GOP lawmakers now see their 'only job as making up hysterical lies': columnist
Congressional Republicans have given up their authority to Donald Trump and Elon Musk without a fight to pursue their true passion — which is spreading baseless conspiracy theories, according to a columnist.
The GOP majorities have allowed the president and his unelected adviser to take a wrecking ball to agencies lawmakers have approved and funded, usurping the constitutional power of the purse. But Salon's Amanda Marcotte argued that Musk's power. grab frees up Republicans to do what they love best.
"If anything, accepting Musk's self-appointed role frees up their time from troublesome decision-making tasks, allowing them more time to go on TV and make excuses for letting a private citizen conduct what looks very much like a coup," Marcotte wrote. "Do taxpayers need to pay 218 full-time GOP representatives whose only job is making up hysterical lies?"
House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) has already announced a "Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets" that will give what Marcotte calls "an unjustified air of legitimacy to various conspiracy theories" about the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK, as well as UFOs, COVID-19 and 9/11.
"The fake conspiracies are much simpler to understand and sexier than the ongoing plot of Musk and his 'Department of Government Efficiency' to illegally burrow into the federal government," Marcotte wrote. "None of this, it should be obvious, is about getting to the bottom of any real mysteries. We can know this because both of these Republicans have previously acted in bad faith, but also because the answers to their 'questions' are already out there."
The only reason to keep interrogating those topics is to distract from Trump and Musk looting the treasury and staffing what's left of the government with loyalists, Marcotte wrote, and headlines about the JFK assassination or UFOs garner loads of attention, even if no new information is ultimately turned up.
"[It's] a continuation of the main MAGA propaganda strategy of the past decade: pumping an endless stream of lies and conspiracy theories into the discourse, disorienting ordinary people to the point where they can't tell fact from fiction," Marcotte wrote. "A lot of it doesn't even need to be overtly political. TikTok, for instance, is awash in medical disinformation, people claiming to be haunted by demons, and charlatans offering psychic readings through the computer. This contributes to a larger atmosphere where people detach from any allegiance to the reality-based world, making them more open to listening to Trump's lies and ignoring the less exciting truths offered by responsible journalists. It's a short leap from believing your astrological sign means vaccines are dangerous to yelling about how Trump's right that immigrants are kidnapping and eating pets."
Trump understands the value of conspiracy theories to distract and bond with his followers, and Marcotte said GOP lawmakers will want to keep their voters from noticing what Musk's cuts are doing back in their home districts."
For congressional Republicans who want to pretend to be doing something while also distracting their voters from this ongoing assault on our national sovereignty, a fake task force pretending to 'investigate' already-answered questions is just the ticket," Marcotte wrote. "Offering the imprimatur of congressional authority to long-standing conspiracy theories will pump this nonsense to the top of the headlines, crowding out alarming stories about the real damage DOGE is doing. It will also raise the level of fake information out there, creating even more noise that helps Musk sell his firehose of lies as just more of the same right-wing rhetoric."