Congressman shreds Trump’s worst ‘ideas’ for border security

The House Homeland Security Committee convened on Tuesday to discuss and vote on two Republican-led articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The Democratic members of the committee decided to take a two-pronged approach to managing today’s proceedings.

First, they pointed out how overtly political this impeachment process has been, and second, Democrats stressed how Republicans spend most of their time and energy complaining about border security while fighting tooth and nail to stop anything from actually being done about border security. That obstructionism includes trying to impeach Mayorkas.

Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California used his time to detail how “Donald Trump and House Republicans also have their own ideas for the border” and went on to helpfully list these actual proposed solutions. 

So let's review the majority’s border ideas, that they've actually presented. Here they are:

Donald Trump actually has said that he wants to build alligator moats along the border. That's one of his incredible ideas. 

Another idea that Donald Trump has promoted is he actually wants to electrify the border fence, and maybe even put some spikes on the border. That's another Donald Trump and MAGA-majority border idea. 

Another idea, which I'm not sure how well it would go, is he wants to actually bomb northern Mexico with missiles. That's another Trump idea.

And finally, I think one of the ones that I think is the most grotesque, is suggestions that instead we should maybe just shoot migrants in the legs as they cross the border. So once again, the Donald Trump and MAGA plan is alligator moats, bombing northern Mexico, shooting migrants in the legs, and electrifying the fence, and putting spikes on them. That is the Donald Trump border plan. 

And so again, we are here today with these horrific ideas being presented constantly by the former president. This is all about trying to get Donald Trump reelected. Donald Trump himself is saying he wants no solutions this year out of the Congress. And Secretary Mayorkas and President Biden continue to offer solutions every day and are ready to actually talk about real immigration and border solutions in this country.

The Republican Party has admitted too many times that these committee hearings and impeachment pushes are entirely political maneuvers, fueled by petty revenge and attempted power grabs. These partisan performances have nothing to do with the checks and balances in our Constitution.

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It is primary season, and Donald Trump seems pretty low energy these days. Kerry and Markos talk about the chances of Trump stumbling through the election season and the need to press our advantage and make gains in the House and Senate. Meanwhile, the right-wing media world is losing its collective minds about Taylor Swift registering younger Americans to vote!

Watch: Republicans slammed for ‘debasing and demeaning’ the Constitution

On Tuesday, the House Homeland Security Committee met to discuss the Republican-created articles of impeachment against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The entire enterprise against Mayorkas has been an example of one of the most transparent weaponizations of impeachment provisions in our lifetime. 

Rep. Daniel Goldman decided to use his time to give a masterclass on how hypocritical, political, and ultimately dangerous this endeavor is, describing the proceedings as “completely debasing and demeaning the impeachment clause of the United States Constitution, and it is a gross, gross injustice to the credibility of this institution.” Goldman reminded the committee that impeachment has only been used against people who have abused their power and should not be used as a way to attack what you might believe to be “bad” policy. “That is for elections and that is for legislation,” Goldman continued.

He then drilled into the political nature of these proceedings, and how they are an attempt to give Donald Trump and congressional Republicans something to run on during this election cycle: “You are sitting here right now trying to impeach a secretary of Homeland Security for neglecting his duties literally while he is trying to perform his duties and negotiate legislation.” Finally, Goldman detailed the catch-22 of nongovernance being performed by the GOP, and how corrosive it is to our country.

So your own party is sabotaging and undermining this administration's efforts to address the border while you are trying to impeach him by saying that they're not addressing the border. The hypocrisy is the least of it. Your attack on the rule of law and our democracy is the worst of it. And you better be careful about the bed that you make. I yield back.

Mayorkas has been a publicly convenient symbol for Republican attacks on immigration policy. No matter how jaw-droppingly obvious the fallacy of their attacks may seem, it is all that they’ve got. Since the GOP continues to fail to gin up enthusiastic electoral support from its voters by way of culture wars attacking trans children and banning books on race and history, trying to impeach Mayorkas has become their substitute for doing anything substantial about our country’s immigration policies.

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New letter exposes Republicans’ latest absurdity in their impeachment stunt

The Republican-led House Homeland Security Committee kicked off the new year by wasting everybody’s time with new impeachment hearings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. And on Wednesday, Chair Mark Green sent a letter to Mayorkas asking that the secretary provide written testimony since he “declined to appear” before the committee.

But that’s not exactly true. Also on Wednesday, NBC News obtained a letter from DHS contradicting Green’s assertion that Mayorkas “declined” anything. According to NBC, after the Republican-led committee originally requested that Mayorkas testify in person on Jan. 18, DHS replied that the secretary could not testify on that date due to scheduling conflicts. Specifically, Mayorkas would be hosting a delegation from Mexico to discuss immigration issues. In other words, the exact issue Republicans are pretending to be interested in working on as lawmakers.

In the letter, DHS explained that Mayorkas remained willing to testify in front of the committee at another date, but as DHS spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg described it in a statement following Green’s letter, Republicans’ “rush to impeach” Mayorkas seems to be taking precedence over having a reason to impeach him.

This is just the latest example of Committee Republicans’ sham process. It’s abundantly clear that they are not interested in hearing from Secretary Mayorkas since it doesn’t fit into their bad-faith, predetermined and unconstitutional rush to impeach him. Last week, the Secretary offered to testify publicly before the Committee; in the time since, the Committee failed to respond to DHS to find a mutually agreeable date.

