Month: November 2023

Top House Republican suggests impeachment inquiry vote is coming

Posted on by Congress

House Republicans are preparing to take a formal vote on their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden in the coming weeks, Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) told GOP lawmakers on Wednesday morning.

Emmer addressed House Republicans as they prepare for a make-or-break decision on how far to take their probe of the president's connections to his son Hunter's overseas business dealings — which, so far, has failed to yield any tangible proof that the First Son influenced his father's decisions, as president or vice president.

Republicans are pressing for a closed-door interview with Hunter Biden sometime next month, though they rejected an offer by his counsel to appear at a public hearing instead. Conservatives who want an impeachment vote are hopeful that there will be sufficient GOP buy-in by January for articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, though centrists and Republicans who represent districts that he won in 2020 remain skeptical.

Generally speaking, a House vote on an impeachment inquiry — a separate, preliminary step before a formal impeachment vote — would also appear to help Republicans work around a Trump-era order that bars any administration from engaging in such an inquiry if the full chamber has not voted for one. That order dates back to 2019, when House Democrats delayed for months before voting to authorize the inquiry that led to Donald Trump's first impeachment.

Kyle Cheney contributed.

Posted in Uncategorized

House Republicans roll out ‘one-stop shop’ Biden impeachment inquiry website

Posted on by Latest Political News on Fox News

EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans are launching a "one-stop shop" website for all things related to the impeachment inquiry against President Biden on Wednesday so that the American people can "see the clear corruption that Joe Biden and his family have committed," Fox News Digital has learned. 

The website, GOP.gov/Bidenimpeachmentinquiry, will highlight the work of the committees leading the effort — the House committees on Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways & Means — and will include summaries of their findings to date, along with supporting "key evidence." A GOP aide told Fox News Digital that the website will be a "one-stop shop" for Americans. 

"House Republicans investigations have uncovered what I believe will be the greatest political corruption scandal of my lifetime. House Republicans will continue to follow the facts and uncover evidence of vast corruption committed by Joe Biden and his family," House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., told Fox News Digital. "Here are the facts: Joe Biden directly financially benefited from his family's corrupt influence peddling scheme, the Biden family repeatedly attempted to sell access to Joe Biden to the highest bidder, including our foreign adversaries, Joe Biden has repeatedly lied to the American people about his involvement and knowledge of his family's corrupt influence peddling scheme." 

"Today, House Republicans are unveiling a website for the American people to provide them with transparency and allow them to see the clear corruption that Joe Biden and his family have committed," she said. 

HOUSE OVERSIGHT SUBPOENAS HUNTER BIDEN, JAMES BIDEN, ROB WALKER FOR TESTIMONY AMID IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

The website includes the House Oversight Committee’s interactive timeline of the Biden family's alleged "influence peddling," dating back to President Biden’s time as vice president during the Obama administration. That timeline includes a breakdown of business dealings with China-linked companies, Kazakhstan, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine.

That timeline also has a feature dedicated to the federal criminal investigation into Hunter Biden. 

The website also includes a "photos" section, which features images of checks written to Joe Biden, photos of the president with his son’s business associates like Devon Archer and more. 

House Republicans also invite visitors of the website to sign up with their email addresses to "get the latest impeachment inquiry updates."

House Republicans also use the website to break down the impeachment inquiry "by the numbers." That section says that lawmakers have found at least $240,000 in direct payments to Biden and have issued 20 subpoenas. The committee, last month, subpoenaed Hunter Biden, the president's brother, James Biden, and requested transcribed interviews from a number of other Biden family members. 

"House Republicans are committed to delivering the transparency and accountability that the American people demand and deserve. Our investigation has unearthed evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew of, participated in, and benefited from his family’s corrupt business schemes," House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told Fox News Digital. "House Republicans’ new website ensures this information is accessible to the American people."

Comer, in September, subpoenaed personal and business bank records belonging to both Hunter Biden and James Biden. Comer said those subpoenaed bank records revealed that President Biden himself received $40,000 in "laundered China money" from a bank account belonging to James Biden and Sara Biden. The $40,000 check had a memo line reading "loan repayment."

Subpoenaed financial records also revealed that Joe Biden received a "$200,000 direct payment" in 2018 in the form of a "personal check" from James Biden and Sara Biden. That check was also labeled "loan repayment."

