This wasn’t planned, but today is turning out to be Spotlight On Liars Day here at First Draft.
Here’s a sampling of commentary over the last few days from GOP electeds, operatives, and fellow travelers. Notice the common element.
First up, our Secretary of Transportation:
FOX: We do we need to know about these recent aircraft near misses?SEAN DUFFY: Well, what you need to know is the last administration didn't pay attention to some really risky signs in the DC airspace. They didn't care about safety. They cared about DEI.
A good example of a GOP senator:
Olympic level cognitive dissonance.
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen.bsky.social) 2025-07-31T04:32:03.891Z
A GOP operative happily paid by the Washington Post:
Thiessen: Just so people understand wind and solar only work when there is wind and sun. We don't have technology to store the energy from wind and solar…
The head of FDA:
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary accuses the NIH of funding a lab that "brewed up a virus that killed 20 million people"
A GOP committee chair:
get a load of this conspiracy word salad Grassley served just now on Fox. How can anyone follow this nonsense?
The current Energy Secretary:
Burgum: "When the sun goes down, you have a catastrophic failure called sunset and there's no solar energy produced, and yet we're subsidizing these things that are intermittent, unreliable, and expensive. We've gotta get back to base load."
The soon-to-be head of the National Counterterrorism Center:
![Screenshot 2025-07-31 at 13-41-52 Republican Accountability on X Joe Kent says that Russia annexing Donetsk and Luhansk is very reasonable. Today the Senate will vote to confirm Kent to lead the National Counterterrorism Cente[...]](https://i0.wp.com/live.staticflickr.com/65535/54691545888_11774d717a_c.jpg?resize=591%2C800&ssl=1)
You’ve already noticed that they are all saying really stupid stuff. But look at the context for each of these quotes. Each of them is treated as if they are just dolts, just stupid people saying stupid things.
But the reality is that they are all part of a massive gaslighting effort*, and that they know they are lying. But until people in the media stop treating this as a “OMG can you believe how stupid these people are?!!” event, we’re stuck in this cycle.
They are lying. Call them out on it.
*Except Tuberville. He really is a stupid fucker.
I’ll leave you with a musical counterpoint: