'Government lies': MSNBC's Ari Melber calls out GOP for Trump hypocrisy over Santos vote
Rep. George Santos (R-NY) became the sixth person in history to be expelled from the House in Congress on Friday, as nearly half of the Republican caucus joined with Democrats to remove him from office over a long series of ethics scandals including serial fabulism, campaign finance violations, and even alleged theft from campaign donors and fellow GOP lawmakers.
But the way Republicans treated Santos, who still awaits criminal prosecution on federal charges, is impossible to square with how they have treated a far greater threat to democracy, argued MSNBC's Ari Melber on "The Beat."
"If tonight marks a stand against government lies and the damage they can do, most of the House Republicans taking this rare, strong measure against these lies also are failing to bring that standard to the Big Lie, to the way Donald Trump abused power to deceive millions about his election loss," said Melber, himself an attorney. "A lie that fed an insurrection."
To be clear, Melber said, this isn't unrelated — rather it cuts to the core of "whether there's accountability, and what Republicans say they did today and what they're actually doing."
"It is a fact that Trump lost the election," Melber continued. "It is a fact that his lies and his demand that his fans come to Washington to act on those lies fed the crowd, populated the crowd, which then stormed the Capitol and committed what is now legally a convicted sedition that day ... whether Donald Trump himself as a defendant is ultimately convicted is a separate and open question. But to be clear, just as Santos has not yet been convicted, the lie part of that equation is not an open question. If anyone knows how it went down, it is those members of Congress, including the Republicans who were giving speeches, they said, against lies today." In fact, "They were standing on the very floor that those Trump fans, and now-convicted seditionists, some of them, stormed and ransacked because of the power of lies."
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And for the record, added Melber, January 6 "was not billed as some sore loser party ... that's not what those now-convicted seditionists mostly said or thought. We know that even beyond propaganda from their private texts and messages with each other. It was a response to Donald Trump's lies about, quote, stopping the steal. Lies from a far more powerful member of government than George Santos about much more important matters than Mr. Santos' job history or Botox or the rest of the stuff we no longer have to cover that much in the news. There was danger posed to Congress. There was an attack on American democracy itself."
"So keep that in mind, and the Republicans' ongoing support for that lie and the way they voted against the certification at the time and sided with Trump after and continue to do so today, as he is their main candidate to go back into the White House," said Melber. "Keep that all in mind as you make sense of this story."
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