Take it from the Republican faithful — Trump's not a liar, just an idiot
The White House snapped into damage-control mode as the testimony of former FBI director James Comey wrapped up on Thursday.
Now, this wasn't just any old Senate intelligence committee hearing: reporters lined winding corridors, people set up viewing parties and bars even opened early to take in the testimony of the guy unceremoniously fired by the president of the United States last month.
Comey testified that he believed Donald Trump tried to influence the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election by requesting he drop the bureau's probe of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. And that the Trump administration lied when it initially claimed he was fired over "disarray" at the FBI.
"I know I was fired because of something about the way I was conducting the Russia investigation was in some way putting pressure on [Trump], in some way irritating him, and he decided to fire me because of that," Comey said.
So deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders attempted to wrangle control of the message as Comey submitted himself to a second, closed-door session.
"The president is not a liar," she said.
And, as if on cue, other Republican faithful jumped in to complete the thought: He's just an idiot.
They didn't come right out and say that, of course, but the notion that the president of the United States might not totally understand what he's doing — or what it is he's supposed to be doing — has become an actual line of defence to explain away Trump's rather unpresidential behaviour.
First off, the evidence is very good that Trump is in fact a liar, simple statistics makes it clear he often knows what the facts are, otherwise he wouldn't be able to contradict them so consistently. If he was just tossing ideas against a wall and going with what stuck in his mind by chance he'd be closer to the truth more often than he is.
It takes intent to be mostly false to totally false almost 70% of the time.
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/
Republicans in Congress can't admit that Trump is lying yet, it would be too damaging to their agenda, so they're going with the idiot defence. Trump is too much of an idiot to know what obstruction of justice is, therefore he's not guilty of any crime. And by extension they're also treating his likely treason in the interests of the Russians in the same manner. There is very good evidence that Trump is in fact deeply compromised by Putin and he worked with the Russian government to get elected last fall. But that doesn't work at all with a republican party that wants to control all aspects of the US government in its own interests.
Top republicans were discussing trumps likely treasonous loyalties last JUNE.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/house-majority-leader-to-colleagues-in-2016-i-think-putin-pays-trump/2017/05/17/515f6f8a-3aff-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html
A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump," McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.
Guess what guys, the "secret" is out.
So we're left with republicans resorting to the idiot defence of why Trump is engaging in what more and more people are seeing as crimes of the highest order... treason is a capital offense and obstruction of justice in defence of that treason makes the situation worse not better.
If Trump truly is an idiot as the republicans are making implicit by their "defence" of him then that doesn't make the entire republican party a confederacy of dunces. After all they willingly selected him to lead the party into last years election and then elected him president against too many warning signs to list. Including their own.
So who's the real idiot here...