Did he assign a trait to liberals? Because if not, there's no inconsistency.
Then a follow up question: is there a difference between 'liberals' as a group (i.e. not liberalism) and a government (i.e. an institution)? If so, there may be no inconsistency.
What I mean is, when people talk about governments it's often as a non-human legal person, which can act, omit, sue, and be sued, but which does not have the full range of human traits, like insincerity. Whereas a group that does not have legal personality and only describes a collection of humans, albeit in the abstract, like 'liberals', can demonstrate a fuller range of human traits.
Then, as an experiment, switch the terms and see if it has the same ring to it:
politics for [governments] are just a big reality show
Does this anthropomorphise 'governments' in the same way as attributing human emotions to them?
I don't necessarily have answers to these questions but it seems that you can't be calling someone out for bad faith unless you can strongly argue yes, no, yes, to the above questions.