WEISS SAYS HE 'WASN'T GRANTED' SPECIAL ATTORNEY AUTHORITY IN HUNTER BIDEN PROBE DESPITE REQUEST: TRANSCRIPT

The White House has repeatedly blasted the impeachment inquiry as an "evidence-free" investigation.

Hunter Biden is set to appear for a deposition behind closed doors on Dec. 13, despite offers to testify publicly.

The committees have also heard testimony from DOJ officials involved in Special Counsel David Weiss' investigation into Hunter Biden. 

"President Biden and his administration have continually changed their stories about President Biden's involvement in his family's influence-peddling schemes and business deals," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News Digital. "House Republicans are ready to deliver transparency and accountability to the American people."

SPEAKER JOHNSON: BIDEN ENGAGING IN ‘COVER-UP’ OF ROLE IN HUNTER BUSINESS DEALINGS, IMPEACHMENT PROBE CONTINUES

The impeachment inquiry is being led by Comer, Jordan and House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo. and began under the leadership of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. Newly-minted House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is fully behind the effort. 

Republicans are focused several avenues of investigation, including the Biden family's business dealings and whether the president was involved. The lawmakers are also investigating allegations of political misconduct and politics influencing prosecutorial decisions throughout the years-long federal investigation into Hunter Biden. 

Pennsylvania Supreme Court debates future of impeachment trial for Philadelphia Prosecutor Larry Krasner

Posted on by Latest Political News on Fox News

Pennsylvania's highest court on Tuesday weighed whether the Legislature can proceed with an impeachment trial against Philadelphia's elected progressive prosecutor and whether the court or lawmakers should determine what qualifies as misbehavior in office.

What the justices decide after oral arguments in the Supreme Court chambers in Harrisburg will determine the future of efforts to remove District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, on claims he should have prosecuted some minor crimes, his bail policies and how he has managed his office.

Krasner was impeached by the state House in November 2022, a year after he was overwhelmingly reelected to a second term, sending the matter to the state Senate for trial.

PHILADELPHIA DA LARRY KRASNER IMPEACHED BY PENNSYLVANIA LAWMAKERS IN GOP-LED EFFORT: 'CRISIS OF CRIME'

PROGRESSIVE DA WILL INVESTIGATE IF PHILLY RIOTERS ARE 'FUNDAMENTALLY LAW-ABIDING PEOPLE' BEFORE PROSECUTION

Justice Kevin Brobson, one of the two Republicans on the bench Tuesday, questioned why the court should get involved at this point and suggested the Senate may not get the two-thirds majority necessary to convict and remove Krasner from office.

"Just as I would not want the General Assembly to stick its nose into a court proceeding, I am shy about whether it makes sense, constitutionally, jurisprudentially, for us at this stage to stick our noses" into the impeachment process, he said.

Justice Christine Donohue, among the four Democratic justices at the hearing, said she was not comfortable delving "into the weeds" of what the impeachable offenses were, but indicated it should be up to the Supreme Court to define misbehavior in office, the grounds for removal.

"It would go through the Senate once we define what misbehavior in office means, whatever that is, and then it would never come back again because then there would be a definition of what misbehavior in office is," she said.

Another Democrat, Justice David Wecht, seemed to chafe at an argument by lawyers for the two Republican House members managing the impeachment trial that lawmakers should determine what constitutes misbehavior.

"It’s not just akin to indicting a ham sandwich," Wecht said. He went on to say, "They could have totally different ham sandwiches in mind."

"I mean, it’s whatever the House wakes up to today and what they have for breakfast and then they bring impeachment. And then tomorrow the Senate wakes up and they think of the polar opposite as what any misbehavior means," Wecht said.

PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE REPUBLICANS ANNOUNCE ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST PHILADELPHIA DA LARRY KRASNER

Krasner has dismissed the House Republicans’ claims as targeting his policies, and a lower court issued a split ruling in the matter.

A panel of lower-court judges rejected two of Krasner’s challenges — that the opportunity for a trial died along with the end last year’s session and that as a local official he could not be impeached by the General Assembly. But it agreed with him that the impeachment articles do not meet the state constitution’s definition of misbehavior in office.

Krasner’s appeal seeks reconsideration of the Commonwealth Court’s decision.

The Republican representatives who spearheaded the impeachment and the GOP-controlled Senate leadership also appealed, arguing that impeachment proceedings exist outside of the rules of lawmaking and could continue into a new legislative session. Krasner, as a district attorney, gets state funding and that distinguishes him from purely local officials, they argued.

