Is Harry Reid coming apart under the strain of the ObamaCare fiasco and his potential criminal liability for the misappropriation of campaign funds? He is now claiming on the Senate floor that he never said what C-SPAN clearly shows he did say one month ago --  that:

“We heard about the evils of Obamacare, about the lives it’s ruining in Republicans’ stump speeches and in ads paid for by oil magnates, the Koch brothers. But in those tales, turned out to be just that: tales, stories made up from whole cloth, lies distorted by the Republicans to grab headlines or make political advertisements.”

This remarkable accusation was taken as a personal affront by many Americans struggling with Obamacare’s consequences. But as of Wednesday, Harry is claiming it never happened:

“Mr. President, the junior Senator from Wyoming has come to the floor several times recently talking about the fact that examples that he and other Republicans have given, dealing with ObamaCare, examples that they think are bad, I’ve called lies.

Mr. President, that is simply untrue. I have never come to the floor, to my recollection, and I never said a word about any of the examples that Republicans have given regarding ObamaCare and how it’s not very good.”

You can see both statements in this video:

Is this a ploy aimed at the low information constituency? That can’t be ruled out – after all, Democrats are known to brazenly lie when Obamacare is being discussed, as illustrated by their current claim that the March 31 deadline is still in place, even as people are being allowed to register until some unknown future date so long as they click a button on their computer screen and claim they are having trouble meeting the deadline.

But in the age of YouTube clips, isn’t it a bit much to expect to get away with such a brazen self-contradiction?

This incident suggests that Harry is going for the insanity defense if he is faced with criminal prosecution over the developing scandal of funneling campaign funds to his granddaughter. In addition to the $16,787 payments he reimbursed the campaign for yesterday, it has come to light that an additional $14,481 was paid to Elisabeth Ryan Reid in 2012, for a grand total of $31,268 given to the eldest child of his eldest child, in the name of holiday gifts, Reid has not reimbursed that. Perhaps he has forgotten.

Either way, this is not going to work.

Hat tip: America Rising, the IJR, Hot Air, and Lucianne.com

Rick Moran adds:

An old English word suffices to describe Mr. Reid and his faulty memory; "mountebank," meaning "a person who sells quack medicines, as from a platform in public places, attracting and influencing an audience by tricks, storytelling, etc." One of its synonyms is "fraud."

And has any media outlet outside of a few on the right called out Mr. Reid for his fraudlent memory? I thought not.