In this installment of the weekly conversation, PF Whalen and Parker Beauregard of The Blue State Conservative resurrect six recent, explosive scandals that deserve answers and the Democrats’ new favorite buzzword: Accountability.
Parker: Both the news cycle and cancel culture, in their insatiable desire to create new hysterias and villains, have produced more than just victims in their unholy wake. They have also created cover for arguably some of the worst political actors in modern times. When it comes to non-scandal scandals, there is an intentional obfuscation of truth and justice in the effort for leftist domination.
Let’s explore some of these issues that need and deserve more attention.
To start off, it seems fair to ask what became of Andrew Cuomo. Or rather, what did not become of Andrew Cuomo. Not that long ago, he was facing two significant charges, the first being the fact that he knowingly lied about Covid deaths in long-term care facilities and the second being the better-publicized sexual harassment allegations that the media used to cover up the rising body count. There were calls for his resignation, even from the wholly incompetent and unscrupulous New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. It seemed momentum was growing on both sides of the political aisle to oust Cuomo. Indeed, by any account, most politicians would have seen any further aspirations for public leadership derailed. After all, Senator Al Franken of Minnesota had to surrender his senatorial duties after a single photo of him pretending to fondle a woman circulated on social media just a few years ago.
Andrew Cuomo was facing more serious charges from an ever-increasing roster of women. He allegedly made untoward comments, touched, and even kissed female staffers. And that wasn’t even the worst of his crimes! It needs to be remembered that the real scandal was the immoral withholding of information revealing the fatal policy prescriptions of his office. Cuomo was responsible for sending Covid-positive elders away from hospitals and to both their and their fellow residents’ death in lesser-equipped and iller-prepared nursing homes. In and of itself this policy smacks of stupidity, but the far greater crime is that families were unable to make better decisions for their families when they didn’t know the extent of the harm being done with their loved ones.
So, what happened with Andrew Cuomo? Anything short of his resignation is political hypocrisy of the highest magnitude, a huge middle finger to justice, and a slap in the face to the victims of both the nursing homes and the women whom he tormented.
PF: Cuomo’s plan is to ride out the storm, and it seems to be working. It’s outrageous.
Journalist Carl Bernstein is famous for appearing on CNN and claiming the latest scandal-du-jour regarding conservatives is “worse than Watergate.” The Russia Hoax, the overblown Ukraine story and Trump calling Georgia election officials are just a few examples. Watergate was bad; really bad; and none of those Trump incidents were even scandals, let alone worse-than-Watergate. But we have indeed seen a scandal that was worse than Watergate, yet the left and their media – including Mr. Bernstein – simply ignored it.
The IRS Targeting Scandal involving the infamous Lois Lerner may be the worst scandal in American history, including Teapot Dome and Watergate. Our federal government militarized the Treasury Department for the purpose of targeting conservative groups. If a group with “patriot” or “Tea Party” in its name applied to the IRS for non-profit status, they were either harassed or summarily dismissed. Using the authority of the IRS to attack political opponents is bad enough. It was a scandal that should have been at least worthy of President Barack Obama’s impeachment and potential imprisonment of key players. But what was most scandalous regarding the IRS Targeting Scandal was the timing.
J. Russell George, the Inspector General who investigated the scandal, was aware of the IRS shenanigans in 2012, well before the reelection of Obama. In serious instances, which this scandal certainly was, Inspectors General are required to notify Congress within seven days of discovery. But George was silent and didn’t alert anyone until after the election. It was a blatant example of partisanship, waiting until the election was over, yet only Congressional Republicans seemed to care.
To date, no one has been truly held accountable. There were three resignations from the IRS, including Lerner, but no prosecutions and the press did everything they could to dismiss it. And their approach worked. There are few aspects of Donald Trump’s presidency that were disappointing, and its failure to further pursue this scandal is one of them. The Trump Administration should have pulled out all the stops in going after this scandal.
Parker: I don’t think you got the memo – Barack Obama kept us scandal-free for eight years, remember? As I recall, the worst thing he did was wear a tan suit.
My mentioning of Andrew Cuomo’s sex scandal made sure to highlight the fact that there are compelling reasons to believe the sex scandal was at least covered because it provided a shield to the real, much more serious crime of sending the elderly to their deaths. Covid has provided no shortage of should-be, would-be scandals for Democrats. This obviously includes the ugly, political hypocrisy of many major and minor Democrat leaders that instituted or advocated for harsh lockdown measures and did whatever they wanted – sent their own kids to in-person schools (private schools at that, which they also oppose politically), traveled to visit family for holiday or on vacation, or otherwise visited gyms and salons despite closing them off to the general public. Gretchen Whitmer alone seemed to violate every mandate she imposed on the people of Michigan. It’s all insane – but many voters reelected them anyways.
The bigger Covid scandal is rightfully the way that many Democrat governors issued orders similar to Cuomo that led to the necessary and tragic death of thousands of patients. On this matter, now-Assistant Secretary of Health Richard Levine had implemented a policy in Pennsylvania in 2020 that mandated both nursing homes and long-term care facilities to accept Covid-positive patients from hospitals. While the ink was still wet, Levine removed his own 95-year-old mother from her facility after being informed there were positive cases. The easy explanation is that Levine was able to do what any son or daughter would want to do, but the scandalous explanation is that Levine was removing his mother from a situation that thousands of other patients were being forced to endure and could not escape.
