The Washington Post finds Fani Willis' testimony cringeworthy, but lauds her father's cringeworthy attempt to rehabilitate her.

When I was young and naive, I used to be surprised at the combination of incompetence, corruption, and sheer stupidity exposed when the national spotlight focused on a particular nook of American politics or law. Now, as a senior citizen, I’m surprised if, when the spotlight focuses, a given nook is not thus exposed.

Accordingly, nothing I’ve seen in the bizarre soap opera emanating from the Fulton County district attorney’s office surprises me. Even Monica Hesse, who writes reliably left-liberal commentary for the Washington Post, felt obliged to call the testimony of the D.A. (Fani Willis) and the guy she dated, hired, and enriched (Nathan Wade) a “cringe-fest.” The Post’s Ruth Marcus concurred. I don’t see how anyone who watched the spectacle could do otherwise.

That’s not to say that Willis’ testimony wasn’t enlightening. We learned that her 50th birthday “sucked.” Apparently, that’s why she needed to take those fancy trips with Wade, her lover.

We learned that Willis isn’t “the hand-holding type.’ We learned that she prefers Grey Goose to wine.

We learned that for a man, a romantic relationship ends when the sex does. For a woman, it ends only after a “tough conversation.” Maybe my girlfriend from 1976 thinks our relationship is still going on.

We learned that Willis would not “emasculate a black man”. . . while she was doing just that (assuming, as Willis did, that saying Wade couldn’t perform sexually for a period of time due to a medical condition amounts to “emasculation.”) I wish the attorney questioning her had asked whether she would emasculate a white man.

More to the point, Willis informed the court that she keeps large amounts of cash, up to $15,000, in her house. That, we were asked to believe, is how she was able to pay Wade thousands of dollars for her half of those fancy vacations — a convenient explanation for the absence of any document indicating her payment.

I don’t believe Willis reimbursed Wade with thousands of dollars of cash. And I don’t believe their romance started after Willis hired her. That claim was contradicted by one of Willis’ friends (now an ex-friend).

But even if we believe Willis and Wade on both counts, the fact remains that while Willis and Wade were in a romantic relationship, he billed her office for a huge number of hours and was paid for that time. Willis thus enriched her lover, and the more hours he billed, the more he was enriched.

Therefore, the two had an incentive to run up Wade’s bill. This might well explain the sprawling nature — 19 defendants and 160 illegal acts alleged — of the case Willis ultimately brought against Trump.

Willis was scheduled to testify again on a second day, but her team decided she shouldn’t. However, Willis’ father, John Floyd, did.

I guess ridiculing the testimony of another black witness was a bridge too far for the Post. Thus, its reporting treats Floyd as a super-star.

A pair of Post reporters do so here. Robin Givhan, who parlayed catty writing about fashion into a gig writing catty columns about politics and race,” does so here.

The pair of Post writers gushed:

From the start, Floyd was a disarming witness. He wore a simple black suit, white shirt and a red tie, with a small red pin bearing the crest of his fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi, on his lapel. His graying beard and hair connected in one continuous curve, like a halo.

(Emphasis added)

In addition:

Floyd’s personal testimony offered a break from the partisanship that has dominated the debate on whether Willis ought to be disqualified from the Trump case: contextualizing his daughter’s actions and revealing snippets of his own remarkable life.

Some have seen him as a quintessential Black father figure. Political commenter Reecie Colbert called his testimony “a Black History Month lesson.” Others took to social media to praise his fiscal advice on the stand: “Thank God for black fathers. My dad also taught me how to always save & to always keep myself some cash.”

In reality, Floyd’s testimony was no more credible than his daughter’s. One problem is that he was in violation of the court’s order that he not hear or discuss the testimony of other witnesses. This violation undermines the credibility of his efforts to support certain of Willis’ claims, including the bit about keeping thousands of dollars of cash on hand. The trial judge suggested as much.

But the real problem with the credibility of Floyd’s testimony is the testimony itself. For example, he claimed that stashing large amounts of cash in one’s home — “a Black thing” — is a lesson he drilled into Willis based on his own experience with anti-Black bigotry in the U.S.

Floyd explained that, when Willis was about three years old (i.e. 50 years ago), he tried to pay for his family’s meal at a restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts. According to Floyd, the joint would not accept his American Express card, his Visa card, or his traveler’s checks. Fortunately, Floyd had a $10 bill on him and therefore was able to pay the $9.95 bill. (Did he leave a five cent tip?)

So: Because, due to racism, Floyd needed $10 to pay a tab 50 years ago, Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, needs to keep $15,000 in cash on hand to take care of her obligations.

Either that, or Floyd was playing the race card in an effort to corroborate Willis’ testimony which he was aware of because he violated a court order.

Another example. Floyd was asked whether he was in Californian in 2019. He testified that, no, he was stuck in Georgia because of Covid.

Confronted with the fact that the pandemic didn’t begin until 2020, Floyd testified that because he had recently lived in South Africa and “has travelled the world,” he knew Covid was around before it hit the U.S.

This is nonsense. The first case of Covid was not recorded in South Africa until March 2020. Floyd wasn’t living in South Africa then. He had moved to Georgia months earlier.

Man-of-the-world though Floyd may be, he was not in a position to know more about the existence of a deadly virus than was the U.S. government, with its vast medical bureaucracy and its representatives all over the world. Covid was not on the U.S. government’s radar until 2020. Floyd’s claim that it was on his radar in 2019 is not believable.

John Floyd may dish BS more effectively than his daughter. He certainly dishes it with a better demeanor. But in my view, he was no more credible as a witness.

The national spotlight has focused on Fani Willis and the Fulton County DA’s office. At best it revealed a cringe-inducing soap opera whose actors are so lacking in judgment that they jeopardized their right to participate in the prosecution of Donald Trump.

In addition, I believe it revealed corruption, self-dealing, and outright dishonesty under oath. No amount of fawning over John Floyd and his “halo” can support a less damning view.