Is Neera Tanden the most brazen liar in DC?
Once again, the liberal policymaker has been caught in a lie about her work.
Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, is one of the most powerful and influential liberal policymakers in Washington. She has also been caught in blatant lies about that work over and over and over again.
The most recent episode occurred just last evening after journalist Taylor Lorenz appeared on the show Rising to talk about social media regulations. Tanden, Lorenz said, spoke at a White House summit on social media in 2024 and pledged to “unmask” the anonymity of “online trolls”. Tanden categorically denied it:
But as it turns out, it was Tanden who was lying. Within hours, Lorenz replied with both a White House email confirming Tanden’s attendence, notes of her comments at the summit, and video footage of her presence.
Tanden’s denial is egregious enough given her history of vindictiveness against the very critics she has now pushed to unmask. Most famously, in 2016, Tanden was widely seen as the driving force behind the firing of left blogger Matt Bruenig, who criticized her role in welfare reform under Bill Clinton. After that Tanden repeatedly promoted and met with a group of posters who described themselves as the “Neera’s Twitter defence force” — many of whom were repeatedly banned for harassment on Twitter. Ultimately, Tanden’s online behavior became such a personal liability that she became what the New York Times called the “First Cabinet-Level Casualty of the Twitter Age,” losing her OMB nomination because of her posts.
But it’s the serial, demonstrable lies that make Neera Tanden’s behavior truly stand out as exceptional on a platform full of notorious liars.
During the Bruenig controversy, for example, Tanden also denied her role in welfare reform: “I never worked on— was never involved with welfare reform,” she said.
But again, the record showed otherwise. First, welform reform architect Bruce Reed, in a recorded interview with Intercept reporter Zaid Jilani, said that Tanden was “obviously involved in the implementation.” Then, reporter Eoin Higgins found even more evidence: multiple documents on welfare reform from the Clinton Library naming Tanden.
In yet another instance, Brooklyn College professor Corey Robin noted that Tanden rolled her eyes during a DNC Platform Committee meeting when Rev. Cornel West criticized Israel regarding its occupation of Palestine. Once again, Tanden denied her involvement:
But video evidence at around the 4:40 mark confirms Robin’s account: she was there.
What stands out in all of these episodes is not just the fact that Tanden lied, but that she has repeatedly lied about her work in positions where she bears serious public responsibility, and in ways that are trivially easy to demonstrate. Taken on a case-by-case basis this behavior may be easy to dismiss, but together they demonstrate an undenial contempt for both the truth and for public accountability. It was never going to be very difficult to prove that Tanden attended these high profile meetings or that she was involved in one of Bill Clinton’s signature policies. She has lied about her work not because she believes that the truth will never come out, but rather because she knows that the truth won’t matter. She knows that she can get caught in lies over and over again and that her power and prestige has almost completely insulated her from any possible consequences.
In one sense, this gamble has proven mistaken: Tanden’s behavior did cost her the OMB appointment, and it seems to have guaranteed that her career has hit its permanent ceiling at the Center for American Progress. But other than that, the strategy seems to have paid off. Tanden has an effectively permanent seat at the table of liberal policymaking in the US, and it is hard to imagine any lie so scandalous that she would ever lose it.
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