Kristen Welker took a page out of Joy Reid's playbook and challenged a GOP surrogate when he blatantly lied during an interview on MSNBC Live on Tuesday.
Trump supporter, Steve Cortes, who's best known for his research-consulting firm that provides real-time market research to broker/dealers, hedge funds, and sovereign wealth funds, tried to defend Trump but found out lying doesn't work with an informed interviewer.
His first assertion was we don't seem to know enough about Hillary's religious beliefs. Just yesterday, Donald Trump said:
“Now, she's been in the public eye for years and years, and yet there's no — there's nothing out there,” Trump said. “There's like nothing out there. It's going to be an extension of Obama but it's going to be worse, because with Obama you had your guard up. With Hillary you don't, and it's going to be worse.”
Thankfully, when Cortes insisted that Hillary has divulged none of her own religious beliefs, Welker put that to rest and explained that she has been very public for years about her faith. Moving on to another talking point, Cortes had to brag about Trump's appeal to the Evangelical crowd because, you know, Christians are under attack everywhere, especially in these United States. His appeal to these devout Republicans is his ability to protect them from all the make-believe attacks on their faith.
Cortes came to the defense of Trump against those pesky facts that Trump's campaign is in financial straits and, exactly like RNC spokesman Sean Spicer claimed, that because of Donald's wealth, he can compensate for any deficits in his coffers. He admits that June hasn't been a very good month for Trump and it doesn't matter because there's always luck, right?
That's when things got weird.
“I think we’re rebounding and we’re going to be the LeBron James and Cleveland Cavaliers of campaigns,” he insisted. “They were down 3-1 and came back and won, and we’re already starting to see the same. Donald Trump is already starting to do better.”
“Despite the fact that there have been some stumbles in June, an absolute barrage of negative publicity, Donald Trump is still tied in key battleground states like Pennsylvania,” the surrogate opined. “When I was a kid, I used to play with Weebles and they would say, ‘Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.'”
“Well, Donald Trump is a combination of a Weeble and LeBron James. And he is coming back strong and smart.”
That sounds pretty plausible, I guess, because Cavaliers is to Cleveland as RNC is to Cleveland, therefore the RNC will repeat the success of the Cavaliers. Expect to hear a lot of that at the Republican Convention.
Moving on to his abysmal relations with ethnic minorities (who are soon to become the majority), the host is unsure of how someone like Cortes could support Trump. She asked,
WELKER Some people would take it further and say some of that rhetoric has been racist and are you counseling him?
CORTES: I would absolutely push back on that. And as a Hispanic who supports Donald Trump, I can tell you that there’s nothing in his record — in my opinion — that indicates that he has any racist inclinations at all; and in fact, I would say that the present administration, and Hillary, I believe, would be a third term of this administration. I would say, if anything, Hispanics and African Americans, unfortunately, have been incredibly loyal to this administration which has done NOTHING for them, they've had no economic recovery, and I think what we need is growth.
Welker reminds him that the unemployment rate has dropped by 5 points under this administration, but President Obama readily admits that there's more work to be done. Like all Republicans, Cortes forgets the years between 2001-2008. Therefore he pretends those years and the staggering recession that W's wars and irresponsible tax cuts caused, never happened. The fact that Obama turned that around doesn't matter.
CORTES: This will be the only president in American history that hasn't had a single year of 3% GDP growth.
Cortes omits the continual Republican blockade against any Obama proposal as McConnell and company regularly put party before country. But then again, there's no surprise that as a Trump surrogate, Cortes will lie forever for the most dishonest candidate in history.
