It seems incredible that any organization could be more fundamentally dishonest than the Trump campaign. As I detailed yesterday, the Trump campaign will lie straight to your face about something that they’ll turn around and admit less than four hours later – and they do this all the time.

However, the RNC has decided they ought to at least try to make the Trump campaign look better by trying to outdo them in the lying department, especially where Ted Cruz is concerned. It started last night almost immediately after Cruz’s speech, where RNC sources spoke to FoxNews’s Bill Hemmer and tried to convince people that Ted Cruz did not congratulate Trump during his speech as he promised he would do:

BREAKING: Sources with the RNC say @Tedcruz speech was ‘classless.’ Party officials expected him to congratulate @realDonaldTrump.

— Bill Hemmer (@BillHemmer) July 21, 2016

For those who might not have seen it, this is how Ted Cruz began his speech:

I mean, literally the first words out of his mouth were congratulating Donald Trump.

Having passed off this lie, they next tried to play off that they did not know or did not pre-approve a speech that didn’t have an endorsement in it. This also was a lie, as evidenced by the fact that Trump knew about it and in fact entered the arena towards the close of Cruz’s speech. Trump knew it was coming the RNC knew it was coming, everyone knew it was coming, it happened anyway.

Next, the RNC lied and fed innuendo to friendly sources that Cruz gave a different speech from the text he submitted for approval to the RNC. Two things about this contention. First, this is my view from my seat.

As you can see, I have a very clear view of the forward text reader, and Cruz’s remarks were exactly what was printed on that screen. So it is clear that he submitted this text for approval and they approved it and put it up there. Moreover, the advance remarks sent out by the RNC about an hour before Cruz’s speech contained exactly the text he used in terms of vote your conscience.

So the RNC is going around today with their official spox calling Cruz an “asshole” on TV:

Even though he told them exactly what he was going to say, he said nothing disparaging about Trump at all, and he encouraged people to get out and vote.

Here’s one thing that’s true that Joe Scarborough has said during the course of this election: The RNC hates Cruz and his supporters way worse than they hate Trump and his supporters. Make no mistake, they have open hatred and contempt for both, but what they really hate about both Cruz and his voters is that they stand for conservative principles and demand that the Republican party adheres to them. Party functionaries believe that adhering to these principles makes it harder to get elected and/or continue to receive fat consulting checks. So as between Cruz and Trump, they will happily throw their lot in with Trump, who will keep the skids greased if he miraculously pulls off a win.

Just a friendly reminder where we stand with the party.