Editor's Note: Steve Schmidt is one of the founding members of the Lincoln Project. He is a communications and public affairs strategist who has worked on several Republican campaigns, including John McCain's 2008 bid for the White House, and he is now a regular political contributor to MSNBC.
On Sunday, Schmidt reacted to Republicans' fake outrage to a tweet from Kamala Harris telling Americans to enjoy the long weekend. MaxNewsToday has assembled this 10-tweet thread and reprinted it as one easy-to-read op-ed for our ongoing segment, Schmidt Storm. It has been edited for grammar and clarity.
Fox News is the most divisive, dishonest and damaging institution in the United States.
It has poisoned our democracy with conspiracy theories and lies, while stoking division and fear. The latest nonsense attacking Vice President Kamala Harris for wishing the American people a long weekend is a great case study.
It does seem like perfect evidence around the enduring insight, apocryphally credited to Sinclair Lewis, that when “fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
The only outrage about Kamala Harris wishing Americans a good, long Memorial Day weekend are the hypocrites attacking her. The phony outrage was manufactured at the Fox News sewer and has been dutifully repeated by people who dishonor America’s war dead with their faithlessness to the cause they gave the “last full measure of devotion” toward.
That cause is freedom and democracy. The people attacking Kamala Harris are the same people who helped incite an insurrection against the United States and ended the peaceful transition of power in this country. The people attacking Kamala Harris are the same people who poisoned faith and belief in democracy with the big lie about the stolen election.
Twenty years after D Day, Walter Cronkite hosted a CBS News special commemorating the occasion with a visit by General Dwight D. Eisenhower to the Normandy beaches. Eisenhower observed the families and children playing in the sand and surf of the killing grounds where the forces of freedom died to destroy the evil of Nazi tyranny.
He remarked that was what the young men who sacrificed everything gave their lives for. They died for freedom and surrendered their lives so we could live in freedom, joy and peace.
Above that beach is the American cemetery. There, more than 10,000 white crosses and Stars of David are aligned in perfect rows. Every headstone faces west, back across the Atlantic Ocean toward America. There they lie, an American army at permanent and silent rest.
Kamala Harris didn’t dishonor those men, though they have been dishonored. Their sacrifice has been disgraced and great violence has been done to the dignity of their memory, as well as the nation they died for, by a despicable faction of Americans that has turned against democracy in the name of power and Donald Trump.
Fueled by cowardice and all of the unworthy vices that have no place on Memorial Day; Trump, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell and scores more of our elected officials will continue their lying, whitewashing and embrace of autocratic extremism. That is the place to look for outrage if that is what you are on the hunt for this weekend.
You won’t find it in the weekend good wishes from our vice president.
Have a good weekend.