BTRTN Announces Winners of the 2024 “Lindsey Grahammys” for the Worst in Republican Hypocrisy

Ready for the awards show that celebrates the most outstanding achievements in Republican political hypocrisy?  Cue the opening credits, the lights, and the music…

Welcome to the 2024 Lindsey Grahammy Awards!

Yes, every year on the day the music industry hands out its “Grammy” awards, Born To Run The Numbers hands out statuettes that memorialize the year’s most egregious examples of deceit, sycophancy, and hypocrisy in the Republican Party.

Tonight is the night! It’s the festive celebration in which Republicans drink the Kool-Aid, swallow their pride, and goose-step along our Red State Carpet hoping this is the year they will please the Donald by winning one of our coveted statuettes. Tonight we are broadcasting from the land of the MAGA Carta, the solemn charter sworn by Republicans to abandon principle, renounce the Constitution, and kiss the ring. In Trump they Trust!

Back when we launched the Lindsey Grahammy Awards in 2020, we knew that the statuettes just had to be named for the Republican Senator from South Carolina who was born with two good arms, two good legs, and two good faces. That’s when Lindsay was caught in perhaps the most audacious, flagrant, and absurd hypocrisy… apart, that is, from every single time that Donald Trump opens his mouth.  

It was in 2016 that Graham justified his opposition to Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court by publicly declaring that it was a matter of principle, and that he was perfectly willing to be held accountable to it:

"I want you to use my words against me. If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said, 'Let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.'"

Sure enough, that exact, precise circumstance came to pass. When Ruth Bader Ginsberg passed away in the final months of Donald Trump’s presidency, Lindsey managed to completely, totally, and unabashedly abandon his “principled” position of 2016, thoroughly endorsing Trump’s right to ram through a new court appointee.

Then, when called on his hypocrisy, Graham justified his flip-flop by accusing everyone else of being equally lacking in moral fiber. “I am certain if the shoe were on the other foot, you would do the same.” Lindsey Graham not only operates in an ethical vacuum -- he thinks we all operate with the same contempt for moral principle that he shows!

Ah, but those were the quaint old days when harmless Lindsay defined Republican hypocrisy. Now the GOP is the party of Donald Trump, a man who has mastered, perfected, and actually weaponized hypocrisy. An essential element of Donald Trump’s twisted psychosis is to constantly accuse his opponents of exactly what he knows he is guilty of.

Consider: he accuses Democrats of “weaponizing the DoJ” all while he yearned for an Attorney General who would be his “Roy Cohn,” and then he found one who did “weaponize the DoJ” by egregiously misrepresenting the findings of the first impeachment commission to seemingly exonerate Trump. Trump claims that the 2020 election was rigged, when he was the one who pressured officials in swing states to overturn the results of free and fair elections. He screams that the election of 2020 was stolen, when he was the one who orchestrated the insurrection intended to steal the election from Joe Biden.

Donald Trump is hypocrisy incarnate, and the Republican Party has allowed him to become the GOP incarnate. You don’t need to understand the transitive principle to figure out that Republicans are now the party of hypocrisy.

Virtually all the leaders of the Republican Party have embraced the lie that the 2020 election was rigged and that January 6^th was a “legitimate political protest.” Those who did not agree to this deceit have been excommunicated, ostracized, and abandoned.

Indeed, the post-factual Trump Party has become a confab of slimy mutated creatures with outsized vocal cords but lacking spines, memories, and dignity. Where once the identifying traits of Republicanism were fiscal responsibility, global obligation, limited government, and rugged individualism, today’s GOP is a pander-fest of wobbly, weak-kneed sycophants whose every action is determined by fear of retaliation from Donald Trump or his army of unhinged insurrectionists.

The question is increasingly becoming whether there is anything that Republicans do that is not in some manner or measure a hypocritical act. In 2024, “Republican hypocrisy” has become a redundancy, and “Republican principle,” is now an oxymoron. Many have suggested that BTRTN would have a far easier time if we simply tried to find the rare example of Republican political courage than attempt to cull the truly exceptional stand-outs in the avalanche of hypocrisy. Ah, but we are committed to his daunting work… and now, the envelopes, please!

1.    You must obey this subpoena, unless you are, uh, us!

On January 24, 2024, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee tried to lower the boom on Hunter Biden, claiming he should be held in contempt of Congress for failing to respect a Committee subpoena ordering that he must testify behind closed doors. Biden actually appeared at the hearing, offering to testify on the spot under oath, claiming only that he wanted to testify in public rather than private. Republican members of the committee were outraged by his failure to obey the subpoena’s demand for private testimony.

