Wanker of the Day: Margot Cleveland

If you read Margot Cleveland’s bio, you’d easily get the impression that she’s an upright and pious mother devoted to the tenets of the Catholic faith. Having a child with cystic fibrosis, she’s a strong advocate for those with special needs, and as an adjunct instructor at the University of Notre Dame and older Gen X mother, she feels qualified to provide a “a cross-generational perspective on culture and parenting, specifically through the lens of a Catholic woman.” She may be all of those things, but she’s also a liar. And if there’s one thing I know about the New Testament, it’s that Jesus of Nazareth really disliked pious liars. There are 18 different times that Jesus uses the word “hypocrite,” and none of them are polite.

Now, Donald Trump is obviously lamenting the fact that the January 6 investigatory committee is exposing his crimes day after day, and it’s making him act like a child.

Of course, he’s not going to get equal time, or any kind of time, because he insisted that the Republicans object to an independent commission and not participate in a congressional one. That leaves people like Margot Cleveland to do their best, but her perch at The Federalist is probably not adequate for the disgraced ex-president’s needs.

The simple fact is that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 presidential election fair and square, and it wasn’t all that close. In every election, there will be examples of mishaps by incompetent administrators and a handful of voters who attempt to, or even succeed in casting a fraudulent ballot. Election laws will be changed at the last minute, and lawyers will battle in court over all manner of issues.

Sometimes the Democrats will succeed in making it easier to vote and sometimes the Republicans will have success knocking people off the voters rolls, curtailing early/absentee voting, closing polling stations in urban areas, and demanding ID from legitimate voters who don’t possess ID.

In the end, the courts decide what floats and what sinks, and then we go on to fight these things out in the next election cycle.

Every reputable person who has looked at the presidential election, including especially in the closely contested states that Biden/Harris won, has concluded that the overall result was correct. Whatever irregularities have been discovered did not amount to enough to change the outcome in any state, and therefore the Electoral College count was correct. This is why Trump could not get any support for challenging the counting of the votes on January 6. He was rebuffed by his Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, by his own White House lawyers, by the courts, and by his own vice-president. If they really felt that the election had been stolen, they would have been willing to listen, but the stood resolute in opposition.

But Ms. Cleveland wants to rehash these things as if they represent anything more than a distraction from the plain truth that Trump lost, did not want to relinquish the presidency, and led a violent and bloody coup against the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Government and the U.S. Constitution.

You can’t aid and abet lies this big and consequential and call yourself an upright and pious person. I hope Notre Dame University takes notice, not because I’m all about cancel culture, but because they have to protect the integrity of their faith.

Trump wants equal time to tell his lies, and Cleveland has eagerly volunteered.