Meadows Downplays Hatch Act Hissy Fit, ‘No One Outside of Beltway’ Cares

Politics and entertainment have melded here in the United States, in what can be, at times, a terrifying amalgam of life and art imitating one another.

We look at Congress with all the contempt of a pro-wrestling match, except that nearly every single participant turned heel long ago.  We loathe most everyone on Capitol Hill, and we’d love nothing more than to see them all lose come November, but that can’t happen.  And there’s no telling who’s next in line to take their spot.

You see, we’re caught in the sort of over-the-top demagoguery that toppled empires centuries ago, where most everything that happens has a political purpose as opposed to a literal, let’s help the nation purpose.

It’s  show, folks.  That’s the easy way of putting it.

So when the Democrats began their predictable tirade about Hatch Act violations during the RNC, we instinctively knew that the criticism wouldn’t stick. It’s just too arcane and trivial an issue in 2020.  (Especially in 2020).

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Wednesday dismissed accusations that Trump administration officials violated federal law by speaking at the Republican National Convention, arguing that critics have overstretched the bounds of the Hatch Act.

“What it’s really designed to do is to make sure people like myself and others do not use their political position to try to convince other employees other federal employees that they need to vote one way, need to register one way or need to campaign in one way,” Meadows said. “We take it on well beyond the original intent of the Hatch Act.”

Meadows then went for the jugular.

“Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares. They expect that Donald Trump is going to promote Republican values and they would expect that Barack Obama, when he was in office, that he would do the same for Democrats,” he continued. “So listen, this is a lot of hoopla that’s being made about things, mainly because the convention has been so unbelievably successful.”

Meadows’ expert takedown of the complaint serves to verify what we already knew:  America has bigger fish to fry right now.