Matt Schlapp is everything that’s wrong with America. He’s a guy that’s full of shit and leaking it all over the furniture. He runs CPAC and claims that’s it’s an open forum for thought from all persons from all sides instead of the Wayne Lapierre pity party it usually turns into. He claims that he and the GOP “take the high road” and they just get slammed and slammed by those people who just hate them viciously, who have nothing but partisan animus against them.
You know which people. The media. And of course, Liberals.
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In the above segment he spends 10 minutes with Allison Camerota justifying the decision by himself and his wife Mercedes to walk out of the White House correspondents dinner when Michaelle Wolf told a joke about abortion, which for them was simply a bridge too far, and crossing a red line.
That’s fine of course because that’s a personal choice — which he immediately announced by tweeting about it — but where he and his wife dip their toes into frackholdland is when they proclaim that Wolf was exclusively derisive to conservatives, which she clearly wasn’t. She obviously spent as much time smashing the media including both CNN and MSNBC for spreading and profiting from the lies spewed by Huckabee-Sanders and Trump as she did talking about her “smokey eye.” While she did bring up abortion she also brought up the forced birther dystopia of Handmaiden’s Tail which was perfectly appropriate in reference to Mike Pence.
But the thing about Schlapp’s ilk is that they are so trapped in their snowflakedom, delusions of competency and permanent grievance mode that they absolute fail to recognize when anyone on their ideological side has crossed the decency line even a little bit. Chris Cuomo spends the second half of the above video making that point with Schlapp as he refuses to admit that anything, ANYTHING, that Trump or his supporters has ever said or done just might be way over the offensive line.
It’s all “I don’t know what he meant...” and “I wasn’t there..”
But now after the “joke” by Kelly Sadler about John Mccain being “dead soon” — Schlapp’s willful ignorance act has grown even worse because as it turns out his wife Mercedes works in the same part of the White House press office as Sadler.
Get load of this….
Schlapp doesn't like what she said, he thinks it’s unfortunate — and he think’s it’s good that she apologized to Meghan McCain — although she had promised publicly apologize and still hasn’t — then he immediately turns around and start complaining about “all the leaking” because that so much worse than looking forward to getting your way on a confirmation vote because a Senator that opposes you is about to die.
After whining about the leaking he goes on to say that they should never comment about private statements because you can never appropriately “run your agenda” if you're always answering questions about what you say behind closed doors. [??!!?] Bill Kristol calls that noise out as totally hypocritical, which it is.
Schlapp also magically doesn’t have a problem with having a Christian Supremacist like Robert Jeffress speak in Jerusalem at the opening of the new embassy. He then turns it around and says that because “thousands and thousands” of evangelical who feel the same way as Jeffress would feel “left out” if he wasn’t invited even though he has clearly made statements that directly attack not only Islam but also Mormanism which has gotten under the skin of Mitt Romney.
In a Sunday evening tweet, former Gov. Mitt Romeny (R-MA and UT) railed against pastor Robert Jeffress, who is leading the prayer in Jerusalem as the new American embassy opens.
“Robert Jeffress says ‘you can’t be saved by being a Jew,’ and ‘Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell,'” Romney tweeted. “He’s said the same about Islam. Such a religious bigot should not be giving the prayer that opens the United States Embassy in Jerusalem.”
So if Jeffress didn’t speak evangelicals would have felt “left out”, but when he does speak Muslims and Momans have no right to feel dissed?
The willful blindness here is staggering.
Particularly when you look back to just a couple months ago Schlapp himself was in the hot seat about various disgusting comments made a CPAC, which he organizes.
So they had Marie Lapen at CPAC whose grandfather is a notorious White Supremacist, although they did disinvite Richard Spencer and Milo, however Schlapp never fully explains why the holy hand grenade would have fracking ever invite Spencer and Yianopoulos in the first place?
Then Meghan McCain gets into the conversation and points out how Trump came after her dad.
“When President Trump called out my dad and led a crowd of booing, I was so upset, I was so hurt,” McCain said. “I know he’s not a conservative darling, but why at this moment when he’s suffering from the worst brain cancer that exists and going through chemo, there can’t be a modicum of respect for my family from CPAC?”
