Watch Republican give awkward speech on Russia to empty senate chamber

In a previous piece we reported the outgoing Arizona Republican Senator (and Never Trumper) Jeff Flake giving a 14 minute speech to an all-but empty Senate floor.  This speech was attended by all of two – yes, only two Senators, both of them not big Trump fans, either, these two being Dick Durbin and Amy Klobuchar.

However, the good Senator lied.  What is particularly sad about this is that he lied while giving a speech that was about truthfulness.

He actually lied in several ways.  The first was the way he presented himself.  It probably took some major acting to do what he did, for if we watch him speak, his mannerism shows nothing unusual – he makes eye contact with invisible people but does it as though they were there.  He addresses the President, but President Trump was out doing something useful that day, and so he was not in the Senate chamber.

But the real crux of the lying was classic Goebbels, as shown in this excerpt of the speech:

But many untruths are not at all trivial – such as the seminal untruth of the president’s political career – the oft-repeated conspiracy about the birthplace of President Obama. Also not trivial are the equally pernicious fantasies about rigged elections and massive voter fraud, which are as destructive as they are inaccurate – to the effort to undermine confidence in the federal courts, federal law enforcement, the intelligence community and the free press, to perhaps the most vexing untruth of all – the supposed “hoax” at the heart of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

To be very clear, to call the Russia matter a “hoax” – as the president has many times – is a falsehood. We know that the attacks orchestrated by the Russian government during the election were real and constitute a grave threat to both American sovereignty and to our national security. It is in the interest of every American to get to the bottom of this matter, wherever the investigation leads.

Ignoring or denying the truth about hostile Russian intentions toward the United States leaves us vulnerable to further attacks. We are told by our intelligence agencies that those attacks are ongoing, yet it has recently been reported that there has not been a single cabinet-level meeting regarding Russian interference and how to defend America against these attacks. Not one. What might seem like a casual and routine untruth – so casual and routine that it has by now become the white noise of Washington – is in fact a serious lapse in the defense of our country.

I do not know what news Senator Flake is reading (clearly, it’s NOT The Duran!), but many outlets are being forced to admit that there was never any election-related, Trump-centered collusion with Russia, nor was there any particular interference perpetrated by the Russians on our system, unless of course you want to consider a few Facebook posts as election interference, OR unless you re-assign the perpetrator of any interference to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Admittedly, there is far more dishonesty in the Western, mainly American media outlets than just the careworn Trump-Russia-election narrative.  We have to deal with dishonesty from the American media and political establishment about Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Russia, Palestine and Israel. In domestic matters now we have to correct and expose the press’ negative narratives even while the USA’s economy is in a boom and with unemployment at significantly, and even record low levels.

For Senator Flake and others, nothing good can come of Trump. This is a most precarious position especially when one tries to tell it to AT&T and Apple employees who just got massive bonuses as their employers repatriated money from overseas.  It is precarious when held up against the manufacturing (yes, manufacturing) boom in a nation that had long been told that manufacturing jobs in the USA were nothing but a fond memory.

However, one can at least be impressed by the efforts of the press to lie about the truth, and not to tell the truth about its own lies.

The value of the New Media (these days called “alt” media, but I am old-fashioned) cannot be underestimated.