Ignorance is a curse. Willful ignorance is a fatal disease. Kevin McCarthy has succumbed to the disease. Dana Milbank writes:
Not since the Know-Nothing Party disappeared in the 1850s has a public figure boasted about his ignorance with as much gusto as Kevin McCarthy does.
It doesn’t seem to matter what you ask the speaker of the House. He hasn’t read it, seen it or heard about it.
The explosive documents from the Dominion case showing Fox News hosts privately said Donald Trump’s election lies were hokum but promoted the lies on air anyway?
“I didn’t read all that. I didn’t see all that,” McCarthy told The Post.
The way Fox News’s Tucker Carlson (predictably) manipulated the Jan. 6, 2021, security footage McCarthy (foolishly) gave the propagandist, giving the false appearance that the bloody insurrection was “mostly peaceful”?
“I didn’t see what was aired,” McCarthy asserted.
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, in an implicit rebuke of McCarthy, blasting the Carlson propaganda while holding up a statement from the Capitol Police chief denouncing Fox News’s “outrageous,” “false” and “offensive” portrayal of the insurrection?
You guessed it. McCarthy “didn’t see” McConnell do that.
The benighted McCarthy has been amassing this impressive body of obtuseness for some time. If ignorance is bliss, the California Republican has been in nirvana for years now.
At first, McCarthy's devotion to Ignorance might seem funny. But there comes a point when it's far from funny:
This week, McCarthy’s see-no-evil approach was just plain evil.
After Carlson aired his phony portrayal of the insurrection, several Republicans finally spoke up about Fox News’s lies: “Inexcusable and bull----” (Sen. Thom Tillis, N.C.), “whitewashing” (Sen. Lindsey Graham, S.C.), “dangerous and disgusting” (Sen. Mitt Romney, Utah).
Then there was McCarthy, questioned by reporters just outside the speaker’s office, which the supposedly “peaceful” insurrectionists had ransacked that terrible day.
“Do you regret giving him this footage so he could whitewash the events of that day?” asked CNN’s Manu Raju.
“No,” McCarthy replied, adding some gibberish about “transparency” (which is the very opposite of Carlson’s fabrication).
“Do you agree with his portrayal of what happened that day?” Raju pressed.
“Look,” McCarthy said. “Each person can come up with their own conclusion.”
That was exactly the position millions took when Jews were packed into cattle cars and shipped off to Auschwitz.
Image: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