Fortunately, the hypocrisy police were on the scene, in the person of Jared Moskowitz, a House Democrat from Florida. Moskowitz offered a “bipartisan” solution, promising to vote on the spot that Biden be held in contempt… with one little caveat. He proposed that identical contempt resolutions be passed for each of Republicans Scott Perry, Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, and Kevin McCarthy – all of whom ignored House Subpoenas from the January 6 Commission. For that matter, Moskowitz could have added Trump Attorney General William Barr, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino.

Every one of these Republicans ignored a House Committee subpoena. Hunter Biden actually showed up to testify. Which one do the Republicans think should go to jail?

Let’s hand out our first “Lindsey Grahammy” statuette to Jim Jordan, currently the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, who insists that a Democrat should go to jail for a “crime” that he personally and unabashedly committed.

2.    Best supporting actor: Matt Gaetz, for supporting Mike Johnson’s budget compromise after ousting Kevin McCarthy as Speaker for pretty much the identical deal.

Who can forget the spectacle of a year ago, when Matt Gaetz roasted Kevin McCarthy’s nuts over an open fire of fifteen House floor votes before allowing him to take the Speaker’s gavel, and then only after securing the right for any single member of the House to call a “motion to vacate” on the Speaker at any time. Guess who did? But the specific hypocrisy that earns Gaetz his Grahammy is that he recently supported Speaker Mike Johnson when Johnson made pretty much the exact same deal that Gaetz excoriated to end McCarthy’s tenure as Speaker.

Matt Gaetz epitomizes the new breed of Republican elected official who views his role less as government and more as performance artist. Give this massive gas bag “best supporting actor” for supporting the puppet he installed as Speaker when he was finished castrating his loathed personal enemy.

3.    Legally Deaf, Blind, But Mostly Dumb: Trump’s Lawyers Argue the Opposite of the Argument they Made Two Year Ago

Ah, legal hypocrisy! Donald Trump’s essential argument for his current claim of total Presidential immunity from prosecution is exactly the opposite of the argument he made when battling his second impeachment. The New York Times pointed out that back in 2021 – when Trump was fighting off his second impeachment -- Trump lawyers argued that because he was out of office, the proper legal mechanism for examining Trump’s role on January 6 was not impeachment, but should be the criminal courts.

But when criminal charges were actually brought against Trump, a new set of lawyers argue that Trump cannot be charged with crimes because he was not convicted in his Senate impeachment trial. This, of course, was famously highlighted by Judge Florence Pan, who asked Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, if his contention of absolute Presidential immunity meant that a President could order Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival. Sauer offered the mind-popping reply that “he would have to be and would speedily be impeached and convicted before the criminal prosecution,” and later embellished that “if there’s no impeachment ever, and no conviction, then the official acts are immune. Period.”

So you can’t criminally prosecute unless there has been a conviction in an impeachment trial. But you can’t have an impeachment trial after Trump leaves office. Follow the logic of Trump’s lawyers: Trump could literally have Joe Biden murdered, and then wait to see if he would be impeached and convicted. If he sensed he would lose and be convicted in the Senate, he could simply immediately resign as President… and walk away a free man. In that scenario, there could be no impeachment conviction, because he was no longer president, and no criminal conviction, because there was no impeachment.

So, there you have it, folks. Trump, knowing that he owns the gonads of at least 35 Republican Senators, believes that if he is re-elected he can order the murder of every Democrat in the United States and never have to worry about a thing. 

4.    What Makes this Court Supreme? Its Supreme Hypocrisy!

One of the undeniable accomplishments of the Republican Party in the past decade is the politicization and corruption of the Supreme Court of the United States. In the face of mind-boggling deception, graft, leaks, and corruption, Chief Justice John Roberts has proven to be a frightened little man incapable of exerting moral influence or authority as his court degrades into a slime-fest of amorality and an arrogant rejection of public scrutiny. 

The moral abyss of the conservatives on the Supreme Court was painfully obvious in the hypocrisy evidenced in their confirmation hearings, when each sought to create the impression that they believed Roe to be “settled law,” and a “confirmed precedent” to be respected… all so that their appointments would be ratified by the Senate. The most stupendous deception: Samuel Alito. In the opinion he authored overturning Roe v. Wade, declared that Roe was “egregiously wrong from the start.” In that the Roe ruling was in 1973, and Alito was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2005, his use of the phrase “from the start” unambiguously means that Alito already believed Roe should be overturned at the time of his confirmation hearings. Yet, under oath, Alito spoke of the importance of precedent – stare decisis – and acknowledged that Roe had now been on the books for years and had been challenged and upheld.  Ted Kennedy would claim that Alito assured him in private meetings that he felt Roe was “settled law.” The cowardly Alito absolutely refused to give any indication that he felt the law was “egregiously wrong from the start,” no doubt fearing that it would put his nomination in jeopardy. Later, all of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney-Barrett would play the same disingenuous game of footsie when their turns came before Congress.

