voted to give illegal immigrants better health care than veterans. Yet again, not true--the vote he's talking about was to create an electronic health record system for immigrants at the border. That system already exists for veterans. The bill does not provide health care of any kind to immigrants, it just tracks their health records.
He said if Trump is able to name another Supreme Court justice, that he expects to see "blood in the streets," because Democrats will riot. He didn't mention Trump retweeting calls for a new Civil War if he's removed from office for his crimes.
He said Democrats know they can't win elections on the issues (without explicitly saying how they do win elections, or mentioning that the last two Republican presidents both lost the popular vote, and were helped into office by outside forces). He also didn't mention that Republican positions on issues are far less popular than Democratic positions, and that Republican electoral strategies revolve around kicking voters off the rolls and choosing their own voters, via massive, crooked redistricting efforts.
He said Democrats want to imbue all power in the hands of "just a few people." Seriously. With a straight face, standing next to a cutout of Trump, in whose hands he wants to imbue all power. The irony, she burns.
He gave a wildly inaccurate summation of the whole Ukraine situation (and because he's an ignoramus, he frequently called the country "The Ukraine"). This was the point at which I started speaking up loudly, telling him that he was wrong, that what he's saying was not how it happened. He called into question the whistle-blower's credibility, even though the "transcript" and the ICIG's letter, as well as additional releases from the White House, confirm almost every detail of the whistle-blower's statement.
He stressed the point that there was no verbal threat or quid pro quo, conveniently never mentioning that Trump had already withheld military aid to Ukraine, appropriated by Congress, meant to help with its ongoing hot war against Russian incursion into its territory. He didn't mention the 13,000 Ukrainians who've already died in that war. He didn't mention the text messages demonstrating that everyone involved--including Ukrainian officials--knew that releasing that aid was predicated on Ukraine not only investigating imaginary corruption, but announcing publicly that they were conducting that investigation.
He grossly inflated the role of Ukraine's interference in the 2016 election (real, but minimal, and not conducted in coordination with any campaign), without mentioning, AT ALL, the Russian interference on behalf of Trump--exhaustively documented in the Mueller report and the Senate Intelligence Committee's reports (reminder--chaired by Republican Richard Burr). Volume 2 of that report--detailing social media manipulation of Americans by Russian actors at the direction of the Kremlin (read it here)--was, coincidentally, released yesterday. Biggs didn't mention it.
Biggs attacked the congressional impeachment inquiry as "unauthorized," while admitting that the Constitution doesn't set specific rules for the process, because, in his words, it ignores precedence. He did not, however, address whether the precedence-breaking of Mitch McConnell (who, need anyone be reminded, broke precedence by stealing Merrick Garland's Supreme Court seat, among other things), the Republican House under Paul Ryan, or Donald J. Trump, who breaks precedence every single day in one way or another, bothered him in the least. But if Nancy Pelosi breaks precedence on impeachment (of which there've only been three in the history of the nation, so not a lot of precedence there), then the whole thing is unauthorized, and therefore the White House can refuse entirely to respect Congress's Constitutionally required oversight role.
In other words, Biggs is a lying liar, and when he's not lying outright, he'd dissembling, shading, and propagandizing. Whatever you call it, it's dishonest. Biggs came across as a smooth-talking salesman trying to talk an ignorant victim into buying a lemon. "Such a deal I'm offering you. This car will last for a million miles and be worth more at the end of it than it's costing you today!"
At the end of his speech, he took a few questions, which had been written down sometime before my arrival--presumably by attendees and not by his own staff (although when there was one he couldn't read, nobody got up and told him what it was supposed to say). His answers ranged from the facile to the idiotic. One question, about how to stem the flow of drugs into the country (shouldn't the answer be to elect Crawford, who will even keep drugs out of the part of the country called Canada?), was answered with discussion about the importance of Trump's wall, then veered into the necessity to keep immigrants out of the country. No discussion of the demand side of the issue, no discussion of drugs arriving via the US Postal Service, etc. Just the border and the wall.
The crowd ate it up with a spoon. They shouted out the appropriate buzzwords, expressed their hatred of Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Democrats in general. They nodded approvingly and applauded at his lies. To them, he was a truth-teller, because everything he said can be heard daily on Fox. Never mind that it's either false or, at best, misleading. He showed his contempt for his audience, lying to their faces with a grin on his face, and they showed that they deserved his contempt because they just loved being lied to. It's hard to see impeachment proceedings changing any of these people's minds, and there are, no doubt, groups of like-minded folks spread across the country. Trump's crimes, his raking of millions of taxpayer dollars into his own pockets, the many scandals engulfing his presidency, don't seem to exist for these voters. And as members of a Republican club, and mostly senior citizens, these people are very likely to vote. So don't think defeating Trump--or Biggs--will be easy. It's going to be a grueling campaign, a reality vs. lies battle, and the outcome is no sure thing.
After it was over, I approached Biggs and asked if I could make a point regarding the drug question. He said sure, so I told him that I used to live near the border, that I've known many Border Patrol agents, have been out at the border with them, held a mini-summit at my house with Border Patrol and US Army brass, and that I've written books about border issues and the drug trade. And I said, you didn't address the most important part of the equation, which is demand. As long as people can make billions of dollars by bringing drugs into the country, they're going to do it, and there's no wall or interdiction effort that can stop it. Further, because the cartels own every port of entry, building a wall will only eliminate any small-time competition the cartels have now--the guy trying to make a few bucks by humping 25 pounds of dope over the Huachuca Mountains, for example. Trump's wall will make the cartels absolutely ecstatic, because then they'll profit from every single ounce of drugs coming across the southern border, instead of just most of those ounces. Biggs agreed that he "forgot" to mention the demand issue, but I suspect he always does, because that shifts some of the blame onto American citizens and off the greedy brown people carrying drugs across the border. I told him that if you're talking about the drug problem and you don't start with the demand side, you're doing it wrong.
In other words, it was a disgracefully dishonest performance by an elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Growing up, I learned that one of the responsibilities of elected office was to tell one's constituents hard truths. Instead, some elected officials have decided that the easier course is to only talk to friendly crowds, pandering to their worst instincts and telling them only what they want to hear. One would like to hope that Cult 45 members could handle the truth. All evidence at last night's event suggests that isn't the case.
It can be argued--and I won't dispute it--that my behavior was disgraceful, as well. It was certainly ill-mannered. I don't like it when rabble-rousers interrupt my favorite politicians' speeches. But I felt that the truth needed to be aired, that Biggs had to be identified as the liar that he is. Before the end of his speech, he was referring to me as "The guy who calls me a liar."
That's an epithet I'm proud to embrace--the guy who calls a liar a liar. I'll take that.
PS: Sometime before my arrival, there was a cardboard cutout of Donald and Melania Trump on display. After I was seated, it was set down on its side behind a railing, which made it look like they were both behind bars (albeit the bars going the wrong way). Still, it seemed like a good look for them, so I snapped a quick pic.