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Welcome back to the second part of our year-end awards column! For those who may have missed it, check out Part 1 from last week to see the awards we've already handed out.
But since these columns are always not only monstrously but downright scroll-bar-defyingly long, let's just dive right back into the 2018 McLaughlin awards, shall we?
Welcome back once again to our year-end awards column series! Today we'll have part one, and then we'll finish up next Friday with part two. As always, we will be using the (slightly-modified, over time) awards categories first thought up by the incomparable McLaughlin Group television political-chatfest show.
Our title today comes, of course, from former Donald Trump lawyer (and jailbird-to-be) Michael Cohen, who during his sentencing hearing this week said of Donald Trump: "Time and time again, I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds."
Barring any last-minute plot twists or other surprises, Nancy Pelosi is going to be the next speaker of the House and reclaim the gavel she had to give up eight years ago. She has now secured a clear majority of votes from the total incoming House, meaning it doesn't even matter now whether Democrats who aren't voting for her vote for someone else or just vote "present." This no longer matters, because Pelosi now has the votes to become speaker no matter how the rebels vote.
I can't decide whether this is just more run-of-the-mill Trumpian-era irony or whether it actually rises to the level of Karl Marx's prediction that "history repeats itself as farce." You be the judge.
House Minority Leader-Elect Kevin McCarthy is helpfully trying to give incoming Democrats some friendly advice. He is warning them that they shouldn't bother to spend too much time investigating Donald Trump and Russia's influence over him, after Democrats take power in January. Just to recap that: a guy with the last name of McCarthy is counselling congressional leaders not to investigate American governmental ties to Russia. "Tail-Gunner Joe" must be having a conniption fit down in Hell, one assumes.
As is now normal, the past week in politics was a pretty wild ride. The stock market went up, then way down, then a bit back up, then way down again -- and that was in a week with only four trading days (Wednesday was a national day of mourning for George H. W. Bush, so the markets were closed). Trump drove much of this confusion, after meeting with the leader of China last weekend to discuss trade. Adding to the confusion was the arrest of the leader of a giant Chinese corporation on Canadian soil at the request of the American Justice Department, and a weaker-than-expected jobs report today.
Welcome back to Friday Talking Points, after our one-week Thanksgiving break! Hope everyone had a great holiday and didn't eat too much turkey.
Most Americans, not being political wonks, have largely moved on from the midterm election results. The mainstream media has also largely been ignoring the still-developing story, for two reasons: (1) they really kind of blew it on Election Night, uniformly coming to the wrong conclusion very early in the evening ("the blue wave is not appearing") and so they're now avoiding having to correct their misinterpretation; and (2) there's a recount in Florida again! Woo hoo! Break out the video clips of that poor myopic cross-eyed guy with the magnifying glass -- that's always fun to run, right?
Our subtitle today is an apt summation of the Republican Party midterm campaign message, in full. That's what they're running on, led by our Snowflake-in-Chief, Donald Trump. Fear. Naked, undiluted fear. "Be afraid!" they warn their voters. "Be very afraid!"
In 2003, Al Franken wrote a book called Lies: And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them, which was written about Fox News (Bill O'Reilly, in specific). Though the title now seems prophetic in the age of Trump, even Franken would have had a hard time believing back then how far the right wing would eventually go down this rabbit hole.