Now, in this past year, we have been forced to endure national humiliation as John Roberts does absolutely nothing to rein in the obvious corruption evidenced by Clarence Thomas. A recent Forbes article simply listed the reports of malfeasance committed by Thomas during his tenure on the Supreme Court and found thirteen different allegations of impropriety: Thomas failing to acknowledge gifts, failing to repay loans, and failing to pay taxes on valuable gifts of an RV, real estate, and tuitions. Thomas accepted invitations to attend meetings of overtly conservative organizations, meetings that included mingling with high-net-worth political donors. Thomas has made a dazzling series of “errors and omissions” on his financial disclosures over the past 20 years.

The Forbes article and ProPublica also note that Thomas has taken “38 ‘destination vacations,’ 26 private jet flights, VIP sports passes, helicopter flights, private resorts, and a ‘standing invitation’ for a private golf club.” And let’s not even get into the fact that his wife is a conspiracy theorist who actually attended the January 6 rally… and yet Clarence Thomas refused to recuse himself from cases involving January 6.

As this mountain of corruption became too big to scale, John Roberts meekly sought to institute an ethics policy that would be handled internally by the Supreme Court. In related news, the fox was formally appointed the Chair of the hen house.

Once upon a time, titans of character, responsibility, and legal expertise from across the ideological spectrum understood that objectivity, character, and principle were the secret sauce that enabled the Supreme Court to undo bad legislation, take down corrupt Presidents, and protect the weak and disenfranchised in our society.

Now we have a court packed with Republican misogynists, leakers, deceivers, and thieves… led by a man who lacks the courage to fix it.

Let’s hand six Lindsey Grahammy statuettes to the six Republican charlatans on the United States Supreme Court. 

5.    House Republicans expel George Santos for doing exactly what Donald Trump does routinely.

House Republicans finally had enough with George Santos. He had lied about his credentials for office. He had used deceptive practices to raise campaign donations. He had misrepresented how he used campaign funds. He had committed illegal acts in the course of campaigning for office. He claimed that legal investigations into his malfeasance were politically motivated.

So Republicans expelled George Santos from Congress.

And they are about to nominate Donald Trump to be the President of the United States.

Donald Trump, who drained the bank accounts of octogenarian donors by tricking them into making their one-time contributions recurring weekly gifts. Trump, who paid money to a porn star to keep news of their affair out of tabloids in the run-up to the 2016 election. Trump, who based the argument for his candidacy on the idea that our government was broken and needed the leadership a savvy, successful, deal-making CEO from the private sector. Turns out Trump was a fraud, a crook, a tax-dodger, and lied more prodigiously than George Santos every dreamed of.

The only question to be asked is which Republican behavior is worse? The 105 Republicans hypocrites who ignored Trump’s identical behavior and voted to expel Santos? Or the 112 Republicans who voted against expelling Santos, perhaps because they knew he was just following the behavior modeled by the Big Boss? You could argue that the latter may be slimeballs, but at least they are consistent.

So we’ll give out 105 Lindsey Grahammy statuettes for the hypocrites who voted Santos out even as they try to get Trump back in. 

6.    The “Biden Crime Family,” versus the “Trump Crime Family.”

Donald Trump enjoys labeling the President as the head of the “Biden Crime Family,” and the utterly unsubstantiated and unproven allegation that Joe Biden personally benefitted from Hunter Biden’s foreign financial deals is at the center of the House Republican effort to impeach Joe Biden.

This is particularly juicy, in that Donald Trump’s entire family was already found to have been part of a massive scheme of fraud. The Trumps actually are the “Trump crime family.” This pertains not only to the New York State real estate conviction, but to the litany of examples of Trump and his family using their White House roles for personal gain. On January 4, 2024, The New York Times reported on a report released by House Democrats providing evidence that Trump took “at least $7.8 million from foreign entities while in office,” adding that this was exactly “the kind of conduct that the G.O.P. is grasping to pin on Joe Biden.” Throw in the two billion Jared Kushner received from a Saudi Prince – over the specific and strong objections of his financials advisors -- for Kushner’s brand new investment fund. It’s pretty easy to figure out which one is the crime family.

