Elizabeth Warren Runs Out of Room to Lie

Regrets? Liz Warren has a few — then again, too few to mention. She’ll never be president, sure, but the shrill progressive harpy and affirmative-action fraudster does at least have a lifetime position as senator from Massachusetts, which beats tenure on the faculty of Harvard Law these days (especially given impending budget cuts). The progressives may be gearing up to primary that old fuddy-duddy Ed Markey next year, but nobody would dream of threatening American progressivism’s own Madame Defarge. All in all, she is living her best life: as a phony who leveraged a fraudulent ethnic identity to climb to the top of academia and subsequently converted it into a lifelong political sinecure. Nice work if you can get it.

So it does my heart good every time this useless, officious busybody and hypocrite scold is humiliated in her failed attempts to practice retail politics. And poor Liz took a whomping for the ages today, when she spectacularly failed to answer a question still on the minds of Democratic and Republican voters alike: Why did you lie to America about Joe Biden’s mental state up until the exact moment, onstage at the debate, he melted like a wax candle?

Warren went on the podcast “Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso,” and it’s worth seeing the full context of the one-minute clip currently causing her so much heartburn among the chattering classes, because the context makes the sting of the moment that much sweeter. After about 50 minutes of chat — none of which I bothered to listen to — Fragoso headed into the concluding segment of the podcast by (quite reasonably) challenging her about the inadequacies of the 2024 campaign, doomed as it was by Biden’s senescence. “Why are we so slow to pivot? Why can we not get past our past?”

Warren responded by saying, “I’d like to answer a different question,”  which is the point where the host betrayed visible exasperation as he accused her of always reframing his questions and answering something other than what he asked. Fragoso complained that he was nearly out of time. Warren responded, “I’m going to run out the clock here.” She then offered some gormless mush about how looking back “just isn’t helpful” unless we can do better moving forward, etc. etc. — typical politician slop, only delivered this time with that signature tone of Warren’s, the one that exudes the warmth of a lizard.

At that point Fragoso smiled and gently followed through:

FRAGOSO: Do you regret saying that President Biden had a mental acuity, he had a sharpness to him? You said that up until July of last year.
[pause]
WARREN: I said what I believed to be true.
FRAGOSO: And do you think he was as sharp as you?

The facial expression Warren makes in this moment must truly be seen to be appreciated — no single still image can do it justice, for its grandeur is conveyed in the kinetic body language of full moral collapse. Warren shudders, struck dumb as if slapped in the face. Her posture crumbles, her face reels into an involuntary smile — the recognition that she’s humiliated herself flickering ever so briefly across her shocked visage. It is a beautiful moment, friends; I felt like I was watching Warren’s soul physically leave her body for a split second rather than deal with the social awkwardness of it all.

Her attempt at a recovery was even worse: “Um . . . I said I had not seen decline — and I hadn’t at that point!” Here, Warren pauses to pull a face for Fragoso, a “maybe you’ll buy that?” expression. Fragoso immediately returns Warren’s attempt with a smirk of disbelief. “You did not see any decline from 2024 Joe Biden to 2021 [sic] Joe Biden?,” he asked skeptically.

WARREN: Not when I said that. The thing is, look, he was sharp. He was on his feet. I saw him at a live event. I had meetings with him a couple of times.
FRAGOSO: Senator, “on his feet” is not praise. “He can speak in sentences” is not praise.
WARREN: OK. Fair enough, fair enough.

I was almost expecting a “Ya got me!” there at the end. Warren’s clunkiness is so funny it almost inspires pity; few have ever been less successful as political prevaricator, which would matter less for her were she not so prone to telling big, dumb, obvious lies. (Think of Jon Lovitz’s “Liar” character from Saturday Night Live: “I had meetings with him a couple of times . . . Yeah, that’s the ticket!”) Warren’s inability to answer basic questions explains well enough why she never made it out of the Democratic primaries; her inability to answer this specific basic question reflects not just on her but on the actions of the entire Democratic Party during the Biden administration.

Jeffrey Blehar is a National Review staff writer living in Chicago. He is also the co-host of National Review’s Political Beats podcast, which explores the great music of the modern era with guests from the political world happy to find something non-political to talk about.

Reprinted with permission from National Review by Jeffrey Blehar.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.