Harry Reid couldn’t hide the wonder in his voice.
The former Senate majority leader sat with the New York Times recently, one of those interviews elder statesmen do when their health is failing and their legacy needs solidifying. And when the conversation turned to President Trump, Reid spoke in critical terms but admiring tones. The reporter, Mark Leibovich, described “a hint of grudging respect.”
“Trump is an interesting person. He is not immoral but is amoral,” Reid said. “Amoral is when you shoot someone in the head, it doesn’t make a difference. No conscience.”
This is where, according to Leibovich, Reid caught himself and qualified.
“I think he is without question the worst president we’ve ever had,” Reid said. “We’ve had some bad ones, and there’s not even a close second to him.” He added: “He’ll lie. He’ll cheat. You can’t reason with him.”
With that, “a hint of wonder crept into his voice.” It was, Leibovich notes, as if Reid was describing some sort of beast, not above, but outside of the rules that constrain everyone else — everyone else, that is, except for Reid.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney will become Utah Sen. Mitt Romney on Thursday. This Republican enters the Senate, after losing the White House, perhaps in part because Reid lied, Reid cheated, and Reid refused to allow anyone to reason with him.
That isn’t libel of an old man. This is an accurate description of what Reid has since described as one of his finest accomplishments. It was 2012, and Romney was mounting what looked like an impressive challenge against then-President Barack Obama. So Reid went to the floor of the U.S. Senate and started lying. He said Romney hadn’t paid taxes in over a decade.
Except that Romney had indeed paid taxes. He released his tax returns showing how he paid the federal government $1.9 million in 2010 and more than $3 million in 2011. By then, though, it was too late. Reid’s lie had gained traction.
When politicians are exposed for their lies, normally they do one of two things. Either they ignore it, hoping their lie will cover itself up with time, or they insist quietly that they didn’t have all the relevant information at the time. Not Reid, though. He was proud when he got caught.
The fact checker at the Washington Post had given Reid four Pinocchios for his lie. Even PolitiFact, hardly a consistent arbiter of the truth, awarded him their “pants on fire” rating. But Reid didn’t mind. When CNN asked him four years later if what he did was wrong, the duplicitous elder statesman said with a smile, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”
Hence Reid’s wonder when describing Trump. The president isn’t some odd, norm-ruining, political specimen. He is an evolution of the say-anything, cheat-to-win mentality that Reid pioneered. The two are similarly amoral, and that’s why Reid admires that quality so much in a politician.