C’mon up to the stage… we’ve got a Lindsey Grahammy statuette for all of you – even Eric!

7    Trump tries to stop bipartisan immigration bill because he wants the inaction on immigration to be blamed on Biden.

There’s nothing like “late-breaking hypocrisy” to liven up Grahammys night!

Just this past week, Donald Trump made clear to House Republicans that they must not support the Senate bipartisan deal on immigration reform being led by conservative James Langford.  

Yes, this is Donald Trump, who made immigration the centerpiece of his 2016 campaign, promising he would build a wall to stem the flow of rapists and drug dealers into the United States. This is Donald Trump, who very much wants to make immigration a, if not the, central issue in his 2024 campaign because – in his current vernacular – immigrants “poison our blood.”

Now, he is desperately trying to block a deal that is designed to address the very calamity he wants to run on. There’s absolutely no secret why. As Republican Senator Kevin Cramer explained: “a border deal that actually reduced the flow of illegal immigration… that would be good for Biden politically.”

Republican Senator Mitt Romney was blunt: “…the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump, and the fact that he would communicate to Republican Senators and Congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it… is really appalling.”

Ahah.

What Donald Trump wants is for the undocumented immigrants he loathes to continue pouring into the country for at least another ten months, for the sole and precise reason that they will continue to present a political liability for Joe Biden. Guess he is not all that concerned about all that poison going into our blood after all.

Not to be outdone on the hypocrisy meter, House Speaker Mike Johnson was quoted saying “I don’t think now is the time for comprehensive immigration reform.” Um, what? There is an urgent crisis, the Senate is close to finishing drafting comprehensive immigration reform, and the leader of one of our two Federal legislative bodies is saying that it is “not a good time” for legislation.

Ah, statuettes for both craven hypocrites…

8.    FOX News Claims that the Settlement of the Dominion Lawsuit “reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”

Ah, if only the executives at FOX news were as telegenic and magnetically loathsome as the cast of Succession. No, all we saw in the settlement of the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit was a bunch of cowards who were willing to fork over close to a billion dollars rather than endure a humiliating trial in which their famous prime time anchors would be exposed as two-bit scam artists who lie to their television audience simply to preserve ratings and profits.

In what is perhaps the single most concentrated, undiluted, super-charged nugget of hypocrisy in human history, Fox News issued this statement following the settlement:

“We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”

Minutes after the statement was released, Jake Tapper read it live on the air. Google the clip… Tapper could not contain his laughter.

Shiny Lindsey Grahammys for Murdoch, Hannity, Ingraham, Carlson, and the entire network corrupt liars who decide the news, then report.

9.    Republican Presidential candidates vow to support Donald Trump even if he was convicted of a felony. 

At the opening debate of the 2024 Republican Primary season, Bret Baier of Fox News asked all nine candidates, “You all signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee. If former President Trump is convicted in a court of law, would you still support him as your party’s choice? Please raise you hand if you would.”  Vivek Ramaswamy’s hand shot up first. Then Nikki Haley. Then Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, and Ron DeSantis. Yes, Mike Pence. Even Chris Christie seemed to raise his hand halfway before retreating. Only Asa Hutchinson refused to raise his hand.

To be clear: the central issue in this debate was to help voters determine who should be the Republican nominee for President, the person who swears an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, reflection, or even pausing to ask which crime should be considered in Bret Baier’s hypothetical question, six of the eight candidates said yes. Instantly. Yes, no matter what crime he is convicted of, these six people would support Donald Trump if he was the party’s nominee…whether he was convicted for stealing top-secret government documents, undermining our elections, or attempting to prevent the lawful transition of power.

These six people would swear an oath to their God in order to serve as President, but don’t require Donald Trump to live up to the same standard. Sounds like these people don’t have a clue what the Founding Fathers expected in those who would be President of the United States.

Hypocrisy and cowardice are often joined at the hip. Let’s hand out Lindsey Grahammy special statuettes to Haley, Scott, Ramaswamy, Burgum, DeSantis, and Pence.  Perhaps they all think the “Oath of Office” is actually the “Hypocritical Oath.”

10.    Special Lindsey Grahammy for Shame, Humiliation, and Tawdry Behavior

Not every Lindsay Grahammy recipient needs to be high and mighty in the Republican Party. We take this moment to honor lesser figures who nonetheless punched above their weight and proved that hypocrisy is genuinely a grass roots movement pervasive in the Republican Party.