Schlapp rattled off a talking point about McCain being a “national hero” before he told McCain he believes there can be a “disagreement on policy questions, and let’s keep it to policy.”
“I would have applauded you had you said that onstage at CPAC,” guest host Ana Navarro replied. “That crowd was getting stirred up to boo him by a guy who dodged the draft five times, man!”
“Why did you get up onstage and do it from of [those] people, not this audience?” Navarro wondered.
Yeah, what she said.
He also took heat from Sonny Hostin who pointed out that at this year’s CPAC former RNC chair Michael Steele was attacked for being merely a “token” black guy that they picked simply to oppose Obama.
Sunny Hostin later explained she was “very disappointed” in a speech by ACU Communications Director Ian Walters, who said former GOP chairman Michael Steele was only picked to lead the party because he’s “a black guy.”
Playing a clip from Schlapp defending Walters to Steele—during which Schlapp demanded Steele show some “grace”—Hostin demanded, “What the hell does Michael Steele have to be graceful for?”
“I will not tell my dark-skinned colleague … that he’s not able to have a point of view on these racial questions we have in society,” Schlapp said. “Shutting people down is the wrong way to handle this.”
“Isn’t the right way to handle it by shutting down racism?” Hostin shot back. “Isn’t that the right way to handle it?”
“You’re a Notre Dame Catholic!” she exclaimed. “That’s what we’re called upon to do.”
“I believe Ian … has the right to have a point of view,” Schlapp insisted.
“Does he have the right to be racist?” Hostin asked.
Apparently he does have a right to be racist bigot at CPAC and I frankly don’t care if he happens to be somewhat not light-skinned. He has plenty of excuses for Sadlers hateful comments about a Vet dying of brain cancer, he’s got excuses for Jeffress insulting entire religions, he’s got excuses for Trump attacking journalist, Mexicans, Muslims, Immigrants and “Shithole Countries”, he’s got excuses for Walters attack on Michael Steele for being black, he’s nothing but excuses.
Except for when Michelle Wolf made an abortion joke.
This right here is the problem in America right now. This guy can overlook, rationalize, justify and excuse damn near anything that comes out of the mouth of a conservative while claiming at the same time that he “doesn’t condone it”, when it’s pretty obvious that he tolerates it just fine. It frankly doesn’t matter what it is because his grievance complex makes him feel like — somehow, somewhere— they’ve been muzzled or something and spewing it out now is only “balancing the scales.”
But that’s just bullshit. That’s just myopic self aggrandizing crap.
Pretty much all Trump supporters do this dance. They’re so offended by any little thing that a Liberal (or really anyone they think isn’t part of their conservative tribe) says, but “Mexican are Rapists and Criminals” and there are “good people on both sides” doesn't even move the dial for them, not simply because they are both horrendously bigoted views they’re also complete fucking lies.
They can’t lift a finger in reaction to Trump repeatedly tweeting white supremacist memes. Even ones that directly condone violence against members of the media, or hitting CNN with a Train, or fake “When Muslims Attack” videos generated by White Nationalists, a GIF of hitting Hillary Clinton with a golf ball, an anti-Semetic graphic attacking Hillary as corrupt with cash and a Star of David which was generated by even more White Nationalists, fake racist crime stats generated by yet another White Nationalist site, Trump saying “he grabs ‘em by the pussy,” that Meghan Kelly was “bleeding from her where-ever”, that Khazir Khan must have been “allied with ISIS” in order to criticize his statements about McCain, that Judge Curiel’s rulings couldn’t be trusted because he has “Mexican heritage”, “Shithole Countries”, “What about the Alt-Left that came charging…?” in Charlottesville, and obviously the media is the “enemy of the people” and on and on and on...
And it’s not just about the things that Trump and his people say and what they tweet — it’s frankly about their lack of judgement.
They had a fucking serial wife beater in the White House with access to classified material who didn’t have his full clearance and then they lied about it for crying out loud. Jared Kushner doesn’t have his clearance, but somehow he’s still sitting in on Top Secret meetings.
They don’t even bat at eye at this shit anymore.
But “get that baby out” is just too, too much for them.