A moment with WH Press Secretary Karoline Goebbels

This morning I spent 10 daunting minutes gazing at a video of the White House press secretary's May 29th, um, briefing? She opened by tendering good tidings — Big, also Beautiful, tidings, those two Orwellian happy faces affixed to Trumpism Unlimited's small-minded, shockingly ugly tax cut legislation. And throughout, she followed ...

Logic's homicidal stabbing arrived forthwith as our featured spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, bemoaned the "shoddy assumptions" being made about the tax bill by lazy folk like those at the Congressional Budget Office. Remember, she said, they projected that economic growth under 2017's tax cuts "would average a mere 1.9% over the next 10 years." Well, she demolished that decade-encompassed shoddiness by pointing out that growth in one year, 2019, "had surged to 3.4%." I kid you not.

Leavitt's brazen murder of logic was a misdemeanor, though, when compared to her doctrinaire zombie-of-a-lie hustle: Cutting yet more revenue from the government's coffers will yield the sensational magic of "no increase in the deficit." But even that altogether debunked ideological deceit was inadequate fodder for the electorally bovine, as demonstrated in Leavitt's elaboration: "The largest deficit reduction in nearly 30 years" is the real truth of the tax bill.

Even so and wouldn't you just know it? she continued, those "radical Democrats" (in the GOP's wholly owned Congress) are threatening (the very wealthiest) "Americans" with "a four trillion dollar tax hike." The heartless bastards. What's more, they're way out of step with public sentiment — a Leavittene allegation that in more general, non-tax-bill terms may very well be true.

Otherwise, our plucky press secretary proceeded to substantiate the claim of Democrats' nonconforming goosesteps in this deeply pseudoconservative parade of fiscal insanity by citing a partisan-skewed survey. "For the first time in the history of Rasmussen polling," she beamed, "a majority of Americans believe the country is on the right track." Said beaming radiated via her big, beautiful, self-satisfied smile.

Alas, no, even friendly Rasmussen was unable to rig a favorable majority outcome. The polling to which Leavitt referred on 29 May showed a right-track percentage three points short of a majority (48%). A subsequent Rasmussen poll showed the same. Meanwhile, independent polling by YouGov revealed a wrong-track stat of 51-41, and a Marquette University survey discovered a wrong-way black hole of 16 points, 58-42.

Ms. Leavitt also happily reported that "consumer confidence surged in May with the biggest monthly jump in four years." And Ms. Leavitt was correct. May's consumer confidence index did indeed jump over April's by 12.3 points. But in every Trumpian trend of seeming sunshine there's an explanatory cloud. In this case, several of them.

Last month's "surge" in consumer confidence was something of a nowhere-to-go-but-up development, seeing how earlier confidence had fallen to its lowest point since January 2021. Plus, the month of May's data was shy by 12 days, with research terminating on the 19th. More influential was that roughly half of May's consumer confidence figures were gathered after the erratic dark prince of stupefaction put a hold on much of his idiotic tariff warring with China.

Before? "Consumers’ expectations were especially gloomy," observed one economist in the field of such things, "with pessimism about future business conditions deepening and confidence about future employment prospects falling to a 12-year low.” Now, given Trump's flying tacos-bloodied ego, is it not reasonable to think tariff pauses are history? If you get your kicks by being especially gloomy, just think on that.

The rest of my 10 minutes with Karoline was merely warmed-over Trump rally bullshit about "unelected," "activist" federal judges engaging in all manner of "troubling and dangerous" behavior. In short, but of course unacknowledged by White House Press Secretary Leavitt: They love the rule of law, and her boss hates it.

I rather regret those lost minutes. Sure, I expected no encounters with logic or honesty from a MAGA hack. But just as watching Trump rallies began lacerating my every sense of human decency long ago, while watching Ms. Leavitt I began feeling that eerie faintness of every ethics donor.