This was a refreshing little dust-up this morning on Weekends With Alex Witt.
Former Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) did a little verbal dance after Witt talked about the drip, drip, drip on the Russia story. She did her best to push the current GOP narrative (Look, over there!) that the Democrats were working with Ukraine.
Fun note: She's yet another wingnut Republican ophthalmologist. Anyway:
"Actually, if you read the accounts that are coming out every day, there's, you know, drip, drip, drip or gush, gush, gush about the DNC and the Clinton campaign and the Ukrainians. there is definitely cooperation there," she said.
Jonathan Alter was really, really ticked, and took Hayworth to school.
"With all due respect, Ukraine is an ally of the adversary of the United States. The connections between the Democratic party and the Ukrainians was an effort to learn what information they had on the Russians intervening in our election," he said. "The Ukrainians were not attempting to intervene in our election."
"No, yes, they were," Hayworth insisted.
"They were trying to expose what was going on with Russia which has been value dated by all these intelligence agencies, so that is a totally phony kind of equivalence and a really kind of pathetic talking point," Alter retorted.
"It's not at all. in fact, Petro Portoshenko is a friend of Vladimir Putin. Ukraine is obviously --" she sputtered.
"Their puppet government," Alter finished. "Those were not the folks that were in touch with the Democratic party."
"That's a cooperative relationship. Let's agree -- " she said.
Alter seems to have had enough.
"Telling the Democrats what was going on with Russian interference in our election, that is not the same as interfering in our election, which is what the Russians were doing," he said.
"There's a totally phony equivalence. It's beneath Republicans at this point. You should be more like Congressman Lance and acknowledge there are serious issues."
She still didn't give up. "I love Leonard Lance," she gushed. "I agree with him, I think there are very serious issues we should have covered in the last administration, including how we sold 20% of our uranium to the Russians under Hillary Clinton."
You can see why she's a Republican. Facts are such flexible things to them.