In this category, nominations included Lauren Boebart “explicitly groping in a family friendly theater” in Denver. You’ve got Marjorie Taylor Greene showing her full-throated GOP support for the Constitution, the First Amendment, and the value of free and spirited debate by saying that any member of the Republican Party unwilling to support Trump’s policies should be "completely eradicated" from the party.  

But no, we’re going to give our “Grassroots Republicans Lindsay Grahammy” to marrieds Christian and Bridget Ziegler of Florida, where hubby led the State Republican Party and wifey is on the Sarasota School Board and is co-founder of “Moms for Liberty,” a conservative group that focuses on education, particularly on eradicating “woke” notions like LGBTQ rights from schools. Well, these paragons of virtue and conservative values are now under investigation – him for an alleged rape of a woman that he and his wife had had a threesome with the prior year. So, ah, Bridget and Christian… we must protect our children from exposure to LGBTQ love, but it’s cool to have a threesome comprised of a lesbian affair and an alleged rapist having extramarital sex. Ah, the state motto of Florida: “If it ain’t woke, don’t fix it.”

11.    Impeach Joe Biden!! He committed the high crime and misdemeanor of… uh… hang on… I am sure we’ll find something…

So you think the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives didn’t accomplish much this year? Hey, they took fifteen floor votes before electing a speaker – that took time and effort! Then they got rid of him as unceremoniously as month-old Ramen noodles – that’s fast government action! Then they moved at light-speed to elect a new speaker, saving tons of time by vetting him less thoroughly than candidates for Real Housewives of Atlanta. Then they, uh, passed a bill that strictly defines milk as something that comes from mammals.

Rather than spend time on urgent issues like Gaza, Ukraine, and immigration, the Republican-led House was laser-focused on one issue: attempting to find a link between Joe Biden and his son’s financial gains from ill-advised international business deals.

After finding not so much as a gossamer thread connecting elder Biden to idiot Biden, the House plunged forth with an impeachment inquiry which was not convened for the normal purpose of evaluating clear evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” No, this impeachment inquiry was convened to try to find such evidence.

This, from the party that accuses Democrats daily of “weaponizing the DoJ” to “dig up” evidence about Donald Trump.

Look, you can criticize Joe Biden for stuff like enjoying too many ice cream cones, but the truth is that House Republicans are wasting tax-payer money for one reason and one reason only: they are trying to besmirch Joe Biden’s record, character, and reputation in an election year.

These, of course, are largely the same losers who refused to vote to impeach Donald Trump in the face of massive evidence of very real high crimes and misdemeanors.

Let’s face it: the “impeachment of Joe Biden” is just an epic bow to Donald Trump, acceding to his wish that the House provide “counter-programming” with the hope of offsetting or negating the spectacle of Trump’s year of courtroom drama.

C’mon, bring ‘em all back on stage for another Lindsey Grahammy each… the House Republicans!

12.    And now, our Grand Lindsey Grahammy for 2024 and our Lifetime Achievement Award for His Unrivaled Contribution to Political Hypocrisy… the envelope please!

No need for the envelope. We already know who wins our Grand Grahammy, year after year.

Who claims to be for law and order while systematically undermining confidence in our judicial system?

Who vowed to protect the Constitution and then led an insurrection to destroy it?

Who spews so much Hitler racist rhetoric that he had to re-assure people he had not read Mein Kampf?

Who supposedly felt immigration was such a problem that he vowed to “build a wall,” and now lobbies aggressively to prevent bipartisan immigration legislation so that the border crisis would remain a liability for his political opponent?

Who claims to be the “least racist person you’ll ever meet” while characterizing immigrants as rapists, drug-dealers and “vermin” from “shithole countries?”

Who made 30,573 false and misleading claims while President of the United States?

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s unanimous, and this election was not rigged and was not stolen.

The Grand Lindsey Grahammy for 2024 and our Lifetime Achievement Award goes to one of the sleaziest, scummiest, most despicable human beings on our planet… well, you know who.

Go ahead, Republicans, nominate him again.

After all you’ve done to prop this loser up, all you’ve done to prostrate yourselves before his throne, all you’ve done to ignore his assault on democracy… well, you’d be hypocrites if you didn’t.

That’s it, folks! One last round of applause for our winners. And remember, the coming year promises to be a big one for Republican hypocrisy… if you see something, say something. Send your nomination for a  2025 Lindsay Grahammy to borntorunthenumbers@gmail.com.

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