Top Oversight Democrat slams GOP for keeping Hunter Biden hearing out of public view

Posted on by Latest Political News on Fox News

House Oversight Committee ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., slammed committee Republicans for refusing Hunter Biden's request for a public hearing on Dec. 13, when Biden will appear for a closed-door deposition.

In a statement Tuesday, Raskin called the Republicans' actions an "epic humiliation" and said their hesitancy to let the president's son give public testimony is "a frank confession that they are simply not interested in the facts and have no confidence in their own case or the ability of their own Members to pursue it. 

"Let me get this straight," Raskin said. "After wailing and moaning for ten months about Hunter Biden and alluding to some vast unproven family conspiracy, after sending Hunter Biden a subpoena to appear and testify, Chairman Comer and the Oversight Republicans now reject his offer to appear before the full Committee and the eyes of the world and to answer any questions that they pose?"

HUNTER BIDEN AGREES TO HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE TESTIMONY

Earlier Tuesday, Hunter Biden's attorney Abbe Lowell wrote to House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., and offered to let the president's son appear before the committee, with C-SPAN cameras rolling, and answer lawmakers' questions about his family's business dealings. The letter came in answer to a subpoena issued by Comer for Hunter Biden and his family members and business associates to sit for a closed-door deposition as part of the GOP-led investigation into the Biden family's business dealings. 

"We have seen you use closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public. We therefore propose opening the door," Lowell wrote. "If, as you claim, your efforts are important and involve issues that Americans should know about, then let light shine on the proceedings." 

HOUSE GOP SUBPOENAS DOJ PROSECUTOR WHO ALLEGEDLY TRIED TO SHIELD BIDEN DURING FEDERAL PROBE INTO SON HUNTER

In reply, Comer accused Biden of "trying to play by his own rules" and rejected his request to testify publicly on Dec. 13. However, the chairman agreed that Biden "should have the opportunity to testify in a public setting at a future date." 

No future hearing has yet been scheduled. 

BIDEN'S CLAIM TO HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF HUNTER'S BUSINESS DEALINGS IS BECOMING HARDER TO MAINTAIN

House Republicans have opened an impeachment inquiry into President Biden to examine evidence and allegations that Hunter Biden leveraged his father's positions in government to make unethical business deals with foreign partners, from which President Biden allegedly received payouts. But at the first public inquiry hearing, GOP witnesses said there was not yet enough evidence to prove the president committed an impeachable offense. 

Raskin said Republicans won't schedule a public hearing for Hunter Biden to testify because it would expose how their case against his father is weak. 

"After the miserable failure of their impeachment hearing in September, Chairman Comer has now apparently decided to avoid all Committee hearings where the public can actually see for itself the logical, rhetorical and factual contortions they have tied themselves up in," he said. 

"The evidence has shown time and again President Biden has committed no wrongdoing, much less an impeachable offense. Chairman Comer’s insistence that Hunter Biden’s interview should happen behind closed doors proves it once again. What the Republicans fear most is sunlight and the truth." 

Fox News' Chad Pergram contributed to this report.

Pennsylvania Rep. Craig Williams enters 2024 race for attorney general

Posted on by Latest Political News on Fox News

A state lawmaker who is helping lead the effort to impeach Philadelphia's elected prosecutor on Tuesday became the newest candidate for Pennsylvania attorney general, an office that played a critical role in court defending Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the presidential battleground.

Rep. Craig Williams, a Republican who represents part of suburban Philadelphia, has said for months that he planned to run for the state's top law enforcement office in 2024.

Williams, a former federal prosecutor and former U.S. Marine Corps pilot and prosecutor, is the third Republican to declare his candidacy.

REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS FILE APPEAL REGARDING THE LEGALITY OF THE PA LEGISLATURE'S IMPEACHMENT OF LARRY KRASNER

COURT REJECTS PENNSYLVANIA TOWNSHIP'S BAN OF 'THIN BLUE LINE' FLAG AS UNCONSTITUTIONAL

In an announcement video, Williams says, "I'm running for attorney general because I know how to deal with violence. ... I fought the bad guys on the battlefield and I beat them in the courtroom."

Democrats are facing a five-way primary for an office that will be open after next year.

