Bill Clinton apologized for his behavior that led to impeachment. In contrast, Donald Trump railed against "scum" and "evil" foes who put him through "hell."
The newest Republican senator, Kelly Loeffler, has quickly risen to be a favorite of impeached president Donald Trump. The Georgia Republican, who was appointed to fill out retired Sen. Johnny Isakson's term, received high praise from Trump in Thursday's acquittal/Festivus "celebration." He gave Loeffler praise that her fellow Republican Sen. Martha McSally must be seething over. Loeffler has "been so supportive and she's been downright nasty and mean about the unfairness to the president," Trump said.
It probably also didn't go over too well with Rep. Doug Collins, the Republican who glued himself to Trump through the House impeachment process and has been counting on Trump to boost his own run for the Senate in the primary for Loeffler’s seat. He got another dagger to the heart today with the report that Loeffler kicked in $5 million to her own campaign this week. There's more where that came from, too. She's got so much money, she's charging her own campaign interest on that loan. She could make as much as $120,000 back in interest! No wonder Trump is impressed: That's the kind of grift he pulls every day, except of course he's doing it to the taxpayers. She's just doing it to potential donors. Charging yourself interest on your campaign loans isn't against the law, but as Beth Rotman, director of money in politics and ethics at Common Cause, says, it's awfully tacky.
At his rally Thursday, Trump did give some props to Collins, calling him an "unbelievable" friend. He also said he's working on a compromise between the two. "Something's going to happen that's going to be very good. I don't know; I haven't figured it out yet," he said. Of course he hasn't, because the idea occurred to him right there on the spot.
But somebody who has no applicable qualifications to speak of is going to get a plum job from Trump any day now.
YouTube VideoBy David Kamioner | February 6, 2020
Now that the impeachment saga has come to a close the administration and its GOP congressional cohorts can go back to doing what they were elected to do: run the country.
While the Republican members of the House are for now outnumbered in that chamber, there are deals that can be worked out with House Democrats and sent to the GOP Senate for approval and subsequent presidential signature.
There are other issues, like federal judicial appointments, that thankfully are solely in the hands of the president and the Republican Senate.
The president will continue to send qualified conservative jurists to that body for a vote. His impressive total of 191 federal judicial appointments so far in his administration has done amazing things like turning the formerly notoriously leftist 9th Circuit Court into a solid shade of conservative red.
RELATED: Nancy Pelosi RIPS Donald Trump’s Speech in Half After His SOTU Speech
And to paraphrase Trump, the fun is just beginning.
The president mentioned in the SOTU that infrastructure was on his mind. Like the recent USMCA trade deal with Canada and Mexico, he may be able to get a big bill on infrastructure through the Democratic House because Big Labor will pressure Pelosi to pass it.
The bill would bring billions in federal dollars to the construction and transportation industries and create a great number of jobs. The only reason it wouldn’t pass is because Pelosi may not want to see the president get the credit for it in an election year.
Spite before economic progress, the modern Democratic Party creed.
Under the general infrastructure umbrella there is an actually bipartisan highway bill that the Senate Public Works Committee advanced last July. It hasn’t got to the floor for a vote as of yet. The current five year highway transportation bill expires at the end of September 2020.
RELATED: CNN Ratings Continue to Struggle, Fox News Gets a Huge Boost From Impeachment Trial
The president will continue to push for funds for the border wall and border security. Democrats may compromise somewhat on this as they know both measures evoke poll numbers that range into the 70 percentiles in support.
Dem proposals that are DOA in the Senate include net neutrality, universal background checks on gun sales, and funding to burn down the Reichstag.
I kinda made that last one up.
This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.
Read more at LifeZette:
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The post It’s Back To Work For The GOP And The President appeared first on The Political Insider.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Thursday took a shot at Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah — the lone Republican to vote to convict President Donald Trump.
“I don’t think Romney is effective in any shape or form,” McCarthy told a group of reporters outside the House chamber.
But McCarthy dodged questions about whether Romney should be expelled from the Republican Conference, which some Trump allies have called for. He also wouldn’t discuss whether it was appropriate for Trump to question the Utah Republican’s Mormon faith. In announcing that he would vote “guilty” on the abuse of power charge during Wednesday’s Senate impeachment vote, Romney got choked up while discussing how his decision was guided by his faith.
While Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming said she disagreed with Romney’s decision, she had a different take than McCarthy: She called him a “man of conscience” and said he is a “real value for us to have in the Senate.
“Senator Romney is a good and honorable man,” Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, said in an interview. “And I don’t think anybody ought to question his faith.”
Trump, speaking during a National Prayer Breakfast in Washington Thursday morning, complained that some people use “religion as a crutch,” though he didn’t mention Romney by name.
“I never heard the president use the word ‘Romney’ at the prayer breakfast,” said McCarthy, who was also in attendance.
