Today was a slow day on the nation's Sunday Shows, thanks to the either intentional or unintentional absence of each of the Trump administration's most dedicated and egregious liars. Perhaps they were tuckered out, or perhaps nausea has set in at the various networks and they've decided that even if their viewers don't necessarily deserve a break from the authoritarian Dear Leaderisms of a Kellyanne or the stubborn Sean insistence on alternative facts, the cameras themselves can only take so much. Regardless, it was up to White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to make the rounds, artfully shedding whatever stray scraps of dignity that still clung to him after a half-year of toadying up to, objectively, the worst man he's ever worked for.
So Reince obligingly went out and did all the lying on his own.
White House chief of staff Reince Priebus on Sunday flatly denied any involvement between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian officials. [...]
Priebus said he’s spoken with high-level intelligence officials in Washington who have told him that no such involvement occurred.
Which directly contradicts multiple reports of exactly that involvement taking place.
His main task, however, was to confirm that when Donald Trump said that our nation's free press was "the enemy" of the American people, he meant it.
"I think you should take it seriously. I think that the problem we've got is that we're talking about bogus stories like the one in the New York Times, that we've had constant contact with Russian officials. The next day, the Wall Street Journal had a story that the intel community was not giving the president a full intelligence briefing," Priebus said. "Both stories grossly inaccurate, overstated, overblown, and it's total garbage."
The definition of enemy of the American people is, then, reporting anything that the set of known liars and propagandists on the Trump team don't want reported. If they don't want it reported, it becomes "fake news", if it becomes "fake news", that makes the news outlets illegitimate, and "the enemy." Yes, it is explicit authoritarian rhetoric. Yes, supposed decent human being Reince Priebus slid gracefully right into the center of that schtick as if he had been forever grooming himself for it.
Also, Reince is very peeved about leaks, and very very peeved that reporters are using unnamed sources to report on the goings-on atop the Trump tire fire.
"We deal with one after the next. I think that the media should stop with this unnamed source stuff, put names on a piece of paper and print it. If people aren't willing to put their name next to a quote, then the quote shouldn't be listed. Period."
Reince is regularly quoted anonymously in the press himself, as is the rest of Trump's staff, so it's going to be very interesting to see whether reporters take him up on this advice. No anonymity for Reince? A good number of journalists are probably angry enough at the Trump team to make that one stick.
So that was the Sunday Show contribution from the White House, this week: An orchestrated, one-man multi-network whinefest about how the team of congenital liars led by a longtime "birther" conspiracy peddler wasn't getting proper respect from the mean, cruel media.
"It's not just two stories. Then, it's followed up by 24 hours a day, seven days a week, of other cable stations, not necessarily Fox, that all day long, on every chyron, every seven minutes, they're talking about Russian spies. Talking about the intelligence community," Priebus shot back.
"Talking about how me and Steve Bannon don't like each other and what's Kellyanne [Conway] doing. All this just total garbage. Unsourced stuff."
It's a fine window into the precise stories that infuriate this White House, isn't it? They are apoplectic over reporting about Russian ties. And darn upset over talk of disarray, as well.
So there you go. If you were wondering what the "serious" side of the Trump "administration" looked like, there's the ringleader of the supposed "serious" side holding forth on his thoughts. No, it doesn't sound any different from what Sean Spicer, or Kellyanne Conway, or Steve Bannon says in their own interviews, does it?
You might even begin to wonder whether the whole premise of a serious Republican team within the White House working to counteract their compulsive, propaganda-fetishizing, authoritarian-minded counterparts is itself just another invention of pundits who want to see competence where there is none.