By BERRY CRAIG
AFT Local 130
Not surprisingly, Rep. James Comer, R-Tompkinsville, played presidential poodle dog during Michael Cohen's dramatic appearance before the House Oversight Committee this morning.
His performance ought to at least earn him another free ride on Air Force One.
As expected, too, Trump's former fixer ripped "his old boss as a 'a conman,' 'a cheat' and a 'racist,' according to the Louisville Courier-Journal's Philip M. Bailey.
Cohen, who used to be Trump's lawyer, also linked the president "to multiple investigations and scandals that have haunted his presidency." He claimed that "Trump paid two women, including porn actress Stormy Daniels, to keep quiet about their alleged sexual affairs with the president," Bailey wrote.
Comer represents the First Congressional District, where I live. Right on cue, he and his GOP teammates on the House panel took umbrage and took up for Trump. Aren't the emperor's duds oh-so-spiffy?
(Bailey filed his story before Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie got a crack at Cohen. But the Lewis County Republican was rarin' to go against the heretic, tweeting, "I think he’s the least credible witness we’ve ever had in front of our committee."
Comer kept pleasing his lord and liege who is hobnobbing with North Korea's homicidal communist dictator in Hanoi, communist Vietnam's capital. (In his salad days, Trump assiduously avoided the Vietnam War with deferments for college and for bone spurs on his heels.)
“I don’t believe Michael Cohen is capable of telling the truth,” Bailey quoted Comer. “And I would hope that as this committee moves forward, [and] that we have the opportunity to subpoena witnesses, we subpoena witnesses who are not recently disbarred, are not convicted felons… that is how we’re going to determine the truth.”
Anyway, few lawmakers are more loyal to the White House than Comer. He's voted the Trump position on issues almost 94 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight's "Tracking Congress in The Age of Trump: An updating tally of how often every member of the House and the Senate votes with or against the president."
(Comer is also a union-buster. He votes the union position just 5 percent of the time, according to the AFL-CIO.)
Comer, Bailey added, "focused his questions primarily on a New York bank fraud charge against Cohen. He peppered him with questions, asking if 'blind loyalty' to the president had anything to do with his other personal misdeeds."
But it was Comer's "'blind loyalty" to Trump that was most obvious, (Ditto for the rest of the committee's minority members.)
"Mr. Cohen, you called Donald Trump a cheat in your opening testimony,” Bailey also quoted Comer. “What would you call yourself?”
“A fool,” Cohen replied. “Well, no comment on that,” Comer said, with just the right touch of indignity that's sure to pleasure his liege and lord.
"How can he [a writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public," Ralph Waldo Emerson mused.
The observation works just as well for politicians who duck "to the giddy opinion of a reckless" president.