Steve Scalise Claims GOP Never Disrespected Office of POTUS Under Obama, But Their Record Says Otherwise

Perhaps House Minority Whip Steve Scalise thinks political watchers were all in a collective coma during the Obama presidency. Or else he just doesn’t care. Maybe both.

Those are two possible explanations for his comments at a Tuesday press conference that Republicans “never disrespected the office” of the president during Obama’s two terms occupying it. As opposed to the Democrats and how Scalise feels they have treated Donald Trump.

“[W]e had disagreements with a lot of Barack Obama’s policies, but we never disrespected the office. I called him President of the United States, as we all did. If he asked us to go meet with him at the White House, we went. We expressed our disagreements in a respectful way, but what they continue to do, to go after him personally, to call for impeachment of the president from day one.”

Republicans refused Obama’s invites to the White House for various events all the time. They refused dinner invites. They skipped state dinners, barbecues, movie screenings and classified briefings on important security issues. They notoriously ignored many of Obama’s efforts at outreach after criticizing him for not doing more of it.

Perhaps Steve Scalise does not feel it is disrespecting the office of the president to suggest that its occupant was secretly born in Kenya and therefore ineligibile to sit in it, but then he should try making that case and see how well it goes over.

If Scalise wants to complain about Democrats continually calling for Trump’s impeachment, here is a pretty good list of all the times Republicans called for Obama’s impeachment over actions that were not even close to violating the Constitution the way Trump has violated it time and again.

Scalise made no effort to defend the way Trump has gone after Democratic members of Congress with nicknames and racist invective. Perhaps the gaslighting had worn him out.

Watch the clip above, via C-SPAN.