McCarthy, one of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, kept his troops together during the impeachment vote in the House and helped deliver a bipartisan vote against both articles. Trump and his allies were hoping for a repeat in the Senate, but Romney broke ranks to join all Democrats in voting to remove the president on one charge — the first senator in American history to vote to convict a president from their own party.
Trump on Thursday praised McCarthy during a victory speech at the White House, predicting that the backlash to impeachment would help Republicans win back the House this November.
“Kevin McCarthy has done an incredible job,” Trump said. “You’ll be speaker of the House. I really believe it.”
Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee and helped defend Trump from impeachment, said he was “very surprised” by Romney’s decision and said there is “a lot of anger” among Republicans over the defection. But Stewart added that he doesn’t think Romney should be punished for his vote.
“If we expelled everyone who voted differently, than we’d have no one in the conference,” Stewart told reporters.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Thursday took a shot at Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah — the lone Republican to vote to convict President Donald Trump.
“I don’t think Romney is effective in any shape or form,” McCarthy told a group of reporters outside the House chamber.
But McCarthy dodged questions about whether Romney should be expelled from the Republican Conference, which some Trump allies have called for. He also wouldn’t discuss whether it was appropriate for Trump to question the Utah Republican’s Mormon faith. In announcing that he would vote “guilty” on the abuse of power charge during Wednesday’s Senate impeachment vote, Romney got choked up while discussing how his decision was guided by his faith.
While Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming said she disagreed with Romney’s decision, she had a different take than McCarthy: She called him a “man of conscience” and said he is a “real value for us to have in the Senate.
“Senator Romney is a good and honorable man,” Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, said in an interview. “And I don’t think anybody ought to question his faith.”
Trump, speaking during a National Prayer Breakfast in Washington Thursday morning, complained that some people use “religion as a crutch,” though he didn’t mention Romney by name.
“I never heard the president use the word ‘Romney’ at the prayer breakfast,” said McCarthy, who was also in attendance.
McCarthy, one of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, kept his troops together during the impeachment vote in the House and helped deliver a bipartisan vote against both articles. Trump and his allies were hoping for a repeat in the Senate, but Romney broke ranks to join all Democrats in voting to remove the president on one charge — the first senator in American history to vote to convict a president from their own party.
Trump on Thursday praised McCarthy during a victory speech at the White House, predicting that the backlash to impeachment would help Republicans win back the House this November.
“Kevin McCarthy has done an incredible job,” Trump said. “You’ll be speaker of the House. I really believe it.”
Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee and helped defend Trump from impeachment, said he was “very surprised” by Romney’s decision and said there is “a lot of anger” among Republicans over the defection. But Stewart added that he doesn’t think Romney should be punished for his vote.
“If we expelled everyone who voted differently, than we’d have no one in the conference,” Stewart told reporters.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is requesting the Government Accountability Office review whether the Trump administration is improperly classifying documents that it provided to Congress.
In an interview, Murphy, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that the Trump administration’s classification of a letter from Vice President Mike Pence’s aide Jennifer Williams centered on the vice president’s call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was the “last straw.”
“There was absolutely nothing in that document that should have been classified,” Murphy said. “It was only classified because it was politically hurtful to the president in the middle of an impeachment proceeding and you are not allowed as president of the United States to keep information from the public simply because it’s going to hurt you politically.”
Williams testified during the House’s impeachment inquiry that President Donald Trump’s July 25 call with his Ukraine counterpart was “inappropriate.” She submitted the document in question to the House Intelligence Committee as supplemental testimony and additional evidence in the impeachment inquiry, but Pence’s office has deemed it classified.
Democrats who viewed the document in January when it was made available to lawmakers claimed there’s no reason to keep it classified.
In a letter sent Thursday, Murphy asked that the GAO compare classified documents that are in the Office of Senate Security to their original classified versions to see if they have similar classification levels as well as examine the material the documents provided to Congress are based on.
“Some documents contain information that is classified at a level that appears inconsistent with the nature of the material,” Murphy wrote. “It is critical to ensure that information provided to the Congress is properly classified when it must be classified at all.”
Murphy along with other Democratic senators have criticized the Trump administration for keeping documents under wraps that they argue do not contain classified information. The Connecticut Democrat has also called for declassifying the War Powers notification sent to Congress after the strike against Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.
“I’ve noticed a trend — I’ve watched as more and more of these documents I’m reading in the [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] don’t have information that compromises sources and methods,” he said. “The War Powers notification for the Soleimani strike had no information in it that was classified.”
Murphy said in the interview that he’s also hearing concerns from Republicans. He acknowledged that the Obama administration also classified documents that didn’t necessarily have classified information, but said that under the Trump administration the problem is “much more acute.”
The Connecticut Democrat is also asking GAO whether a member of Congress can challenge the classification status of a document.
“Right now the only thing we can do is declassify it ourselves which I do not think is a solution,” he said. “But if this doesn’t get better, then I do think we need to think about processes by which a third party can weigh in and decide to un-classify something that’s just a political embarrassment.”