“Boy, what an idiot!”

Immediately, the shameless agents of “the resistance” in the blogosphere, cyberspace and the mainstream media leaped on the gaffe with the enthusiasm of jackals encountering  fresh carrion. Here is a typical example, from ThinkProgress:

“In Francisco’s defense, this is probably a slip-up. He probably meant to say that Trump has praised Islam as one of the greatest religions of the world. But still, it’s a slip-up that seems more likely to happen if you truly believe that Muslims are all the same. “

Now the accusation is that Francisco thinks “all Muslims are the same”? Morons! The Solicitor General doesn’t argue his personal beliefs or positions, but the government’s. Moreover, Francisco isn’t “Trump’s lawyer” as this consistently dishonest and rapidly partisan cyber-rag claims, but the United States of America’s lawyer. This is ThinkProgress taking the typical, current, Angry Left position that anyone who works for the Administration must also hold the parody of its alleged beliefs the “resistance” claims in its propaganda and fearmongering. ThinkProgress has no idea what Noel Francisco thinks about Muslims or Islam. Lawyers are not their clients, Francisco isn’t Trump, and Trump never said that Islam is “one of the greatest countries of the world.” What he said, in a 2017 speech in Saudi Arabia that was intentionally conciliatory to Islam,

“The Middle East is rich with natural beauty, vibrant cultures, and massive amounts of historic treasures. It should increasingly become one of the great global centers of commerce and opportunity.This region should not be a place from which refugees flee, but to which newcomers flock. Saudi Arabia is home to the holiest sites in one of the world’s great faiths…”

Francisco’s mistake in oral argument was absolutely meaningless, trivial, and without consequence. No Justice corrected it, because they all knew what Francisco meant to say, and also because most of them have probably done worse.  The actual quote he referred to was probably in his brief. Yet this arrogant and vicious cabal of progressive scolds nonetheless piled on, to embarrass Francisco, to attack the President, to throw their petty tantrum because they are going to lose on this issue, as they should , as they always should have. Now they will move on to their next effort to make governing as difficult as possible for the elected President, and as painful as possible for those who serve the nation along with him.

As I just wrote to a commenter on Ethics Alarms who debased himself by raising Francisco’s slip of the tongue, an oral argument before the nation’s highest court is incredibly stressful. The most brilliant, most prepared, most composed lawyers frequently stumble and stutter when they are under that microscope. Anyone who mocks a lawyer who makes a mere verbal miscue while broiling under a harsh professional spotlight with such massive stakes—as all Supreme Court cases have–is displaying ignorance, being a jerk, or both.

And let us consider Mr. Francisco, who is, it is a fair wager, more educated and astute than all of the cheap-shot artists taking aim at him combined. He is the first Asian American to serve as Solicitor General, meaning that the typical social justice assassins chasing him now would have almost certainly let his gaffe go unnoticed upon if he happened to be black, Hispanic, or work for Barack Obama. He earned a B.A. with honors from the University of Chicago, and received his Juris Doctor with high honors  from the University of Chicago Law School. Next Francisco served as a law clerk for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and later for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Scalia, you may have heard, did not suffer fools gladly.

Francisco joined the law firm of Cooper, Carvin, & Rosenthal, now known as Cooper & Kirk. In 2001, Francisco was appointed as an Associate Counsel to President Bush in the Office of Counsel to the President. He later moved to the Office of Legal Counsel for the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the United States Department of Justice. Francisco left Justice to enter private law practice, joining the prestigious Washington, D.C. law firm Jones Day (they wouldn’t hire me) , eventually becoming the chair of the firm’s Government Regulation Practice. He argued several cases before the Supreme Court, and numerous cases in the lower federal and state courts. He was appointed by President Donald Trump to the position of Principal Deputy Solicitor General for the United States, served as the Acting Solicitor General, and then was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become Solicitor General.

I’m tempted to go on a rant about this pathetic “gotcha!” game the anti-Trump media has been playing. But I won’t, even though it is the equivalent of those who want to argue with a post here focusing on typos. Those kind of below-the-belt commenters don’t get out of the spam bin, because they are being assholes. So is the Left when it makes a news story out of a trivial slip of the tongue. Anything to justify attacking the President or anyone or anything connected to the President.

They don’t realize how terrible, desperate, ugly this makes them look, how much it alienates fair and rational Americans, and the price they will pay for stooping so low, so often.

The full oral argument is here.