When Heather originally pulled this clip from Meet the Press, my initial intention was to criticize Rep. Liz Cheney for her ridiculous, but all-too-predictable Fox News-style smears against her fellow congressperson Ilhan Omar and the Democratic Party in general.

But the more I watched it, the more angry I got. Not at Liz Cheney (you can't be upset at a scorpion for being true to its nature), but at Chuck Todd and NBC News for giving him this platform that he is so woefully incapable of doing at all.

Let us take a moment to acknowledge the generational passing of the baton on Meet the Press. Seventeen and a half years ago, Dick Cheney appeared on the show to bald-face lie to host Tim Russert--who did not bother to challenge him--and led this country inexorably into a democracy-ruining war via dishonest right wing framing.

And here we sit, with Dick's spawn lying and making up utterly nasty, democracy-destroying lies without a peep of challenge by the even lesser Todd.

There is nothing about this exchange that doesn't enrage me. First and foremost, why in the hell does anyone need Darth Vader's seed opining on the Democratic Party (note that unlike Cheney, I use the CORRECT name)? She actually voted against the bill introduced by the Democratic majority condemning hate of all sorts. She's FOR hate, obviously. Her stated reasoning? It wasn't mean enough toward Rep. Ilhan Omar.

“I decided to vote against it because I think it was really clearly an effort to actually protect Ilhan Omar, to cover up her bigotry and anti-Semitism by refusing to name her.”

Liz Cheney only wants to speak up against anti-Semitism if she can do it under the guise of slamming a Muslim Woman of Color at the same time. Never mind all those old white men in her party (including the president) are using anti-Semitic tropes constantly. Never mind that statistically, incidences of violence against Jews in this country are being committed by conservative Trump supporters.

But none of that passes through the milquetoast lips of Chuck Todd. For a man so deeply devoted to promoting "both sides," he can't bring himself to point out that OVERWHELMINGLY, this hatred, this bigotry, and the ensuing violence is not coming from the Democratic Party.

And that just gives Cheney to continue with the lies, the distortions, the hate. Now, the Democratic Party is no longer the party of anti-semitism, they are "the party of infanticide, the party of socialism. It's really time for the Democrats, the leadership in that party, to stop it, to stand up and to act worthy, frankly, of the trust the American people have placed in them."

The party of INFANTICIDE???? May the rotten shell of a soul that occupies Liz Cheney's body necrotize even further into ash. This is the kind of garbage that is insanely dangerous to put out there and the reason why I place the blame for the state of the country firmly in the lap of the mainstream media.

How DARE Chuck Todd not challenge that? How dare he let that go by unmentioned?

The country is being governed by lying, horrible, evil, grifting people in the Republican Party that Chuck Todd and his producers give an uninterrupted place at the table to poison the national dialog. And because they're never called out or challenged for their democracy destroying ways, the public doesn't think it applies. Because they're given a chance to demonize Democratic Party for everything, then the leadership of the Democratic Party feel obligated constantly to respond to these disingenuous attacks.

The Republican Party is the single biggest threat to this country right now. Until Chuck Todd finds his gonads and treats them as such, until NBC News (and ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC) stop pretending that this is normal partisan politics, democracy will continue to suffer.