Congressional Cowards is a weekly series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol Hill, who refuse to criticize him—no matter how disgraceful or lawless his actions.
This column is taking a bit of a different direction this week, focusing on President Donald Trump’s nominees for Senate-confirmed roles—all of whom refuse to admit that their mad king lost the 2020 presidential election.
Jay Clayton, Trump’s pick to replace Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, twisted himself into knots to avoid saying Dear Leader lost to now-former President Joe Biden. Currently the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Clayton got into a testy exchange with Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia about the results of the 2020 election.
Ossoff pressed Clayton numerous times to state the fact that Biden won that election. But Clayton refused, since admitting such may lead Trump to pull his nomination.
“Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president’s delusions?” Ossoff said to a visibly angry Clayton.
Clayton is no dummy. Before debasing himself to join the Trump administration, he was a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the top law firms in the country. (Disclosure: My husband worked there for nearly nine years.)
But refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election is a prerequisite for getting a job in the second Trump administration. Thus, Clayton had to play along and refuse to say Trump lost.
“This exchange between Sen. Ossoff and Trump nominee Jay Clayton—about who won the 2020 election—is well worth watching,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in a post on X on Thursday, hours before Trump went on to spread lies about the 2020 election in a primetime address. “Keep it in mind during Trump’s planned address tonight. Then notice who continues to go along with his delusions, and vote accordingly.”
This is a theme for Trump nominees.
A Demand Justice review from June of 55 judicial confirmation hearings found that not a single one admitted Trump lost the 2020 election.
The report suggests that the nominees are coached to not admit Trump lost, since their “responses appear nearly identical, with many nominees using verbatim phrasing, repeating key words, and, overall, using unusual and evasive language that’s almost entirely outside the normal, historical, and common lexicon used to describe such events.”
Clayton’s evasiveness suggests he, too, was coached in a similar fashion.
Still, true to their cowardly form, Republicans defended Clayton’s comments.
Sen. Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, told CNN’s Manu Raju that the office of the director of national intelligence “does not certify elections, and he made very clear over and over again that Joe Biden had been certified as the winner of the election.”
“I’m not sure what my colleagues were seeking further,” Collins added.
Actually, Susan, it seems like a pretty big deal when the proposed head of the U.S. intelligence community is willing only to tell Trump what he wants to hear, not the truth. That could cause some serious problems if U.S. intelligence finds information that would hurt Trump’s ego.
Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona made that point during the hearing with Clayton.
“The problem I have with this is, he [Trump] isn’t in the room today,” Kelly told Clayton at the hearing. “You’re going to be in a room with him many times. And at times, you should have a difference of opinion. And if you can’t disagree with him when he’s not in the room, are you going to be able to disagree with him when you’re sitting across from him in the Oval Office or the Situation Room?”
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