Remember when Elise Stefanik used to model honesty and integrity? Yeah, I don't either.
Somewhere along the way, Rep. Stefanik (R-NY) sold her soul to Donald Trump in the hope she'd become his Vice President. She may get more than she bargained for.
A lack of empathy is a defining characteristic of the sociopath.
Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: Exodus
The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink
George Orwell, 1984
Once upon a time, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) may have possessed a conscience. There may also have been integrity and honesty to accompany it. She may have been a good person, willing to do the right things for the right reasons. She also might have entered public service because she legitimately wanted to make a difference.
Somewhere along the line, though, the worms ate her brain. She lost whatever conscience, integrity, and honesty she may once have had. Any compassion and kindness went south with them. She morphed from a relatively unknown Republican back-bencher to someone who’s spent most of her time auditioning to be Donald Trump’s Vice President. And it’s a pretty shameless, out-in-the-open audition…emphasis on shameless.
Elise Stefanik and I had been speaking for only about a minute when she offered this stark self-assessment: “I have been an exceptional member of Congress.”
Her confidence reminded me of the many immodest pronouncements of Donald Trump (“I would give myself an A+”), and that’s probably not an accident. Stefanik has been everywhere lately, amassing fans among Trump’s base at a crucial moment—both for the GOP and for her future.
Stefanik spent October presiding over the leaderless House GOP’s search for a new speaker—a post that Stefanik, the chair of the conference, conspicuously declined to seek for herself. In a congressional hearing last month, she pressed three of America’s most prominent university presidents to say whether they’d allow students to call for Jewish genocide; directly or indirectly, her interrogation brought down two of them. And for the past several weeks, Stefanik has been making an enthusiastic case for Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Her ugly, shrewish performance in the Congressional hearing was as performative as it was pathetic. She used it as a showcase for her rhetorical rage and devotion to a hot-button issue guaranteed to generate a lot of press. That her line of questioning was intended to trap the university presidents into a no-win situation was evident, and she claimed their resignations as if she were counting coup.
It was all about performing for the cameras, no doubt so that Donald Trump could see her and be impressed with her ability to badger witnesses and bring them down.
All in all, it was a performance unbecoming of a public servant at any level.
She campaigned with him in New Hampshire last weekend, defending his mental acuity in the face of obvious gaffes (“President Trump has not lost a step,” she insisted) and rejecting a jury’s conclusion that he sexually abused E. Jean Carroll. She parrots his baseless claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” and that the defendants charged with storming the Capitol to keep him in office are “hostages.” After a GOP congressional candidate was caught on tape mildly criticizing Trump, Stefanik publicly withdrew her endorsement. Barely an hour after the networks declared Trump the winner of the Iowa caucus—before Iowans had even finished voting—she issued a statement calling on his remaining opponents to drop out of the race.
I spoke with Stefanik about her fierce defense of Trump, which has won her praise from the former president. In New Hampshire, he called her “brilliant” and lauded her questioning of the university presidents as “surgical.” (He did, however, butcher her name.) Just about everyone can see that Stefanik has been mounting an elaborate audition. The 39-year-old clearly didn’t pass up a bid for House speaker because she lacks ambition. On the contrary, she seems to have a bigger promotion in mind: not second in line to the presidency, but first. In our conversation, Stefanik didn’t make much effort to dispel the perception that she wants to be Trump’s running mate. “I’d be honored to serve in any capacity in the Trump administration,” she told me, repeating a line she’s used before.
Her displays of fealty aside, Stefanik has a lot going for her. She has become, without question, the most powerful Republican in New York, where her prodigious fundraising helped give the GOP a majority. Stefanik’s House GOP colleagues say she is extremely smart, and she still draws compliments for her behind-the-scenes role during last fall’s speakership crisis, when she ran a tense and seemingly endless series of closed-door conference meetings. Whether or not her declining to run for speaker was tied to the vice presidency, it was politically shrewd.
No one doubts Stefanik’s intelligence or her political skill set. She’s a shrewd- some might even say ruthless- political operator who shows no mercy and takes no prisoners. But she also doesn’t make many friends along the way.
Her ambition is plain to see, and it’s not merely about being Trump’s Vice President. She’s only 39 and knows Orange Jesus is 77 and won’t be around forever. She wants to position herself as the unquestioned heir apparent when Trump’s time is over. Her ambition is as evident as her ruthlessness.