Williams is a second-term member of the state House who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2008, losing by 20 percentage points to then-U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak. He spent about a decade as a lawyer for Philadelphia-area electric and gas utility Peco Energy Co., an Exelon Corp. subsidiary, before running for the Legislature.

As a freshman lawmaker, he became one of two House Republicans tapped to lead the impeachment of Philadelphia's progressive district attorney, Larry Krasner. The process is tied up in court, with Krasner challenging it as a political impeachment based on policy disagreements, not credible evidence of wrongdoing in office.

Williams, 58, born in Alabama, got his law degree at the University of Florida.

The attorney general's office has a budget of about $140 million annually and plays a prominent role in arresting drug traffickers, fighting gun trafficking, defending state laws in court and protecting consumers from predatory practices.

The office also defended the integrity of Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential election against repeated attempts to overturn it in state and federal courts by Donald Trump’s campaign and Republican allies.

The two other Republicans who have announced their candidacies are York County District Attorney Dave Sunday and former federal prosecutor Katayoun Copeland.

The Democrats running are Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer, state Rep. Jared Solomon of Philadelphia, former state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, former federal prosecutor Joe Kahn and Keir Bradford-Grey, the former head of Philadelphia’s and Montgomery County’s public defense lawyers.

No Republican has been elected attorney general since 2008.

Candidates must file paperwork by Feb. 13 to appear on the April 23 primary ballot.

The current officeholder, Michelle Henry, is filling the last two years of Gov. Josh Shapiro 's second term as attorney general and doesn't plan to run for the office. Shapiro nominated Henry, his top deputy, in January when he was sworn in as governor.

Fox News explains why America shouldn’t hear from Hunter Biden after Comer chickens out

Posted on by Hunter

House Republicans are still all-in on their plan to impeach President Joe Biden for Something Something Hunter Biden, even if they still haven't been able to work out the pesky details. But Hunter threw a wrench in the gears Tuesday morning with an offer to testify, in person, to the House Oversight Committee investigating him—but only if his testimony is public.

Crack Republican investigator and committee chair James Comer immediately shot that idea down, because at no point in the process did Republicans intend for Hunter Biden to actually respond to any of this. No, Republicans absolutely do not want Hunter to come in and testify publicly about their speculations and accusations.

Now Fox News and other Republican disinformation factories have to come up with some spin on why the House committee is right to not want the American public to hear Hunter's willing testimony. Acyn has the clip, so here's your shit show:

Fox News hosts trying to convince their viewers that a closed door deposition of Hunter Biden is better than a public hearing pic.twitter.com/KPxznk5NUK

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 28, 2023

Michele Tafoya: But I agree, I prefer hearings to be done behind closed doors, because I think they actually get to the heart of the matter, and they get some truth, and they can ask questions without preening for the camera, without all the grandstanding.

Yes, that's what the Republicans investigating the Something Something Hunter Biden conspiracy hate more than anything else: grandstanding. Comer and Jim Jordan are known nationwide for their unwillingness to do anything that looks like grandstanding. Republicans specifically selected lawmakers who would be least likely to tolerate grandstanding, which is why Comer and Jordan are joined on the committee by such level heads as—taking a deep breath here—Virginia Foxx, Glenn Grothman, Pete Sessions, Clay Higgins, Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Anna Paulina Luna, Paul Gosar, and Marjorie Taylor “Absolutely No Grandstanding Here” Greene.

The House hearings on Hunter Biden are likely the most dignified and least showboating hearings to ever have occurred in any Congress anywhere, in fact. They ooze decorum like Jordan oozes concern for college athletes’ welfare.

Hmm. The chyron identifies Tafoya as a "former NFL sideline reporter." During her many years on the field, I wonder if she ever discovered a football game going on.

“That is my preference, and for Abby Lowell, for his attorney to say, ‘well you all use that to misinform, and to distort the facts,’ well you know what? You can do that too. After he comes out of his closed door session, you feel free to knock yourself out and you can distort too.”

Ah, and there we have the perfect encapsulation of the Fox News mindset: The truth isn't important! Nobody wants to see the truth for themselves! What's important is how partisans want to "distort" the facts, and the other side can distort the facts too, and then Fox will broadcast the distorted facts that it thinks are best and those are what you, loyal couch potato, should then base your entire mushy worldview around. That's how America is supposed to work.

