Ayman Mohyeldin has a daytime news show on MSNBC. On Thursday he brought on officials from both the Trump and Biden campaigns to talk about various controversies surrounding Tuesday night’s debate. First up was Steve Cortes, the Trump campaign’s brand new “senior adviser for strategy.” Cortes has been a busy bee, as working for Donald Trump means one must not simply lie, but keep up with the lies and then pretend you aren’t lying almost 24 hours a day.
Mohyeldin first asked Cortes to answer a simple question. The House, led by Democrats, passed a bill to help Americans during this COVID-19 pandemic. The Senate, led by Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump’s Republican Party, has refused to take up the legislation and instead opted to sit on it until this past month. What’s the deal? Cortes gave a pat, pointless, run-around statement about Trump doing all he could do—which is clearly not enough. Then Mohyeldin decided to get serious about making Cortes answer some substantive questions and boy, it got fun really fast.
Mohyeldin played a classic ‘Trump’s a racist asshole’ clip, from a rally he held on Wednesday night in Minnesota where he attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar and remarked, “Then she tells us how to run our country, can you believe that?” This is because he’s anti-immigrant, anti-Black, and anti-people. He’s a truly awful person, running a fascist campaign. Of course, fascism is something that Mr. Cortes is a huge fanboy of.
Asked about that clip, Cortes then went into pushing fact-free conspiracy theories about the legitimacy of Omar’s naturalization process in becoming a U.S. citizen, prompting Mohyeldin to ask for clarification: “You're saying her naturalization is not legitimate?”
CORTES: No, I'm saying I don't know. But I'm saying there are a lot of questions which she had yet to answer. About marriages, about documents.
He threw in some bogus claim of voter fraud as well. Mohyeldin explained that there is “no evidence she illegally immigrated here.” To which Cortes, like a true psychopath, responds, “I didn't say evidence, I said questions.”
Mohyeldin then asked Cortes about the lies he and Trump and the Trump campaign promoted before, during, and after Tuesday night’s debate that Biden’s campaign had agreed to and then refused to have “earpieces” checked. This is a completely made-up story by Trump’s team. Mohyeldin even showed the fake, photoshopped images the Trump campaign paid to have plastered around social media sites like Facebook, promoting this lie.
Mohyeldin then pointed to Cortes and played audio of Cortes promoting this very lie on Fox News, when he told reporters that “Look, they agreed to the ear inspection. It’s simple, it would have been by third party, not by us. And then they went back on it. Why? I don’t know. I mean, they’ll have to explain that.”
Mohyeldin asks Cortes if he will be willing to apologize for “misleading” the American public by promoting this fake bit of information. This is when Cortes realizes that he’s actually being called out directly for being a piece of shit, which leads to my single favorite moment connected to the garbage fire that was Tuesday night’s debate.
CORTES: I didn’t mislead, give me your proof that it’s false.
Mohyeldin smiles because anyone rocking a working set of brain cells above the age of 6 knows that Cortes’ argument here is not an argument at all.
Mohyeldin: No, no, that’s not how that works. You don’t make a false statement and then say prove to me that it’s not false.
Mohyeldin then presses forward on how Cortes and the campaign put out this false statement saying that Biden and his campaign “agreed” on these things, a claim that Biden’s campaign has flat-out denied and the Trump campaign has been completely unable to present evidence for. This is why it is false. He presses Cortes on who in the Trump campaign exactly can vouch that this agreement was made. Cortes cannot provide this information, partly because it doesn’t exist, and partly because he’s being asked to answer questions that weren’t delivered by him to Fox News.
Cortes, pushed into a corner to provide a single shred of evidence for his lie, retreats to the famous right-wing snowflake persecution complex rhetorical defense of “you called me a liar on national television.” AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAH.
Oh. Man.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA.
Whew! Mohyeldin gets deadly serious here, because while he is definitely calling Cortes a liar, that’s because Steve Cortes is a goddamn liar. Mohyeldin puts his hands together in order to try and direct this point back to Cortes so even he can understand this. “No. You put out a statement—your Trump campaign put out a statement—that Joe Biden agreed to an earpiece inspection before the debate. All I’m asking you is where did you get that information from internally within your campaign, give me a name. You’re buying ads. You’re doctoring photos, putting earpieces in the candidate’s ear—that’s a fake advertisement. I’m asking you, where are you getting that information from?”
The fake ad the Trump campaign promoted and created
Cortes, like the weak sauce charlatan that he is, then says he has never seen the ad. In fact, he doesn’t even believe Mohyeldin is telling the truth that the ad exists. It’s fake news! In fact, this is all a “gotcha moment” that Mr. Cortes will not participate in! Mohyeldin smiles, maybe realizing for the first time, that these “gotcha moments” only happen if you press people like Trump and his surrogates for truthful answers. “I’ll give you a chance to go back and prepare for this interview next time, with what your campaign is doing, bring the names of those involved—“
Cortes interrupts to say that he is prepared. I know you are … but what am I?
MOHYELDIN: No, you’re not. You don’t even know the names of the people in your campaign who made an agreement.
Cortes attempts at spouting a faux-talking point about voter fraud through Mohyeldin, but Mohyeldin isn’t having it and just repeats himself, “You don’t even know the names of the people in your campaign who made an agreement.”
Cortes, attempting to save face, says he does know who, and it’s an “entire team” but he isn’t giving individual names so they can be “harassed,” but Mohyeldin very cooly walks through this bag of bullshit and says he will give Cortes time to go and find out exactly who on this entire team can speak to the validity of an agreement with Biden’s campaign on earpiece inspections. “When you find out who made the agreement, please bring the documents, the emails, the agreement, anything you could provide to substantiate the claim that was used to misinform millions of people in this country.”
The final 20 to 30 seconds of the interview is worth watching 100 times. I’ve watched it about 10 in a row to make myself smile.
