make a pretense of

He doesn't even make a pretense of governing.

Sissi’s regime does not even make a pretense of respecting civil rights.

Unlike Holder, Barr does not even make a pretense of arguing that there is no reasonable argument in favor of the ACA’s constitutionality.

Now President Trump and other GOP leaders, many still smarting from their failed push to repeal the law last year, no longer even make a pretense of offering an alternative to the current law.

“Above and beyond the persecution of activists, writers, clerics, scholars, and businessmen inside Saudi, where the Saudis could claim some kind of ‘process,’ the apparent kidnapping of Khashoggi is now a pattern of attacks where the Saudis don’t even make a pretense of legality,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division, told me on Sunday.