It seems like just last week House Republicans were loudly crowing about how America needed to see all of the Capitol security camera footage from the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection—absolutely needed to see every bit of it (except for the bits they're going to withhold because of reasons and the bits where they're going to blur out faces so that nasty, nasty law-abiding Americans can't snitch on any more rioters than they've already snitched on). Now we're hearing that cameras and public broadcasts are bad and what Americans really want to know is what the loudest conspiracy freaks in Congress think they should know.

I mean, you can't say she's wrong here. Roger Ailes built a whole network around that idea and he died rich and only mildly discredited, shunned, and a social pariah.

“I mean, it's a silly argument and Comer has said, ‘fine, sit before us publicly, a public hearing, we will do that later. We want the closed door one first.’”

And if you can't trust Comer and Jordan to keep their word, who can you trust? Ask Jordan's old wrestling team: This is a man who's never told a lie.

“And I think it's totally, totally appropriate. Hunter Biden would love nothing more than to sit, have cameras pointed at him, and try to generate the narrative that he wants to form.”

That darn grandstanding Hunter Biden. He tricked Rudy Giuliani into possessing his criminally hacked computer files. He tricked the least grandstand-y group of House Republicans to ever exist into displaying his hacked, private nude photos during a public hearing. He tricked them into focusing obsessively on all of the lowest moments of his life, using all of his worst failures as tabloid fodder for the sake of discrediting his father. Now he's trying to trick them into allowing him to tell his side of the story, after years of Republicans broadcasting their own version?

The absolute gall.

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Hunter Biden offers to testify. Republicans scurry away in fear

Posted on by Mark Sumner

After months of being treated as a punching bag by Republicans in the House and by right-wing media, Hunter Biden has reacted to a Republican subpoena by offering to testify in person before the House Oversight Committee that’s supposedly looking into allegations of misconduct by President Joe Biden and members of his family. It’s a direct challenge to Republican committee Chair James Comer and to the GOP’s ongoing efforts to create an excuse to impeach the president.

Hunter Biden’s testimony could be one of the greatest “put up or shut up” moments of the century.

Except it’s not going to happen. It’s not happening because the offer to testify in public and answer any question that Republicans wanted to ask was met with a refusal from Comer. The last thing the House Oversight chair wants in his committee is the truth.

According to Hunter’s attorney, David Lowell, the president’s son is willing to sit for the committee on “December 13, or any date in December that we can arrange.” And he has just one requirement: That testimony has to be public, so everyone gets to hear what Republicans ask and what Hunter has to say in response. “All you will learn is that your accusations are baseless,” writes Lowell. “However, the American people should see that for themselves.”

That’s exactly what terrifies Comer. As CNN reports, the Republican congressman who has been making outrageous claims about the Biden family for months quickly rejected the idea of public testimony. “Hunter Biden is trying to play by his own rules instead of following the rules required of everyone else,” said Comer. “That won’t stand with House Republicans.”

Instead, Comer insists that Hunter must appear before Republicans in private so that they can frame information released about both questions and answers in the way they best suits their “investigation.” Republican Rep. Ben Cline followed Comer’s refusal by maintaining that Hunter’s offer to testify in public was part of a Democratic scheme to block Comer’s investigation.

Because, as everyone knows, open public testimony is something that a Republican investigation simply cannot tolerate.

Hunter has been the subject of continuous attacks since Rudy Giuliani first strolled into The New York Times in 2019 and handed them an utterly ridiculous story about Hunter, his father, and a corrupt prosecutor in Ukraine. That story was rapidly and thoroughly debunked, but that hasn’t kept Republicans from citing it as fact from that day until the present. Just days before the 2020 election, Giuliani announced that he had obtained “Hunter Biden’s laptop”—a phrase that has now been promoted thousands of times by Donald Trump, Republicans in the House and Senate, right-wing media, and Elon Musk. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene went so far as to brandish revenge porn taken from this nonexistent laptop on the floor of the House.

The combined effort of Republicans, their supporters, and the media to crush Hunter may be the most jaw-dropping example of the lengths to which the right will go in an effort to find some reason, any reason, to defame Joe Biden. In the past few weeks, Comer has been dribbling out already well-established information one crumb at a time, treating each piece as if it’s some kind of revelation and throwing claims of corruption at multiple members of the Biden family.

And that’s exactly what Comer and others intend to do over the coming months. They have no interest in the truth, and no interest in what Hunter Biden has to say. They only want to preserve their ability to pretend to “investigate” by way of smear.

