The "It Was A Joke" Defense Is A Lie

Last night, Chris Hayes did a short segment about the many times the Trump courtiers have excused the terrible things he's said by claiming that "it was a joke," perhaps the most recent of those being by the current liar as Press Sec. Sarah Huckabee Sanders claiming that Trump's encouragement of police brutality while addressing a group of cops was "a joke".   He also noted that the Trump stable of designated liars have said the same thing when he advocated "Second Amendment" solutions if Hillary Clinton was elected and appointed federal judges, suggesting assassination of either her or the judges she would appoint - something not unknown in Republican politics in this era.  In that case it was the scummy Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan who lied on Trump's behalf.   He also noted that when he attacked the Gold Star parents, Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose son died in action, it was the man who Trump would appoint as Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross* who, like Trump appears to never have served in the military, who made the excuse that he was "joking" when he did what would have, before Trump, been unthinkable for a major American politician to have done.

When he was called on asking Russia to break the law and hack Hillary Clinton's e-mail on behalf of his campaign, CALLING FOR A REGIME OF ORGANIZED CRIMINALS TO INTERFERE IN OUR ELECTIONS, WHICH WE KNOW THEY DID FOR HIM, it was Trump who passed it off as "sarcasm".  Later they had another of his stable of designated liars, Sean Spicer claiming a blanket immunity from decency or even legal propriety on behalf of Donald Trump using the "joking" privilege.   

There needs to be a rule that holds that a presidential candidate, anyone holding high office who says things like Donald Trump has doesn't get the chance to claim that they were "just joking".   Barack Obama, probably the best at making jokes of any president in our history, never in my memory had to make that defense of something he said, he certainly never said anything as legally problematic as calling for a foreign crime boss to meddle in our elections or encouraging his supporters to consider the possibility of politics by assassination or police misconduct or as repulsively disgusting as attacking Gold Star parents as Trump did.   That "just joking" stuff is disgusting enough in private life (I've had it pulled on me a number of times, just Sunday, in fact) but no president, House member or Senator or Cabinet level official should ever get to use it, certainly not as Trump and his stable of designated liars has.   

By the way, in Trump's world everyone would seem to be a designated liar, but some of them have it as a job description. 

*  That's Wilbur Ross, a Yale - Harvard product.  His time in the Bill Clinton administration is just another piece of evidence that the rule of the Ivy Leaguers has some deeply ambiguous features that are definitely not in the interest of the overwhelming majority of the American People.