Jussie Smollett is guilty, guilty as sin, and the Left has been completely wrong-footed in their latest attempt to tar dissidents from their agenda as violent, racist hatemongers. (Don’t worry; they’ll keep trying.) 

But being a Leftist means you never have to say you’re sorry, because you will seldom, if ever, be called to account for your false statements, however outrageous and incendiary they may have been; everything is forgiven if you’re advancing the cause of our right-thinking moral superiors. 

Thus it was a bit of a surprise, given the sycophantic posture of the establishment media whenever a Democrat is in the White House, that Jen Psaki was actually asked about the inflammatory and false statements made by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris about the Smollett case. 

Typically, however, she deflected attention away from them and onto none other than the Left’s favorite whipping boy, a Florida man known as Donald J. Trump. Really, what would the Left do without him?

Psaki was asked, “Both the president and the vice president tweeted at the time of the attack. The president tweeted, ‘What happened to Jussie Smollett must never be tolerated in this country. We’re with you, Jussie.’ The vice president called it ‘an attempted modern-day lynching.’ Since the guilty verdict, are there any lessons learned here on rushing to judgement when a crime is alleged?”

The press secretary was not in the mood to issue any mea culpas. Instead, she said, “I think there are lessons learned perhaps for everybody who commented at the time, including former president Trump.” She quoted Trump saying of the alleged attack on Smollett, “I can tell you that it’s horrible, it doesn’t get worse.”

This was supremely disingenuous, even more so than Psaki usually is. While it is true that Trump’s immediate reaction to the Smollett case as it was initially reported in January 2019, before it became clear that the whole thing was a hoax, was, “I think that’s horrible. It doesn’t get worse as far as I’m concerned.” 

However, once it was clear that Smollett was lying, Trump was unequivocal. When Smollett was arrested in February 2019, Trump tweeted: “What about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments?” He declared in March 2019, “I think the case in Chicago is an absolute embarrassment to our country and I have asked that it be — that they look at it. Somebody has to at least take a very good hard look.”