Rep. Jamie Raskin issued a response to Comer’s insistence that his work can only be carried out in darkness:

“Let me get this straight.  After wailing and moaning for ten months about Hunter Biden and alluding to some vast unproven family conspiracy, after sending Hunter Biden a subpoena to appear and testify, Chairman Comer and the Oversight Republicans now reject his offer to appear before the full Committee and the eyes of the world and to answer any questions that they pose?  What an epic humiliation for our colleagues and what a frank confession that they are simply not interested in the facts and have no confidence in their own case or the ability of their own Members to pursue it.  After the miserable failure of their impeachment hearing in September, Chairman Comer has now apparently decided to avoid all Committee hearings where the public can actually see for itself the logical, rhetorical and factual contortions they have tied themselves up in.  The evidence has shown time and again President Biden has committed no wrongdoing, much less an impeachable offense.  Chairman Comer’s insistence that Hunter Biden’s interview should happen behind closed doors proves it once again.  What the Republicans fear most is sunlight and the truth.”

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Another Republican admits there is zero evidence of corruption on the part of President Joe Biden

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo continues to tilt at Biden corruption windmills. On Tuesday, she had Republican Lisa McClain of Michigan on her show to dish the dirt on the Biden crime family! McClain is all-in on trying to prove President Joe Biden is corrupt—or at least create the appearance that he is corrupt. The big problem the right-wing-o-sphere continues to have is that not only do they lack a smoking-gun piece of evidence, they lack smoke entirely.

Bartiromo did what she does best: Create some misinformation before being informed there was no evidence to back those claims up, and then asking a direct question about evidence. In this case, that question was: “Have you been able to identify any actual policy changes that Joe Biden made as a result of getting money from China?”

McClain’s response? “The short answer is no.”

YouTube Video

Spoiler alert: The long answer is also no. Bartiromo, a proven misinformation machine, has so little to go on these days it seems that the entirety of the project is to have some conservative “investigator” on, spout conspiracy theories, and then be told there is no evidence to support any of those theories.

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Trump lashes out at Laurene Powell Jobs over Atlantic piece calling him ‘fascistic,’ anti-Christian

Posted on by Charles Jay

Former President Donald Trump attacked The Atlantic and its publisher and majority owner, Laurene Powell Jobs, a billionaire philanthropist who is the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. On Saturday, Trump posted a diatribe on his money-losing Truth Social platform.

He did not specify which article in the magazine upset him so much. But last Wednesday, Peter Wehner, who served in the administrations of Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. and Jr., wrote an op-ed for The Atlantic titled: “Have You Listened Lately to What Trump Is Saying?”

In the piece, Wehner described Trump’s rhetoric at recent campaign rallies as “clearly fascistic” and anti-Christian. Wehner, a Christian conservative, concluded that by supporting Trump, “far too many Christians in America are not only betraying their humanity; they are betraying the Lord they claim to love and serve.”

RELATED STORY: Donald Trump goes on odd rant about how he's not suffering cognitive decline

Trump posted this on his Truth Social platform:

It’s so good to see how badly the THIRD RATE MAGAZINE, The Atlantic, is doing. 

It’s failing at a level seldom seen before, even in the Publishing Business. False and Fake stories do it every time! They’ve got a rich person funding the ridiculous losses, but at some point, rich people get smart also. Steve Jobs would not be proud of his wife, Laurene, and the way she is spending his money. The Radical Left is destroying America!”

It’s not the first time that Trump has gone after Powell Jobs. In September 2020, Trump got angry after The Atlantic published a story by its editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg that cited four anonymous sources as saying Trump called Americans who fought and died in World War I “losers” and “suckers.” 

In October 2023, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, a former Marine Corps general whose son was killed by a landmine in Afghanistan, went on the record with CNN to confirm details of Goldberg’s story. But back in September 2020, Trump posted this on what was then known as Twitter:

Steve Jobs would not be happy that his wife is wasting money he left her on a failing Radical Left Magazine that is run by a con man (Goldberg) and spews FAKE NEWS & HATE. Call her, write her, let her know how you feel!!! https://t.co/wwuoP85bQE

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2020

Trump’s tweet was responding to a post by Charlie Kirk, who has become a millionaire heading the conservative pro-Trump youth group, Turning Point. 

