Amnesia is embedded deep within the Republican brand — cowering out of sight now a mainstay of the GOP operational apparatus as the public gets a whiff of their real agenda of chaos, which in turn, strongly indicates an inability to govern.

And the memory loss carries a nasty, chickenshit T-Rump stink:

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says he can't recall a phone call with Republicans where he said Trump admitted to bearing some responsibility for 1/6.

Luckily he doesn't have to — there's audio.

(h/t @KFILE) pic.twitter.com/F34zBEdUMO

— The Recount (@therecount) January 14, 2022

Nutshell via BusinessInsider this morning:

In the days after January 6, 2021, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told Republicans in a private phone call that then President Donald Trump admitted that he shared some responsibility for the Capitol riot, according to CNN.

But during a news conference on Thursday, McCarthy told reporters that he couldn’t recall that phone conversation.
“I’m not sure what call you’re talking about,” McCarthy said.

CNN reported on the phone call at the time, and on Thursday the news outlet obtained a detailed readout of what McCarthy told his Republican colleagues.

“Let me be clear to you and I have been very clear to the president. He bears responsibility for his words and actions. No if, ands, or buts,” McCarthy told House Republicans on January 11, 2021, according to CNN.
“I asked him personally today if he holds responsibility for what happened. If he feels bad about what happened. He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened. But he needs to acknowledge that.”

McCarthy also said in a local radio interview on January 12, 2021, that Trump “told me personally that he does have some responsibility” for the riot, CNN reported.

The lying runs way-deep.
Beyond the COVID emergency, Americans are also suffering health-wise due to the horror shit-show created exclusively by Republicans, and the crazed, full-blown lying and violent rhetoric against just about any democratic principles have people feeling like shit.
Politics nowadays suck, and is unhealthy. A new study reveals not only induces stress, but also provokes compulsive behaviors – via EurekAlert, also this morning:

Scrolling social media, reading websites, listening to podcasts, watching news. With so many options, it’s never been easier to follow American politics, but at what cost?

According to research from University of Nebraska–Lincoln political scientist Kevin Smith, all the political jockeying is harmful to our health, has been for some time, and even a change in party power didn’t help.

In a follow-up to the groundbreaking 2017 survey study where he first measured the effects of the political climate on Americans’ physical, social, mental and emotional health, Smith has published a new article in PLOS ONE.
Smith repeated the same 32-question survey twice in 2020 — two weeks prior to the election, and two weeks after.
The 2020 findings mirrored the 2017 results, and again found that a large proportion of American adults blame politics for causing them stress, loss of sleep, fractured relationships and more.

Similar to the 2017 findings, the 2020 surveys found that an estimated 40-percent of Americans identified politics as a significant source of stress.
Additionally, between a fifth and a third of adults (50 to 85 million people) blamed politics for causing fatigue, feelings of anger, loss of temper and triggering compulsive behaviors.
About a quarter of adults reported they’d given serious consideration to moving because of politics.

That the results remained mostly stable after nearly four years is cause for alarm, Smith said.

“This second round of surveys pretty conclusively demonstrates that the first survey was not out of left field — that what we found in that first survey really is indicative of what many Americans are experiencing,” Smith, chair and professor of political science, said.
“It’s also unpleasant to think that in that span of time, nothing changed. A huge chunk of American adults genuinely perceive politics is exacting a serious toll on their social, their psychological and even their physical health.”

All the lying, cheating, gaslighting, whatnot, all that shit would have an effect on the public at large:

Most stunning to Smith was the repeated finding that 5% of Americans blame politics for having suicidal thoughts.
“One in 20 adults has contemplated suicide because of politics,” Smith said.
“That showed up in the first survey in 2017, and we wondered if it was a statistical artifact. But in the two surveys since, we found exactly the same thing, so millions of American adults have contemplated suicide because of politics. That’s a serious health problem.”

Adults who were most likely to be negatively affected by politics were younger, more often Democratic-leaning, more interested in politics and more politically engaged.
“If there’s a profile of a person who is more likely to experience these effects from politics, it’s people with those traits,” Smith said.

Besides pointing to a possible health crisis, Smith warned the findings could be a bad recipe for democracy.
“There’s potential for a demobilization effect here,” Smith said.
“If people view politics as so conflictual, and potentially a threat to their own well-being, they’ll say ‘heck with it, I don’t want to get involved.’ And democracies depend on participation. We need civically-engaged citizens.”

Hopefully, all this shit about T-Rump, McCarthy, and the rest of the asshole pack will bring people out to the polls this November — if not, Pinball is correct again:

Here we are, yet so once again…

(Illustration out front: M.C Escher’s ‘Scholastica,’ found here)