Given her age, her time in power could last a long time, whether as President or the titular head of the GOP afterward.
Her ambition sometimes gets her in trouble, as when former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney caught her deleting a statement on her website.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) — who is thought of as a leading candidate to be former President Donald Trump's 2024 running mate — recently deleted a 2021 statement from her website calling for the prosecution of January 6 participants.
Stefanik apparently deleted the statement after former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) linked to it on Saturday. On her official X/Twittr account, Cheney called the statement a "rare moment of honesty" from the woman who replaced her as House Republican Conference chair, adding that "she will have to explain how and why she morphed into a total crackpot."
Cheney noted in a subsequent tweet that Stefanik deleted the statement from her website without explanation. However, she included a screenshot of the statement in the post, telling her 644,000-plus followers to "feel free to share."
That “rare moment of honesty” involved Rep. Stefanik condemning the insurrection on January 6, 2021, something that’s politically inconvenient now.
There’s a French concept (the word for which I can’t recall) that holds that one’s first reaction is usually the most honest. I think Stefanik’s original statement was indeed a “rare moment of honesty” on her part…until she realized that her honesty could have some serious negative political consequences.
"This is a tragic day for America. I fully condemn the dangerous violence and destruction that occurred today at the United States Capitol," Stefanik said in the now-deleted statement. "Americans have a Constitutional right to protest and freedom of speech, but violence in any form is absolutely unacceptable and ant-American."
"The perpetrators of this un-American violence and destruction must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," she added. "Thank you to the United States Capitol Police, all law enforcement, the National Guard and the bipartisan professional staff of the United States Capitol for protecting the People's House and the American people."
Yes, Rep. Stefanik condemned the insurrection on January 6 before she had a change of heart and realized that the day “was just a normal tourist visit.” Violence? What violence? Sure, if you look past the tear gas, the broken windows, the five people killed, and the millions of dollars in damage done, January 6 was just a large number of people looking for the Capitol gift shop.
Hey, did anyone see the Proud Boys tour group? Yeah, they were the ones carrying the bear spray and the truncheons. They got lost on the way to the gift shop and ended up in Nancy Pelosi’s office. An honest mistake…it could’ve happened to anyone, don’tchaknow??
Rep. Stefanik was just one of the Republicans who decided to whitewash history because Orange Jesus couldn’t handle the idea of being held accountable for inciting a failed coup attempt. And so most of the House Republican Caucus meekly went along. “Nope, nothing to see here, move along people…you can’t stay here and demand Donald Trump’s head…because nothing happened on January 6.”
[Rep. Stefanik] has since changed her tune on January 6 defendants, whom she now refers to as "hostages." That concerned fellow New York lawmaker Rep. Dan Goldman (D-New York) so much that he filed a censure resolution against Stefanik, calling it "the culmination of a rhetoric that has gone too far."
Stefanik may have deleted the statement in order to ingratiate herself with Trump, as his commanding wins in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary move him closer to the Republican presidential nomination and the selection of a running mate. Trump has not only used the "hostages" label for January 6 rioters, but has promised to pardon the vast bulk of them if elected to a second term.
So far, more than 1200 January 6 “hostages” suspects have been arrested. Confessions or convictions have been secured from roughly 800.
No, Rep. Stefanik, these folks aren’t “hostages;” they’re criminals, and hundreds of hours of video show most of them doing precisely what they’ve been accused and convicted of. You don’t get to change the descriptor because it serves the political needs of your benefactor.
Elise Stefanik is a politician who’s sacrificed her character, reputation, integrity, and anything else that might have convinced others to respect her in the name of blind political ambition. She’s dishonest, untrustworthy, and incapable of doing something that isn’t wholly self-absorbed and intended to further her political prospects.
That’s her prerogative, of course, but I can’t help but wonder what she’ll teach her child about honesty, integrity, and being a good person, someone that people can rely on in a time of crisis. I wonder how her child will feel when they’re old enough to realize that their mother is a lying, scheming, political shape-shifter who’s completely untrustworthy.
The course of one’s life is dictated by the decisions one makes. I can only hope that Elise Stefanik will be able to look back at hers without feeling like President Frank Underwood from Netflix’s House of Cards. Sure, she might reach the top, but what happens if, by the time she gets there, she’s burned so many bridges that no one gives a shit about her anymore…or worse, actively hates her?
Just a reminder that Karma can be a real bitch…and Schadenfreude is the breakfast of champions.
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