PF: The narrative the mainstream media continues to push regarding the Obama presidency is that it was “scandal-free,” which is absurd. If anything, Obama was scandal-plagued. In addition to the IRS targeting scandal, we also had Benghazi. And both scandals should have impacted the 2012 election in which Obama defeated the GOP’s pathetic candidate, Mitt Romney.
While the IRS Targeting story was suppressed by the Inspector General prior to Obama’s reelection, Benghazi was manipulated by Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya was attacked on September 11, 2012, by Islamic terrorists commemorating the attacks on American soil eleven years earlier. Four Americans died in that attack, including our Libyan Ambassador, Christopher Stevens. It turns out that Secretary Clinton’s State Department screwed the pooch by not providing enough security for the consulate, which is a scandalous development in its own right. But the real scandal with Benghazi was the cover-up.
We were seven weeks away from Election Day, and Americans had feared from the beginning that Obama might be too soft on terrorism as president. Obama, Rice, and Clinton had been pushing the storyline that Islamic radicalism was on the decline and they had done a great job in combating it. Instead of raising their hands, admitting the reality of the Benghazi situation, and accepting blame, Susan Rice went on five different Sunday news shows and pushed the lie that the attacks were the result of a “spontaneous” reaction by Libyans due to an American video on YouTube that was offensive to Muslims. Blame America, President Obama.
It seemed unlikely from the get-go that it was just coincidental that the attack happened on 9/11, but it wasn’t until after Obama’s victory that the truth came out. Rice blamed the CIA for an inaccurate report, but it was all nonsense. It was a cover-up that was conducted in plain sight, and our esteemed media was Obama’s wingman. “Nothing to see here, folks… move along… Obama is scandal-free.” Obama should have been impeached, and Rice and Clinton should have been forced to resign.
Parker: Need I remind you that the biggest scandal of the Obama years was a tan suit? Nothing bad ever happened. Honorable mention in these six scandals is anything related to Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden. Clinton’s server scandal alone should have landed her in a cell next to Jeffrey Epstein. For the record, it’s hard to see how he wasn’t murdered, so there’s another scandal altogether.
In keeping with my current events (and I appreciate you keeping Obama scandals alive), I think it’s critical to note how the Derek Chauvin trial was filled with scandals from beginning to end, and it all centers around Minnesota Attorney General – and America-hating, Louis Farrakhan disciple – Keith Ellison. I’ll name three issues related to him and trial, although there are surely more that could fill this space.
First, there is the record payment of $27 million by the Minneapolis City Council to the family of George Floyd. That payment is a scandal all on its own, but the timing is remarkable. In the middle of jury selection, the Minneapolis City Council wrote a check and announced the settlement. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Keith Ellison’s son, Jeremiah, sits on the council. There is then the intentional withholding of officer body camera footage on the day of Floyd’s arrest. For over two months after the infamous events of May 25th, the general American public only had the imagery and narrative of the white police officer kneeling on the black criminal suspect. It was only after a U.K. news outlet shared a leaked recording months later that we finally had context to the arrest, hearing how Floyd couldn’t breathe, how he asked to be laid on the ground, and how much time the arresting officers devoted to helping Floyd. (Of course, none of this mattered to the jury anyways). Finally, there was the recent revelation that Ellison did not bring hate crime charges against Chavuin because no evidence existed to suggest that Floyd’s race had anything to do with his arrest or death.
This last sentence bears repeating and its own paragraph: Despite the ubiquity and cacophony of charges about systemic racism and white supremacist policing, Keith Ellison admitted – with a heavy sigh, no less – that there was no evidence of racism in the Chauvin/Floyd drama. None. Zero. Zilch. What the hell have we been doing the last year if not for demanding an overhaul to the whole system because of alleged racism? Derek Chauvin was found guilty because of the races of the players involved, America endured domestic terrorism never before seen, and now it turns out it was all based on a premeditated lie. There are no words.
PF: You mentioned Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, and it really is remarkable that he’s still in office. But equally extraordinary is the fact that somehow, Ralph Northam is still the governor of Virginia.
The scandal which appeared likely to be Northam’s downfall was his racism scandal which resulted from resurfaced pictures of two young men, one in blackface and one in KKK garb, and one of which was Northam. It’s difficult to determine which would have been a greater sin the KKK outfit or the blackface, and Northam never acknowledged which individual was him. He apologized and threw himself on the mercy of the court of public opinion. With today’s unforgiving cancel culture, it remains inexplicable how Northam wasn’t removed or why the left let the scandal go away. But even more peculiar is the pooh-poohing of the scandal regarding Northam’s infanticidal comments on a radio show.
We who are anti-abortion call the destruction of a fetus in the womb murder, whereas pro-abortion advocates insist the fetus is just tissue. But Northam lifted the veil and dropped the pretending game. During a radio interview, Northam was asked about aborting babies with deformities and disabilities, to which he explained, “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Even rereading Northam’s words from two years ago, they make me sick to my stomach. A sitting governor of a state was openly and unapologetically discussing murdering babies. There was no hiding Northam’s words behind the premise that fetuses aren’t human beings, Northam was matter-of-factly explaining his plan for killing the most innocent among us, post-delivery. Ralph Northam is a truly repulsive person, as is anyone who agrees with him, and anyone who participated in downplaying this scandal.
