Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Friday ripped both chambers of Congress — and the parties that control them — for their handling of President Donald Trump’s impeachment proceedings, calling the process “a sham and a joke.”
Hogan, the Republican leader of a deep blue state, has found himself frequently at odds with the president and came out in favor of an impeachment inquiry in October. The president’s Senate impeachment trial ended Wednesday in a mostly partisan acquittal on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, ending an acrimonious four month battle in Washington.
But speaking at POLITCO’s 10th annual State Solutions conference, Hogan said that he had more faith in voters than Congress to evaluate the president's conduct, emphasizing that he wanted to see a fairer and more objective process.
“I don’t think Congress did their job. But the American people will, and I have more faith in the American people to make that decision in November, and that’s what they're going to get to do,” he predicted.
Hogan is not the first member of his family to break ranks with the Republican Party against a sitting GOP president. The Maryland governor’s father, Larry Hogan Sr., was the first Republican congressman to come out in favor of impeaching former President Richard Nixon in 1974. The governor on Friday noted that as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, his father fought for Nixon to be able to call and cross examine witnesses and to be able to mount a defense during his impeachment hearings.
“Only after seeing all the evidence,” significant portions of which were forcibly turned over by federal court orders, was Hogan Sr. able to make a decision, the governor said.
The Maryland governor noted that he’d had doubts from the outset that any impeachment proceeding in such a polarized environment would be fair and objective, smacking the majority parties of both the House and Senate for their conduct over the last four months.
“I thought the Democrats in the House had already decided before the hearings that the president should be impeached and I didn’t think it was going to be fair and objective,” he said.
Hogan added that he thought the impeachment trial was equally as fruitless in the Senate, and that the GOP-led chamber would acquit the president “no matter what the facts were.”
“Pretty much what I said in October is what happened,” he pointed out. “I’m very frustrated.”
Hogan asserted that there was plenty of criticism to go around, and reiterated his assertion from October that “I didn’t like anything that I was hearing” about Trump’s actions with regard to Ukraine and that “we needed to get to the facts.”
In particular, he objected to the lack of bipartisanship in the initial House inquiry, saying he disagreed with Republicans’ inability to call their own witnesses and with initial depositions for the investigation taking place in a classified setting behind closed doors.
House Democrats refused to honor Republicans’ requests for witnesses like former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, as well as the intelligence community whistleblower whose complaint set off the series of events leading to the inquiry, brushing them aside them as irrelevant to the case.
Hogan also criticized Senate Republicans for blocking efforts to hear from new witnesses in the case, a main point of contention in the trial.
“Neither of those things happened, so the whole process was kind of a sham and a joke,” Hogan concluded.
Another Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, also acknowledged to POLITICO that he was concerned by the president's conduct, and remarked of Trump's infamous July conversation with Ukraine's leader: "It was not a perfect call."
"You know, wisdom says that if you've got allegations of corruption, I think that can be handled through the attorney general, particularly whenever it involves somebody that is in the political realm," said Hutchinson, who served as a House impeachment manager during President Bill Clinton's Senate trial two decades ago.
"So, no, it wasn't [a] perfect call, and that's an issue that people can look at differently," he continued. "I look at it with a critical eye. But it's certainly not an impeachable offense, and I think that's what the Senate found, clearly."
Quint Forgey contributed to this report
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Friday ripped both chambers of Congress — and the parties that control them — for their handling of President Donald Trump’s impeachment proceedings, calling the process “a sham and a joke.”
Hogan, the Republican leader of a deep blue state, has found himself frequently at odds with the president and called for his impeachment in October. The president’s Senate impeachment trial ended Wednesday in a mostly partisan acquittal on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, ending an acrimonious four month battle in Washington.
But speaking at POLITCO’s 10th annual State Solutions conference, Hogan said that he had faith American voters would pick up Congress’ slack at the polls in November.
“I don’t think Congress did their job. But the American people will, and I have more faith in the American people to make that decision in November, and that’s what they're going to get to do,” he predicted.
