Representative Rodney Davis was recently on MSNBC talking about (among other things) the failed Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
In the past, Congressman Davis has attempted to blame this failure on Democrats. Of course, as Rep. Davis would prefer you forget, Republicans didn’t need a single Democratic vote to get that bill to the President’s desk. Not only that, they went out of their way to make sure Democrats couldn’t help in the process of crafting the bill(s). Both the House and the Senate bills were crafted in secret without the input of Democrats, health care experts, women, or anyone that knows anything whatsoever about health care legislation. That may help explain why the AHCA was the least popular bill in almost 3 decades, and was opposed by the American Medical Association, the AARP, the American Cancer Society, and virtually every patient advocacy organization in the country.
Congressman Davis was confronted with this fact on MSNBC this afternoon, when he was asked by Ali Velshi why Democrats didn’t come to any of the hearings Republicans didn’t hold. Representative Davis responded about as well as anyone might upon being called out for blatantly lying about something easily verified. After several seconds of uncomfortable silence and furious blinking, Rep. Davis doubled down on his original lie:
Make no mistake: Rep. Davis knows he’s been lying about the process by which the AHCA made its way through the house. He knew he was lying when he said that Democrats were invited to non-existent hearings on health care reform.
You can see the wheels spinning in Congressman Davis’s head during that long, awkward pause. He’s trying to decide whether or not he wants to be the “bipartisan and transparent” congressman he pretends to be, or to (as usual) stick to party line he was ordered to regurgitate before going on the air. His decision to double down on something he knows to be false makes it abundantly clear which choice he made.
Ironically, the only thing Congressman Davis didn’t lie about in this clip is the fact that he doesn’t feel the need to distance himself from someone equally as unfamiliar with the truth as President Trump, which might explain why he’s voted exactly the way Trump wants him to almost 100% of the time.