If they ever convene all the people who have lied under oath to the U.S. Congress, they should gather them in that big new ballroom they’re constructing right now at the White House.
That’s the ballroom Donald Trump mentioned the other day in his heartfelt response to the killing of Charlie Kirk.
You saw this with your own disbelieving eyes, didn’t you?
In the immediate aftermath of the killing of Charlie Kirk, as Trump stood out there on the White House lawn, a reporter said to him, “My condolences, sir, on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. May I ask, sir, how are you holding up over the last day-and-a-half, sir?”
And Trump, displaying both his usual sensitivity to the plight of others and his customary three-second attention span, answered, “I think very good. And by the way, right there you see all the trucks. They’ve just started construction on the new ballroom at the White House.”
Well, that new ballroom of his better be a good, big one.
Because if they ever need it to host all those who have testified before the U.S. Congress and lied through their teeth, and then gotten away with it because the truth counts for nothing in official Washington, they’re going to bring in a lot of people.
A lot of serious lying has been done, and not this nonsense they’re trying to pin on James Comey, the former FBI director and newest name on Trump’s “Tour of Retribution.”
Trump thinks it’s a crime if Comey leaked a story to a reporter — or told an aide to leak it — and then told Congress he didn’t. For the record, Comey denies any part of it.
You want some really serious lying before Congress, which wound up counting for nothing over the years?
How about football executives who lied about brain injuries, and tobacco executives who said they knew nothing about the connection between cigarettes and cancer and heart disease, and U.S. Supreme Court nominees who said they wouldn’t do anything to overturn abortion protection?
And nothing happened to any of them.
But let’s not go there yet.
Right now, this bitter, unhinged, vindictive Trump wants to make a case that Comey deserves indictment for lying.
When that indictment was announced the other day, Trump boasted, “There’ll be others.”
Watch out former National Security Advisor John Bolton, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California), New York Attorney General Letitia James, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, and billionaire philanthropist, investor and Democratic donor George Soros.
They’re all rumored to be on deck.
Will their cases be as flimsy as the Comey indictment?
Comey’s charges are flimsy enough that career prosecutors balked at bringing the cases. But they were overruled by Lindsey Halligan, a Trump loyalist whose background is insurance law. She’s never prosecuted a case. She was handpicked by Trump to be interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern district of Virginia, where the charges against Comey were filed.
Does anybody ever take it seriously when someone lies to Congress?
If they do, how have we wound up with Supreme Court justices who went through congressional hearings vowing they would never attempt to overturn such “established law” as abortion protection and yet found a way to do just that?
And how did we have a generation of tobacco executives claim no one in their industry ever suspected a connection between cigarettes and cancer and heart disease, while millions of people went to their graves because of those connections?
And ironically, there’s this little football connection, whose final act played itself out last week in New York City.
Two months ago, 27-year-old Shane Tamura killed four people at the midtown Manhattan office building that houses headquarters of the National Football League. Tamura, a former high school football player, had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain disease linked to football and other contact sports.
He shot four people and then killed himself, but not before leaving a note blaming the NFL for his troubles.
The New York Medical Examiner’s office issued the CTE report on Tamura last week, finding “unambiguous diagnostic evidence of CTE in the brain tissue of the decedent.”
Does anyone still remember some of those NFL officials testifying before Congress when the world was first learning of the brain damage to football players?
Does anyone remember those liars claiming they had no idea there might be a connection between constant head banging and eventual brain damage?
So yeah, lying is a terrible thing.
And who would know better than Donald Trump, who’s been caught lying several thousand times during his presidential years?
Lying before Congress is also a terrible thing.
But isn’t it amazing how lying about cigarettes and cancer, lying about abortion rights, lying about brain injuries, nobody gets punished there.
But there’s question about a Trump antagonist leaking a story to a reporter, and from this they somehow want to make a federal case.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” (Johns Hopkins University Press) and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home” (Johns Hopkins University).
Someone needed to tell Donald Trump that his appearance at a UFC fight over the weekend was not a good look, writes Michael Olesker.
Journalists bear a responsibility to go beyond the headlines and social media posts to understand the past and present, writes New York University student Lucia Alonso.
The Trump administration's invoking of religion is reminiscent of the words and actions of one of history's most brutal Crusaders, writes Michael Olesker.
Like thousands of communities around the country last weekend, Pikesville demonstrated its disgust with the policies of the Trump administration, writes Michael Olesker.