Hogan is not the first member of his family to break ranks with the Republican Party against a sitting GOP president. The Maryland governor’s father, Larry Hogan Sr., was the first Republican congressman to come out in favor of impeaching former President Richard Nixon in 1974. The governor on Friday noted that as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, his father fought for Nixon to be able to call and cross examine witnesses and to be able to mount a defense during his impeachment hearings.
“Only after seeing all the evidence,” significant portions of which were forcibly turned over by federal court orders, was Hogan Sr. able to make a decision, the governor said.
The Maryland governor noted that he’d had doubts from the outset that any impeachment proceeding in such a polarized environment would be fair and objective, smacking the majority parties of both the House and Senate for their conduct over the last four months.
“I thought the Democrats in the House had already decided before the hearings that the president should be impeached and I didn’t think it was going to be fair and objective,” he said.
Hogan added that he thought the impeachment trial was equally as fruitless in the Senate, and that the GOP-led chamber would acquit the president “no matter what the facts were.”
“Pretty much what I said in October is what happened,” he pointed out. “I’m very frustrated.”
Hogan asserted that there was plenty of criticism to go around, and reiterated his assertion from October that “I didn’t like anything that I was hearing” about Trump’s actions with regard to Ukraine and that “we needed to get to the facts.”
In particular, he objected to the lack of bipartisanship in the initial House inquiry, saying he disagreed with Republicans’ inability to call their own witnesses and with initial depositions for the investigation taking place in a classified setting behind closed doors.
House Democrats refused to honor Republicans’ requests for witnesses like former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, as well as the intelligence community whistleblower whose complaint set off the series of events leading to the inquiry, brushing them aside them as irrelevant to the case.
Hogan also criticized Senate Republicans for blocking efforts to hear from new witnesses in the case, a main point of contention in the trial.
“Neither of those things happened, so the whole process was kind of a sham and a joke,” Hogan concluded.
By David Kamioner | February 7, 2020
Six female minority staffers told Politico they left the Nevada state organization of Democratic candidate for president Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts because they felt like tokens.
No duh ladies.
It’s not exactly an epiphany that the Left looks upon minorities as political pets, to be used like beasts of electoral burden but always to take a back seat to upscale white limo leftists.
Though it seems that these gals are just pulling the race hustle. It’s a particular practice, as amusingly chronicled in Tom Wolfe’s “Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers,” that uses racial guilt to get goodies from guilty white liberals.
RELATED: MSNBC Hosts Caught on Hot Mic Trashing Dems
We could go on with more general comment. But in a new tool LifeZette is providing its readers, we will now engage our Political Translation Service (PTS).
It takes leftist gibberish and translates the likely real meanings into standard understandable English. So, here are the statements of the aggrieved parties and the PTS translations.
First ticked off staffer: “During the time I was employed with Nevada for Warren, there was definitely something wrong with the culture,” said Megan Lewis, who signed on with Warren last May.
“I filed a complaint with HR, but the follow-up I received left me feeling as though I needed to make myself smaller or change who I was to fit into the office culture.”
PTS: “Oh man, this campaign is falling out of the sky like a brick. Nobody believed us on the Bernie thing and we got killed in Iowa. Even though she’s from next door, New Hampshire looks like a loss too and there’s no way I am going down with this leaky ship. So I’ll say something about race. Nobody will believe me, but everybody will pretend to and that will get me a job with a better campaign.”
She went on: “We all were routinely silenced and not given a meaningful chance on the campaign. Complaints, comments, advice and grievances were met with an earnest shake of the head and progressive buzzwords but not much else.”
This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
Read more at LifeZette:
New video shows Pelosi practicing ripping up Trump’s State of The Union speech
Ex-Spokesman for Romney campaign says Trump guilty vote was ‘motivated by bitterness and jealousy’
Meghan McCain Eviscerates Joy Behar After She Expresses Hopes Trump Will Go ‘Completely Nuts’ During State Of The Union
The post Elizabeth Warren Gets Race Hustled By Her Own Campaign appeared first on The Political Insider.
