If you check out the description of our “WATCH LIVE” post of the Friday morning vote on George Santos’s expulsion from the House we had couched it in a lot of uncertainty after what had seemed like a done deal in the political media universe had suddenly been cast into doubt this morning. First it was Speaker Mike Johnson coming out against it, next a flurry of tweets from Capitol reporters saying shit like “Some of the GOP members who told me they were a yes on expelling Santos now say they’ve flipped to no or undecided. Some are looking for guidance from leadership and not getting a ton – though others say they are seeing smoke signals suggesting they shouldn’t vote to expel” and “momentum appears to be trending in [Santos’s] direction” and so on and so forth.

And then it wasn’t even close. At all, with 29 more Republicans voting yes than were needed.

If you read yesterday’s rant about the media’s relationship with “momentum” on Capitol Hill you already know where we’re going with this: It had all the hallmarks of another scam operation designed to get wayward souls on board the GOP’s ship of unaccountability. Really the only thing tempering it is what David Joyce, a Republican member of the Ethics Committee, told CNN about how other scumbag Congressman Max Miller’s last minute email to his colleagues was received.

Maybe we’re assigning a little too much value to a variable in an equation that already has too many of them, especially as Joyce – who did vote yes – and could be overselling the significance of a fellow Ohioan’s email about getting ripped off. Which would be helping leadership – all of them having voted against expelling a precious piece of their tiny majority – to save face.

So in the most charitable read possible you could take Joyce’s version as gospel and it was only the intervention of Miller – who really does legitimately hate Santos so we don’t doubt he was sincere in his intent – that reversed the tide of real momentum. On the opposite end that the “momentum” was all bullshit orchestrated and fed to the press by Elise Stefanik and her ilk as a desperate last-minute Hail Mary to psyche out wavering members. Or somewhere in the middle of that and David Joyce wittingly or unwittingly helping Big Stef paper over another failed propaganda operation.