Brunswick Beacon, 07.14.22
George W. Bush said he repeated things to “catapult the propaganda.” Today’s Republicans repeat Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and dismiss uncomfortable truths as “fake news.”
Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards testified that Trump rioters attacked police on Jan. 6. “There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. I was slipping in people’s blood.” More than 100 officers were injured. The Republican National Committee is so divorced from reality that it unanimously passed a resolution calling the riot “legitimate political discourse.” Republicans reject uncomfortable reality and replace it with “alternative facts.” Mike Felmly’s July 7 letter, accusing Democrats of misrepresentation, is a perfect example. It’s a misleading mixture of half-truths and blatant falsehoods.
Felmly says Budd and Rouzer voted for the Baby Formula Act, but doesn’t mention that they voted against H.R.7790, the Infant Formula Supplemental Appropriations Act, the only bill that appropriated money to fix the problem. Rouzer admitted voting against funding the FDA’s efforts to safely reopen closed formula plants and import foreign production.
Felmly dismissed the rise of White Supremacy as “one white kid” in Buffalo, ignoring the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally that featured neo-Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us,” the arrest of 31 White Supremacists at an Idaho gay pride event, and the assault on a black Bostonian by dozens of white supremacists just last week.
Felmly also makes the bizarre assertion that “Rick Scott’s plan does not ‘sunset’ Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid.” Bizarre because the plan literally reads: “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years!” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell understands plain English and reached the same conclusion as Democrats. Scott’s plan, McConnell said, “sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”
A Bush aide once mocked what he called “the reality-based community.” “We create our own reality,” he said. That’s what the Big Lie’s proponents are all about.
Linda McConnell Baker
Leland