Susan Collins was right: Donald Trump did learn something in the course of the Senate impeachment trial. He learned that his hold on most Republican senators was even tighter than anyone had credited. It confirmed—again—that he could say or do anything at all without consequence. And he learned that he has permission to be more aggressive in demanding personal loyalty, even when that loyalty conflicts with tradition, law, or national interest. Trump’s hour-long victory-lap-cum-whine-session, in which he complained about “dirty cops,” declared that most wives would not care if their husbands were shot, and segued into 1960s baseball, was so genuinely bizarre that even invited hosts from Fox News were shocked.
"I was struck by, first of all, how perhaps Susan Collins, [felt] when she said that the president has learned from this,” said Fox News political reporter Bret Baier. “He's learned something but it probably wasn't that he was wrong. That's not what he takes away from it."
Though multiple media outlets chose to cover it end to end, allowing Trump to gloat uninterrupted and make statements that would have been bleeped if they were said on a late night talk show, the Thursday afternoon speech was not meant for a national audience. Instead, Trump gathered up select members of his staff, a smattering of those from Congress he considered most loyal, and some favored conservative media. That meant not only that there were no questions allowed, but also that there was no Mitt Romney. Or Susan Collins. No one without a sub-Devin Nunes level of willingness to engage in public distortion and personal abasement was welcome in that room.
Buoyed by being surrounded by only the best of the bootlickers, Trump had no problem opening up with an admission that he had started his time in office by obstructing justice. “Had I not fired James Comey,” said Trump, “it’s possible I wouldn’t even be standing here right now.”
But the victory speech didn’t stand alone. It was just one of three speeches that Trump delivered in a week that showed just how far the world has tilted on its axis since Republicans made it clear that authoritarian was absolutely their preferred flavor for the next 1,000 years.
On Thursday morning, Trump attended the National Prayer Breakfast. Traditionally, this is an event at which politicians express their thanks for all the blessings bestowed on the nation and their contrition for their own failings, and make clear that they share fundamental beliefs with those across the aisle. Trump did the opposite of all that. He complained that he had been abused, denied that he had done anything wrong, attacked Nancy Pelosi, who was seated four feet away from him, and accused both the Catholic Pelosi and the Mormon Mitt Romney of being heretics who lacked any real faith. Trump didn’t quite repeat his claim that he had never asked God for forgiveness. He didn’t need to.
Both of these speeches followed a Tuesday night State of the Union address that was one part prying open the political divide, one part the reddest of red meat, and one part sleazy game show. But then, it was 100% a demonstration of his authoritarian reign. Trump dismissed the idea of public education, then displayed his royal largesse by tossing one little girl a scholarship. He sent thousands of soldiers off to be mercenaries for another authoritarian regime, but deigned to allow one to come home as a “heartwarming” surprise. He attacked everyone who supported immigrants, repeatedly used the term “criminal aliens” and … that’s it. There was not even a crumb of humanity on that point. Just wall. To underline this, Trump had the always-scowling Melania drop a ribbon around the neck of premier racist, misogynist, and xenophobe Rush Limbaugh.
At the SOTU, Trump made it clear—he would do what he wanted. Give when he felt like it. Punishment and reward are his to bestow. At the National Prayer Breakfast, he made it clear that he doesn’t care who is on God’s side, because he feels that God is on his side. With an unlimited supply of lightning bolts. And back at the White House, Trump made it clear: Only those who are consistent in their service to him are worthy to be admitted into his court. His countenance shines only on those who are unwavering in placing what’s good for Trump first, no matter what.
There won't be any investigations of Donald Trump this campaign season. Attorney General William Barr sent a memo Wednesday to the FBI and U.S. attorneys across the nation instructing them to get his approval before opening any new inquiries during the 2020 election cycle, according to The New York Times.
Barr used the backdrop of 2016 and the inspector general's report criticizing some aspects of the FBI's investigation into Trump's campaign as justification for his new decree. The department, he wrote, had a responsibility to safeguard against "improper activity or influences" in the election. “In certain cases, the existence of a federal criminal or counterintelligence investigation, if it becomes known to the public, may have unintended effects on our elections,” Barr wrote.
