Okay, this headline is a bit misleading.
The actual worst response to former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s swift downfall this week comes from resistance grifter Louise Mensch, who claims the Russians are responsible for reports alleging he has physically assaulted several women.
But seeing as how Mensch is in a wackadoodle category of her own, she doesn’t really count.
Therefore, the award for the worst take on the Schneiderman scandal goes to anti-President Trump propagandist Matt McDermott, who tweeted Monday evening, “It took just three hours for Cuomo to call on Schneiderman to resign. Meanwhile, Eric Greitens faces two felony charges and accusations of rape yet remains the Governor of Missouri. Republicans refuse to call for his resignation.”
He added, “No, both parties are not the same.”
Except that Josh Hawley, Missouri’s attorney general and GOP candidate for Senate, has indeed called on Greitens to resign. Several Republican state lawmakers have also called for Greitens’ resignation. In fact, the GOP-controlled state legislature has moved to have Greitens impeached. Republican donors have also said the governor needs to go.
Despite having these details neatly laid out for him by far more honest social media users, McDermott stood fast by his original claim. After all, why let facts get in the way of a perfectly good viral tweet?
He defended his initial assertion by shifting the goal posts a bit, referring to Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., as the collective “Republican Party.”
“It took Sen. Gillibrand two hours to call for Schneiderman’s resignation. Sen. Blunt was on Meet the Press this past week, was asked repeatedly, and refused to call for Greiten’s resignation,” McDermott tweeted.
He added, “No, both parties aren’t the same.”
The point here isn’t to argue that the GOP is blameless when it comes to the issue of sexual misconduct. The point isn’t to argue that Republicans have been particularly great about flushing accused offenders from their ranks (See: President Trump and failed Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore).
The point here is only to say that McDermott’s response is aggressively stupid, and not just because it’s factually inaccurate. It’s lame brained because it’s predicated on the idea that his tribe deserves praise because one of its members has resigned in disgrace.
That’s a winning message. Democrats: We manage our accused monsters better than Republicans manage theirs. Okay, great, but the subtext here is that both parties have monsters.
Also, it’s worth noting that Schneiderman’s exit Monday evening isn’t the result of New York Democrats policing their own ranks. His ruin is 100 percent a reaction to a report published by the New Yorker. And the way the New Yorker tells it, Schneiderman was able to get away with his alleged wrongdoing for so long because he had a network of enablers within the party.
But hey — at least he resigned quickly after four accusers came forward with extraordinarily detailed and gruesome accounts of sexual abuse. Three cheers for damage control. Hip! Hip! Hooray!
The only good response to stories like the one published this week by the New Yorker is: “This is terrible. We must commit to doing better.”
Looking to squeeze a win out of the grotesque Schneiderman episode is political opportunism at its shallowest. But I guess that’s about all we should expect from the same guy who lied about the first family skipping Easter Sunday services.