While Powell Jobs has not responded directly to Trump, she has put her money where her mouth is by donating generously—to the tune of more than $900,000—to Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. Powell Jobs founded the Emerson Collective after she inherited billions of dollars of stock in Apple and Disney after her husband died of pancreatic cancer in 2011. In 2023, Forbes ranked her as the eighth richest woman in the U.S. with a fortune estimated at $13.4 billion.

The Emerson Collective is a social change organization dealing with such issues as education, immigration reform, the environment, health care, and media. In 2017, it purchased a majority stake in The Atlantic, which was founded in 1857 by prominent abolitionists, including writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson.

But Wehner is no liberal. He is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative Christian who served as a speechwriter and senior adviser to President George W. Bush. But he became one of the first senior Republicans to see the dangers posed by a Trump presidency and wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in January 2016 titled: “Why I Will Never Vote for Donald Trump.” He said he would vote for “a responsible third-party alternative.”

And Wehner has only grown more alarmed about Trump’s threat to American democracy, which he expressed in last week’s op-ed. Wehner began by relating how political leaders of the Hutu ethnic group cultivated hatred toward the minority Tutsis in Rwanda by singling them out in rhetoric “as less than human,” eventually leading to the 1994 genocide in which an estimated 1 million people were killed, mostly Tutsis. He noted that one influential Hutu political leader referred to the Tutsi as “vermin.”

And Wehner said that he thought about the events leading to the Rwandan genocide when he heard Trump refer to his enemies as “vermin” in a Veterans Day speech. Trump said in Claremont, New Hampshire:

“We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country—that lie and steal and cheat on elections. They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”

Wehner wrote:

Trump’s rhetoric is a permission slip for his supporters to dehumanize others just as he does. He portrays others as existential threats, determined to destroy everything MAGA world loves about America. Trump is doing two things at once: pushing the narrative that his enemies must be defeated while dissolving the natural inhibitions most human beings have against hating and harming others. It signals to his supporters that any means to vanquish the other side is legitimate; the normal constraints that govern human interactions no longer apply. …

That is the wickedly shrewd rhetorical and psychological game that Trump is playing, and he plays it very well. Alone among American politicians, he has an intuitive sense of how to inflame detestations and resentments within his supporters while also deepening their loyalty to him, even their reverence for him.

After citing Trump’s numerous anti-democracy excesses, Wehner called out those in the Republican Party who, though they know better, have accommodated themselves to “a profoundly damaged human being, emotionally and psychologically.”

And he also expressed alarm about the continuing overwhelming support among white evangelical Protestants, one of the GOP’s most loyal constituencies, for Trump and MAGA world. He noted that in one survey, nearly one-third of white evangelicals expressed support for the statement, “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”

Wehner wrote:

It is a rather remarkable indictment of those who claim to be followers of Jesus that they would continue to show fealty to a man whose cruel ethic has always been antithetical to Jesus’s and becomes more so every day. Many of the same people who celebrate Christianity’s contributions to civilization—championing the belief that every human being has inherent rights and dignity, celebrating the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount and the parable of the Good Samaritan, and pointing to a “transcendent order of justice and hope that stands above politics,” in the words of my late friend Michael Gerson—continue to stand foursquare behind a man who uses words that echo Mein Kampf.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Taking a stand for conscience, even long after one should have, is always the right thing to do.

in his op-ed, Wehner also mentioned how Trump once described the press as “truly the enemy of the people.” And he recalled that Trump once demanded that the parent company of MSNBC and NBC be investigated for “treason” over what he described as “one-side[d] and vicious coverage.” Trump’s Truth Social post on Saturday lashing out at The Atlantic and its publisher, Powell Jobs, by name has to be seen in that context. 

On Monday morning, Wehner appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” After host Joe Scarborough sharply criticized Trump’s threatening rhetoric as “evil,” Wehner piled on about the disgraced former president who remains the GOP presidential front-runner despite two impeachments and four criminal indictments. 

"There is a long history of this dehumanization, these passions consuming people, including people of faith. That's why I think there has to be such a pushback from others, to try, in a sense, to shake them and say, 'Do you know what you're doing? Do you know what you're a part of? You've jettisoned everything you claim to most cherish in your life to make inner peace with this man who is a sociopath, an unfiltered sociopath.'

"And he is undisguised … in who he is and what he wants to do. That not only pushes them away, but it brings them toward him. It is just a sickening episode in the history of American politics and the history of American Christianity."

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