At this month’s Lincoln Day Dinner in Oldham County, Kentucky House Speaker David Osborne is seen on video yanking the microphone off the podium as U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie says to the audience, “The chain of command does not go to the commander in chief when you are a congressman. You work, not for the speaker of the House. I work for you.”
As Massie walks off stage, we hear a man in the crowd yell, “Welcome to the snake pit, baby!”
It is jarring to see a sitting United States congressman treated with such disrespect by our House speaker.
Just as jarring as it was during the 2024 General Assembly when Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers left his seat and joined then-Floor Leader Damon Thayer on the Senate floor to snarl and wag fingers at Sen. Karen Berg for daring to question data undergirding House Bill 5, the Safer Kentucky Act.
I would like to say that we expect better from those in senior leadership positions – but a decade into the Trump era it appears that decorum and common decency are increasingly viewed as weaknesses, if they are considered at all.
The culture of an organization, whether it be a business or the government, typically reflects the values of those at the top. And boy, do we have some humdingers of indecency up top.
At this month’s National Prayer Breakfast, President Donald Trump used his time at the podium to denounce those he views as enemies, including Massie, calling the Kentuckian a “moron.” Trump made fun of the House speaker for asking him to pray during lunch. “You know, Mike Johnson is a very religious person, and he does not hide it. He’ll say to me sometimes at lunch, ‘Sir, may we pray?’ I say, ‘Excuse me? We’re having lunch.’”
If that was supposed to be a joke, it did not land. What kind of man, what kind of leader, ridicules prayer at a prayer breakfast?
And yet, there is so much sanctimonious snark and depravity in national Republican leadership these days, it’s hard to keep up. Here are a few things that happened just last week.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the man whose ideas about healthy living are touted by legislators in Frankfort — told a podcaster, “I’m not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s testimony before a congressional committee, in which she was meant to answer questions about the Epstein files, devolved into hours of childish shouting in which she stonewalled and boasted off-topic about the stock market.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the rumored-but-not-so-hidden extramarital affair between Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (who once famously bragged about shooting her puppy) and staffer Corey Lewandowski in which there was something called “the blanket incident.”
“Noem had to switch planes after a maintenance issue was discovered,” the report read, “but her blanket wasn’t moved to the second plane, according to the people familiar with the incident. The Coast Guard pilot was initially fired and told to take a commercial flight home when they reached their destination. They eventually reinstated the pilot because no one else was available to fly them home.”
Nothing says professionalism like the secretary of Homeland Security whining about her blankie.
And speaking of whining, on Valentine’s Day morning President Trump posted a shockingly long, angry missive about talk show host Bill Maher that read, in part, “Anyway, Bill Maher is a highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT, and Republicans should stop using him to show how the Left is coming over our way — Our Base, the Greatest of All Time, laughs at your weakness when you do it! … Bill continues to suffer from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS!), and there is nothing that will ever be done to cure him of this very serious disease. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
This is what our president, the most powerful leader in the free world, is spending his time on?
The late free-market thinker Joseph P. Overton advanced the theory that there is a range of subjects and policies the public finds broadly acceptable — the Overton Window — and that it changes over time.
If the president and his cabinet are setting regular examples like this — and they are — is it any wonder decorum is tossed out the Overton Window by Kentucky leadership at a GOP Lincoln Day Dinner in Oldham County or on our Senate floor?
Ah well. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned and decency, in the Trump era, is all but dead.
I keep thinking about the man in the audience at the Lincoln Day Dinner who shouted at Massie, “Welcome to the snake pit, baby!”
If a dinner hosted by the Kentucky Republican Party for its own members is the snake pit, hoo boy. Local leaders like Osborne and Stivers are going to need a good antivenin vaccine, and quick. Unfortunately, the Health and Human Services secretary is an anti-vaxxer, busily bragging about snorting cocaine off a toilet seat.
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| Tip Jars |
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