In other words, Trump is still really pissy about the Russia probe—even though it was never public—and wants to ensure that none of the other corrupt activities he is surely engaged in will interfere in his election, not to mention get investigated at all.
Barr, a man who skewed the rollout of the Mueller report in Trump's favor and declined to investigate Trump Ukraine call for criminal violations, advised, "we also must be sensitive to safeguarding the department’s reputation for fairness, neutrality and nonpartisanship.” Whatever reputation the Justice Department had for delivering fairness is already long gone under Barr's leadership.
In the big picture, this is just one more move by Barr to consolidate power. During the Senate impeachment trial, Barr also installed a loyalist as the new U.S. attorney in D.C., the largest U.S. attorney’s office in the country that also happens to handle many of the most politically sensitive cases in Washington. In another recent development, the Justice Department, which had recently sought six months of jail time for former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, is now saying probation time would be acceptable.
In ways both obvious and cunning, Barr continues to prove his commitment to doing Trump’s bidding, no matter the task.
In a long and rambling explanation of her actions during the State of the Union address, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused President Trump of being drugged ahead of the speech.
The insinuation might go down in the irony hall of fame.
Pelosi spoke to reporters about the exchange at the beginning of Trump’s speech, when he handed she and Vice President Mike Pence a copy of his remarks and appeared to either snub, or not see, an extended hand from the leader of the impeachment movement.
“It was also an act of kindness,” Pelosi claimed of the gesture, “because he looked to me like he was a little sedated.”
She added, “He looked that way last year too.”
Pelosi on Trump: “He looked to me like he was a little sedated.”
Seriously?
She acts drunk or like she’s on drugs 99% of the time. pic.twitter.com/aBZBRlgIuT
— ALX
(@alx) February 6, 2020
RELATED: Rep. Mike Johnson Offers Nancy Pelosi Some Fancy Souvenir Acquittal Pens
There’s a whole lot of stupid to unpack in that very short video clip.
First off, why did she make an uncontrollable shaking hands gesture to indicate somebody is sedated? That’s more indicative of her obvious fidgety nature.
Second, many observers of Nancy’s actions during the State of the Union address could have easily walked away with the impression that it was she, not the President of the United States, who was on something.
The constant erratic facial contortions were incredibly distracting to those watching the speech. As was the mumbling to herself. Not to mention the uncontrolled rage at the conclusion.
The New York Post’s Michael Goodwin describes Pelosi’s final act of tearing up the printed remarks: “In one sense, Pelosi’s distress is understandable. Trump’s address was long because he had a long list of big accomplishments to cite, and every Republican standing ovation had to drive her closer to the edge. She often seemed to be talking to herself, and finally snapped.”
Those seem like the actions of somebody either under the influence of something unnatural, or an anti-American under the rage-inducing influence of the President’s pro-America agenda.
Nancy Pelosi actually just accused Trump of being on drugs during his State of the Union Address.
Yes, really. pic.twitter.com/aEtKW6Neqw
— The First (@TheFirstonTV) February 6, 2020
RELATED: Trump Holds Up ‘Acquitted’ Headlines Next to Pelosi Attending Prayer Breakfast
It’s not the first time a Democrat has accused the President of the United States of being on drugs, and it won’t be the last. Anything to make that 25th Amendment argument, eh libs?
Josh Earnest, former White House press secretary to Barack Obama, once accused then-candidate Trump of having “snorted his way through” the debates.
To be fair, Trump had suggested both he and Hillary Clinton submit to a drug test during the campaign, “like athletes.”
Comedian Tom Arnold, like Pelosi an unhinged victim of Trump Derangement Syndrome, baselessly claimed the President used to ‘snort Adderall’ on the set of The Apprentice.
Pelosi’s daughter appeared on Fox News and claimed her mother was not insinuating “he was drugged or something,” but rather, he “had a cold.”
Good to know Pelosi has handed down the perpetual liar genes.
The post Nancy Pelosi Accuses Trump of Being ‘Sedated’ During State of the Union appeared first on The Political Insider.
