Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has long been one of the most despicable figures in Washington, D.C., and a recent piece in New York Mag illustrates just how disgusting Reid really is.
One of Reid’s most infamously slimy moments was when he lobbed the false accusation that Mitt Romney didn’t pay his taxes in the 2012 presidential race. In the New York Mag piece, Reid gloated that that the false accusation was to force Romney to release his tax returns, and tried to spin it as some sort brave act of heroism.
“I didn’t have anything against him personally,” Reid said. “He’s a fellow Mormon, nice guy. I went to everybody. But no one would do it. So I did it.”
Reid also constantly used the Senate to protect his fellow Democrats by blocking bills from coming to the floor so the Democrat facing re-election wouldn’t be forced into making uncomfortable votes that could harm them politically. One egregious example was a bill involving treatment options for the terminally ill:
Reid took the heat in other ways as well — earlier this year, for instance, when Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, a Republican, introduced legislation that would allow terminally ill patients to pursue experimental treatments when no other options were available. Dubbed the “Right to Try” bill, it seemed like an easy piece of legislation to support, but Democratic health-care wonks identified numerous problems. It indemnified drug companies and physicians from any liability arising from adverse outcomes, and it included a provision that allowed insurance companies to refuse to pay for any treatment for side effects. No Democratic senators, however, wanted to oppose the legislation themselves. So Reid did it for them — using a host of procedural maneuvers to block the legislation from receiving a vote. “It is beyond disappointing that Reid would ignore the pleas of those with terminal illnesses to score a political point,” Johnson said.
Stonewalling Republican efforts for political purposes has been a hallmark of Reid’s tenure as the Senate Democrats’ leader; during the 2013 government shutdown Reid wouldn’t take up piece-meal funding of certain government agencies like the National Institute of Health to force the Republicans to fund the entire government or none of it; he revived the Democrats political fortunes in 2005 in opposing the Iraq War and President George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security.
Even as Reid is on his way out, he is still hurling outlandish claims to score political pointS, which included “calling for FBI director James Comey’s resignation for his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails” and “accusing the Trump campaign of being ‘in on’ Russia’s election hacking.” He also condescendingly called Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) “Doctor Barrasso, the orthopedic surgeon from Wyoming” and is against granting a waiver for retired Gen. James Mattis to serve as Trump’s Secretary of Defense.
“I’m not too sure my opinion will matter much anymore,” Reid lamented in the piece. One can only hope.