Brazen & Corrupt
Sometimes it's just too challenging, over and over, coming up with properly* excoriating language to describe the current President and his Administration; there are just too many occasions that require just too many words, that mere vocabulary tends to fall short. Sometimes, too, my memory lets me down. I've had the feeling that, on the short list of particularly apt words, there was (at least) one that I was overlooking.
In the context of comparing the pressure that the Nixon White House brought to bear on the media to say nice things with the machinations of the current administration directed at the same, Arthur Silber quotes Frank Rich:
The main difference is that in the Nixon White House, the president’s men plotted behind closed doors. The current administration is now so brazen it does its dirty work in plain sight.
"Brazen"! That's it! Brazen, brazen, brazen. Just the word I was trying to remember.
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*Which is to say: properly accurate and precise, avoiding the tired clichés and the merely hyperbolic.