Sunday Show Summary Part 1: Reince Lies

Incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus appeared with George Stephanopolous yesterday to discuss the transition process. He came up with a couple new lies and repeated one golden oldie, and Stephanopolous did an admirable job of calling him out on both of them. Video of the exchange is available on Mediaite and a full transcript is published on ABCnews.com. He starts with John Lewis, whose battle with Trump we covered yesterday:

PRIEBUS: Well, look, here's the issue -- I and we look up to John Lewis and his historic contribution to civil rights.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the president-elect said he was all talk, no action.

Priebus would go on to say that because John Lewis and others "have been champions of voting rights," he should be the first person to recognize the results of a popular election. But the distinction is clear between Priebus's statement and Trump's. You can believe that John Lewis is a champion of voting rights and a hero for his country who should be part of every peaceful transition of power as Priebus and Republican Senator Ben Sasse have said. Or you can believe that he's "all talk, talk, talk - no action or results" as Donald Trump has said. The two beliefs are completely incongruous, and if Reince Priebus is appearing as a surrogate for Donald Trump, he has to either repudiate Trump's statement or defend it.

Ultimately, Reince's argument boils down to an idea he stated later in the interview: "You didn't have Republicans questioning whether or not Obama legitimately beat John McCain in 2008." If Republicans can accept a change of power without questioning the legitimacy of the candidate, why can't Democrats? We'll leave aside for a moment the fact that what Democrats have a problem with had no precedent in American elections and skip to the other aspect: that nobody questioned Barack Obama's legitimacy. This is demonstrably false, as the man Reince Priebus helped elect built his entire political brand around questioning Barack Obama's legitimacy. Josh Voorhees at Slate has done the hard work of collecting all of Trump's birther tweets, but I'll select a few for you here as Exhibit A:

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Yes, Donald Trump implied that Barack Obama had a woman who signed a waiver releasing information he requested killed in a plane crash to keep her from. The allegations are insulting not only because of how absurd they are, but because Donald Trump's friends can tell him several less complicated ways to remove your enemies. Priebus would point out that Donald Trump no longer believes these things, but it's worth noting that, as with the John Lewis comments, he has not apologized for his lies and abuse. Instead, he used a speech promoting his new Washington, D.C. hotel to blame Hillary Clinton for them.

Priebus would try to differentiate Lewis's talk of illegitimacy from Trump's by saying Trump never questioned the vote tallies electing Obama. Which could almost be a fair point if Trump hadn't QUESTIONED THE VOTE TALLIES EVEN WHEN HE WON.

(Sorry Reince, but you helped elect a man who leaves a solid paper trail for all of his lies and distortions.)

In this same interview, Reince would repeat part of that same Trump lie, saying that "this man won in an electoral landslide." We covered this particular Trump/Priebus lie a month ago, citing PolitiFact's analysis among other things. A more thorough analysis of the data done later for the New York Times shows Trump's electoral college victory ranked at 46th out of 58 elections, and his popular vote margin at 47th out of the last 49.

The fact that Priebus and company continue to repeat this bold-faced lie shows that they will not be deterred by reality, and serves as proof that Donald Trump is unlikely to rise to the dignity of the office he takes in four days' time.

#DonaldTrump #ReincePriebus #birther #JohnLewis