“One of the Achilles’ heels of autocracies is that you don’t have people in those systems who speak truth to power or who have the ability to speak truth to power. And I think that is something that we’re seeing in Russia.” —Secretary of State Antony Blinken, March 30, 2022.

In this screenshot from the RNC’s livestream of the 2020 Republican National Convention, North Carolina congressional nominee Madison Cawthorn addresses the virtual convention on August 26, 2020. (Photo Courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via Getty Images)

Happy end of the first quarter of 2022.

In today’s Morning Shots:

• Trusting Madison

• CBS’s deplorable Mulvaney hire

• Putin was believing his own bullsh*t

• What Ukraine needs to win this war

• Here comes the DOJ

• Yes, Democrats, you have a problem

• What just happened at MIT?

• A “moral war on Disney”?

Join us!

Trusting Madison

So this is what it took.

It wasn’t the tree-punching, his racist website, the lying about his accident and his admission to the Naval Academy; it wasn’t his incitement of the January 6 Insurrection, the allegations of sexual misconduct, his threats of violence, or his accusation that Volodymir Zelensky was a “thug”.

Apparently none of that was enough to shake Kevin McCarthy’s trust in the flamboyantly reprehensible young congressman.

But now, the GOP House Leader is shocked, shocked to discover that Madison Cawthorn is a liar, a crackpot, an an all-around deplorable human being.

And all it took was a few allegations about orgies and “key bumps” of cocaine.