So there I was the other night sipping my pre-dinner cocktail and multitasking back and forth from my phone to the TV. Chris Hayes of MSNBC was interviewing Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence (no not that one, the other one), aka, the Bonnie and Clyde of the MAGA world, about their involvement in the January 6th attempted overthrow of the United States government. You can watch the entire interview right here:

Before I go any further, what is it with Trumper women and makeup? Is it their belief that if some is good, more is better, and using a spackling trough as an applicator is best?

But I digress.

Stockton and Lawrence were in the news because they had played a large part in organizing the January 6th so-called “Save America” rally that ended up with the attack on the Capital. Unlike so many others in that group, these two had decided to come clean to the congressional committee investigating the attack and have been handing over texts, emails, and all other kinds of juicy tidbits. A lot of people are worried about what they have said. A lot of congress type people.

Of course in typical Trumper fashion their claim is “we did nothing wrong”. They claim to only have been the organizers of the rally outside the White House that day and only found out the mob was going to march down to the Capital when their chief cook and bottle washer Herr Oberfuhrer Drumpf told them to from behind the cloak of White House and Secret Service safety.

So setting the table means you have nothing to do with serving the dinner. OK, gotcha.

They were shocked, shocked I tell you to discover that Donald Trump would throw them under the bus by pardoning everyone else and leaving them hung out to flutter in the winds of justice. This even after Lawrence says she’d known Trump for a decade.

You’ve known him for a decade and hadn’t figured out he does that to EVERYONE?! It’s just occurring to you that Donald Trump only cares about Donald Trump?! The rest of the non-Trumper world knew that was the case, but it was only after your failed attempt to keep him in power and his subsequently throwing you under a multi axle vehicle that you realized, “hey maybe he’s not such a nice guy”.

I shouldn’t be surprised. A con man is always gonna be a con man. And the biggest defenders a con man can have are the people he conned. It might be because they are still under the influence of the con or it might be because they are subconsciously attempting to justify to themselves the fact they were conned. Whatever the reason, and whatever the evidence mounted to prove the con, they will only under the most demanding of pressure admit to their folly.

So little Dusty, even while he attempts to throw Trump under that multi axle vehicle, also tries to do the “but what abouts” with Hayes over MSNBC’s coverage of the Trump/Russia investigation. Credit Hayes for not buying into that and keeping the interview on as even a keel as could be hoped for. He did what Chris Wallace at the first 2020 Presidential Debate should have done, but then again Wallace had to deal with a crazy person high on anti-COVID drugs (and whatever else he uses) while Hayes only had to deal with a disgruntled man child who had lost his reason for being.

Come to think of it, maybe they were both dealing with the same thing.

Press this little link to see what else these scamps were into

In general they both come off in the interview the way a child admitting to eating the entire box of Oreo’s comes off. A million excuses, a million rationales, but in the end they have to admit to their indiscretion. Wow, Trumpers admitting they were wrong. We only seem to see that when their fairy tell prince who sexually abuses women, treats financial institutions as suckers for lending him money, attempts to discredit the sacrifice of those who served in the armed forces, and, well I could go on ad infinitem, we only see those he conned own up to the con when he’s fleeced them for all he can get and has thrown them to the side. Join Michael Cohen, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Rex Tillerson, all the contractors he never paid for work done on his properties, all his tenants who overpaid for apartments, hell, maybe even Jeffery Epstein (wherever he is).

Towards the interview’s end Hayes asks if they will at least admit that the false claims of voter fraud or election fraud they peddled in the days after (and to a certain degree before) the final vote counts were, in fact, just that, false. After little Dusty whines about those supposed MSNBC “false memes”, he eventually admits that it’s true, all of the claims about election fraud were false.

All the claims about election fraud were false. They knew that and still peddled The Big Lie. Maybe it’s not so far fetched to call them the Bonnie and Clyde of MAGA world. The original pair were all about creating a false narrative of themselves as Depression Era Robin Hoods. These two are trying to peddle themselves as true conservatives who want to save the country from the scourge of….well just what are conservatives trying to save the country from these days? Loss of personal freedom? You mean like trying to take away women’s rights regarding their own bodies? Loss of our standing in the world? Oh yeah, because Trump’s reign of error made everyone love us. Loss of community? Well the country is in what amounts to being a cold civil war from all the bile that’s been thrown around by Fox News*.

No, let us be honest about this. What conservatives want is a “return” to a fiction of a time that never existed. A time when white men ruled the world, women stayed home and popped out babies, minorities were exploited for their labor and thrown in jail when they became too uppity, men had sex only with women and women just gritted their teeth and got through it, guns were plentiful, liquor was cheap, smoking was good for you, and the rich just kept on getting richer. A time when everyone knew their place and stuck to it.

Modern conservatism isn’t about ideals or ideas. It’s about the wealthy in our country being able to control all the rest of us for their own financial benefit. They don’t care about democracy, as a matter of fact they find democracy inconvenient. That’s the reason for all these anti-democratic voting laws. That’s the reason for Fox News*. That’s the reason for Donald Trump. That’s the reason for a mob attacking the very symbol of American Democracy. It’s all a con being perpetrated by the one percent in order to make themselves a few more dollars.

The tragedy is that the people who are most harmed by this are the ones who have fully bought into the con. They have invested not only their time and their money, but their souls. They need the con as much as they need the air they breathe because it’s the only thing they have going for themselves. These are people who have been taught to believe that all the things the government should do for them, healthcare, honest and just police, clean water, an environment capable of sustaining their very lives, a chance to live a safe life for themselves and their families, all of these things are somehow “not the American way”.

Dusty and Jen are perfect examples of those the rich hire to do the dirty work. The surprise is that, faced with the possibility of jail time, they decided to sorta kinda flip. Not the best of reasons, but it’s a start. Maybe the old adage the twelve steppers are fond of quoting is appropriate: “The first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem”.

Now stop hanging out with all the enablers and get on with your lives.

This week I’ve been listening to lots of Tom Waits and Warren Zevon. Step right up as we head out to the weekend.

Shapiro Out