“(Trump is) the second president of the Confederacy… The people who are interested in law and order are not in the White House. The people who are interested in law and order are in the streets.” — Steve Schmidt, former Republican Political Strategist and political consultant to George W. Bush, Lamar Alexander, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and John McCain.

As you may have heard, two days ago Trump tweeted “Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?” His press secretary du jure Kayleigh McEnany said on Wednesday “It’s not a baseless conspiracy. No, not at all. I won’t acknowledge that.”

Don’t you just love it when the nation’s public employees surrender their souls and lie through their teeth over easily disprovable Trump tweets, just to save their phony-baloney jobs? This is a time-honored tradition dating, oh, all the way back to Sean Spicer, Trump’s first chief shill. He established a tradition that has been followed by Anthony Scaramucci, Sarah Sanders, Stephanie Grisham, Raj Shah, and now Ms. McEnany… not to mention Michael Dubke and Hope Hicks, communication directors who posed as ersatz press secretaries.

What’s cute about McEnany’s latest prostration is that, back in June 2015 she told CNN that Trump’s campaign kick-off, in which he said Mexico was sending immigrants to the US who were rapists bringing drugs and crime to the United States, was despicable (my word, not hers). What she said at that time was “To me, a racist statement is a racist statement. I don’t like what Donald Trump said.” 

What ever happened to that person? Evidently, the possibility of fame and fortune, no matter how temporary, eclipsed her morality. Or, perhaps, she’s been replaced with a bionic doppelgänger. Don’t be too quick to dismiss that possibility: it makes more sense than Trump’s Martin Gugino tweet. Or his Clorox cure. Or the existence of an organization called “antifa.”

(Fun Fact: The laws of physics strongly suggest that one man, a 75 year old man at that, cannot possibly hit the ground harder than he was hit by the police. However, let’s give the president a chance to prove his point. I’d like to see Mr. Trump take his place and show us, on live television, emceed by Mancow Muller.)

Even George W. Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleischer, a man way to the east of centrist, called the Trump tweet reckless. Yeah, sure, he dumbed it down, but we’re talking about Ari Fleischer, for crying out loud. And that statement was a hell of a lot more than what most congressional Republicans said… which has been absolutely nothing. “Hello, darkness, my old friend.”

There was a time when White House press secretaries had solid moral fiber. Jerald terHorst was Gerald Ford’s press secretary (Ford was one of those Republican presidents) from August 9, 1974 all the way up to September 8, 1974. He wasn’t fired nor was he pressed out of service. He resigned because he “could not in good conscience support (Ford’s) decision to pardon former President Nixon… even before he was charged with the commission of any crime.”

This was a very courageous action back in 1974. By today’s standards, as defined by Trump’s gaggle of Keystone fuglemen, terHorst deserves to be canonized.

As for hypocrite Kayleigh McEnany, who quite obviously is as beyond embarrassment as she is beyond truth, justice and the American Way, her countdown clock is ticking, and it’s ticking loudly. Recent history has proven it is pointless to sell your soul to the Great Orange Devil. Will she last long enough to fight Kellyanne Conway for a good spot in that very special circle of hell?

Yeah. Spicer, Scaramucci, Sanders, Grisham, Shah… Kayleigh, your true name is “next!”

(Thanks to Mel Brooks and to Paul Simon for their referential contributions to today’s Weird Scenes.)