The Patriot Post® · Hypocrisy

When it comes to hypocrisy, Democrats are in a class by themselves. It’s no secret that from time to time all pols engage in it, but Democrats have raised it to an art form. I felt like commenting on some recent examples, but given time and space limitations, the hardest part was picking the few to highlight.

Consider some of the entrants that wound up on the cutting room floor: Valerie Jarrett claiming Barack Obama deserves all the credit for the current great economy; Comey listing all the reasons why Hillary Clinton broke the law before opining that no prosecutor would bring charges, and then on his book tour claiming that Hillary is a lawyer with great respect for the rule of law; college campus free speech advocates blocking conservative speakers; the Justice Department/FBI blocking documents that turn out to be covering up internal embarrassment; accolades for Obama’s use of diplomacy on North Korea that allowed it to develop nukes, but refusal to give any credit to Trump for diplomacy that might remove them; virtually any Democrat candidate stump speech; and virtually any Robert Mueller Russia collusion probe tactic.

But in honor of the tour podium protocol (that would be the Tour de France, which everyone knows is the greatest sporting event in the world and begins in 59 days), I landed on just three.

The third wheel belongs to New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. In verification that truth is stranger than fiction, Schneiderman resigned after being accused of striking and choking four women during violent sex sessions without their consent. For those not familiar with this guy, he is the darling of New York’s uber pols whose day job had the title AG, but he really spent all his waking hours “seeking higher office.” As an example, he was the one who went after Exxon Mobil for inadequate disclosure supposedly relating to the risks to the company’s survival from climate change caused by fossil fuels. Dubious law, but it endeared him to the far-left, deep-pocketed donor base.

But the hypocrisy award comes from his cheerleader position on #MeToo matters, including his efforts to bring charges against Harvey Weinstein. Now Weinstein certainly deserves whatever legal reckoning is coming his way, but it might be a tad better if the prosecutor wasn’t a clone. It is, however, in the same grand tradition of other New York pols — Elliott Spitzer and Carlos Danger come to mind — and it will be fascinating to see how the Democrats rhetoric their way out of this. For his part, Schneiderman has actually not denied that the accused activities took place, but he is claiming that they happened as part of “role playing” and were not “nonconsensual sex” (and I have no doubt that he never told anyone to lie, not a single time, ever). He added that the conduct was “not part of the operations of his office” (one would hope), but would “prevent me for leading the office’s work,” so he is resigning. And no, you can’t make this up.

The runner-up goes to John Kerry. Recall the Democrat uproar a mere two weeks before the Trump inauguration when Michael Flynn was accused of violating the Logan Act by reaching out to the Russians to discuss prospective relations between the two countries going forward. The Logan Act essentially makes it illegal for private citizens to engage in foreign policy negotiations with foreign governments, but Flynn was the incoming administration’s national security adviser, and there was a long history of perfectly acceptable similar discussions. It may have even been seen as a dereliction of duty if the new NSA did not engage in these types of outreach efforts, but that didn’t stop the Democrats from throwing around their accusations.

Fast-forward to Kerry, who is said to be running around having discussions with multiple foreign governments, trying to salvage the Iran nuke deal — the foreign policy poster child for him and Obama. He is purportedly going so far as to assure both friend and foe that he will be running for president in 2020, so all they have to do is wait things out and he will fix it then. It has also been reported that he is discussing Middle East policy with the Palestinians, assuring them as well that they will have a friend in the White House come 2021, so resistance to Israel will serve them well. Even though there has never been a prosecution under the Logan Act, there can’t be a more blatant violation than Kerry’s. The Democrat/media response? Crickets.

Taking home the yellow jersey is the collective Democrat reaction to Trump’s nominee to head the CIA, Gina Haspel. She is a 33-year veteran of the CIA and has tons of support from the intelligence community and government officials on both sides of the aisle. Her résumé is chock-full of raves as the consummate professional spy. What a novel concept — a real spy to run the spy agency. The objections to her candidacy are centered on her participation in the “black site” enhanced interrogation programs after 9/11. But many of those in opposition (and admittedly, there are some GOP folks in that crowd) were exactly the same people who were begging the CIA to do whatever it took after 9/11 to keep the bad guys from parking a suitcase nuke outside the Capitol Building; were fully briefed on the tactics the CIA was using; and gave their wholehearted support. After an 18-year memory lapse, they are now shocked to find that waterboarding was going on.

If you thought that was bad, consider the cowardly approach by some in both parties to brand enhanced interrogation as not “being who we are” and demand that it be made illegal. But when faced with the question of what the CIA would be allowed to do if the “ticking time bomb” scenario played out, the answer was, “Well, it would still be illegal to use enhanced interrogation, but if the CIA thought that was the only way to get the needed information, I imagine they would use enhanced interrogation and just have to rely on us not to bring charges.”

It should be irrelevant that Haspel is a woman and would be the first woman to lead the CIA, because she is so qualified that the qualifier is meaningless. The Trump/Haspel strategy seems to center around Trump claiming that Democrats are against her because she was too tough on terrorists, but Trump also manages to sneak her gender into every tweet. He is setting the Democrats up by making it clear that weakness on defense and the choice of hypocrisy over defending #MeToo is driving the opposition. And by inference, hatred of Trump is all that matters over national security. They even arranged a leak that Haspel offered to withdraw so the CIA would not be damaged, but Trump talked her out of it, which also put the crosshairs back on the Democrats.

I know that conventional wisdom is that nominees facing this type of possible controversy should make their pilgrimages to Capitol Hill and kiss the rings of the pol committee members and then be meek and mild in the hearings, leaving the boat unrocked. But I would love to see Haspel challenge the hypocrites head on. I hope she calls out the Democrat change of heart on enhanced interrogation from the 9/11 era, is proud of what she did to keep Americans safe, has no regrets and reminds the pols that she acted with their full knowledge and authorization. And while enhanced interrogation is not the first method of choice these days and she would not use it as a matter of course, if it were needed to save American lives, she would use it again and dare the Democrats (and some in the GOP) to play the holier-than-thou card. Maybe she will also bring along a yellow jersey for the champ hypocrite on the panel. That would indeed be must see TV.