Instead, they provided this offer of written testimony to the media before any outreach to the Department. [Homeland Security Committee] Republicans have yet again demonstrated their preference for playing politics rather than work together to address the serious issues at the border.

Mayorkas has long been a target for the do-nothing Republicans in Congress because immigration has been an amorphous boogeyman they use to (successfully) frighten their base. Sometimes, though, Republican lawmakers can’t keep their conspiracy theories straight, such as when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene mistakenly claimed during another hearing that the FBI was part of the Department of Homeland Security.

As a DHS official told NBC, Mayorkas has testified 27 times in 35 months—more than any other Biden Cabinet official—and has answered hundreds of questions concerning immigration and the southern border. The first two-hour hearing that Green chaired last week was unable to bring up a single piece of evidence that might rise to the level of impeachment.

Green’s choice to try and paint Mayorkas as dodging these circus-like impeachment proceedings is possibly twofold: It allows Republicans a chance to throw suspicion on Mayorkas’ as guilty of something while also ensuring that the secretary won’t publicly embarrass them the way he recently humiliated Sen. John Hawley.

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Republican Rep. Andy Ogles faces serious ethics complaint

An ethics complaint filed by the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group, is calling for a federal investigation into Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee. The complaint asks that Ogles be investigated for the more than “$1 million of financial disclosure discrepancies [that] provide reasonable basis for OCE to investigate whether Rep. Ogles complied with the Ethics in Government Act (‘EIGA’) and House rules.” The Campaign Legal Center was founded by Trevor Potter, a former GOP commissioner on the Federal Elections Commission. Potter is still the watchdog’s president.

The complaint also requests an investigation into Ogles’ finances in light of the fact that “Rep. Ogles’ financial disclosure statements do not include the assets that he purportedly used to personally loan $320,000 to his campaign committee in April 2022.” The complaint goes on to explain that Ogles provides no sources for where he got that money. This mysterious loan first raised flags in November after it was reported that Ogles has not disclosed any “substantial investments,” nor has he reported even having a savings account.

Adding to the mystery was Ogles' omission of a $700,000 line of credit he reportedly opened in September 2022 with FirstBank. Ogles’ campaign responded to initial financial questions back in 2022 by claiming there were “issues retrieving bank records.” I guess these records are still hard to find.

Last year, Nashville’s NewsChannel 5 did a series of investigative reports on Ogles that raised all kinds of serious ethics questions. The complaint cites the results of these investigations as proof of a pattern of lying on the part of the congressman. The questions being raised about Ogles’ financial dealings are beginning to resemble those that eventually led to the recent expulsion of George Santos.

Some of the questions brought up during the investigation include:

  • Why did the Tennessee congressman lie repeatedly about his educational background, claiming he was an “economist” and allegedly lying about doing graduate work at prestigious business schools at universities like Vanderbilt and Dartmouth?
  • What happened with the missing $23,575 he raised for a children’s burial garden back in 2014?
  • What about the time he described himself as “a former member of law enforcement” who had done work "in international sex crimes, specifically child trafficking,” even though there is zero evidence in his résumé of any of those things?

Donald Trump’s swamp talk seems to have only drawn more and more swampy creatures into the Republican orbit. The CLC summarizes it best with the sentiment that “the similarities between Rep. Ogles and Rep. Santos should not be ignored.”

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GOP congresswoman defends Trump’s Nazi talking points

Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York went on CNN Monday evening to defend Donald Trump’s recent fascist rhetoric. Specifically, Trump’s transparent use of Nazi references to racial impurity, saying things like immigration is “poisoning the blood of our country.” 

Host Abby Phillip attempted to get Malliotakis to admit that, at the very least, Trump’s repeated use of authoritarian rhetoric was worrying, reminding her that Malliotakis’ own origin story includes being the daughter of a Cuban refugee. Malliotakis didn’t see it that way:

Abby Phillip: Let's talk for a second here about the fact that Trump continuously, repeatedly uses this rhetoric that now maybe you could say the first time he didn't know the references, the parallels to authoritarians—he knows now. Why does he keep saying it over and over again?

Nicole Malliotakis: Well, look, I just think he's trying to bring attention to the issue.

Is there anyone more narrow-minded and group-thinky than a Republican lawmaker? In Malliotakis’ defense, she has maintained a rather stolid hypocrisy when it comes to immigration policy. Her 2022 campaign for the 11th District of New York consisted of attacking asylum-seekers.

What makes this an extra-special kind of hypocrisy is that Malliotakis is willing to defend the heinous rhetoric of Trump, a man she herself claimed in 2017 to have regretted voting for. Of course, that was when she was running for mayor of New York City, a place where Trump isn’t well liked.

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Sen. Ron Johnson goes on CNN, makes wild election claims, then struggles to provide proof

Sen. Ron Johnson went on CNN Monday evening to talk about the Republican Party’s continued attempts to tie providing aid for Ukraine with conservative bogeyman border policies. At the end of the interview, host Kaitlan Collins mentioned recent news about Wisconsin’s 10 fake Donald Trump electors cutting a deal in their civil case. Collins wanted the senator to weigh in on calls for one of the fake electors, Robert Spindell Jr., to resign his position on the state elections commission.

Johnson is nothing if not duplicitous and he stayed on brand, citing “all kinds of irregularities in Wisconsin in the 2020 election” and saying that having “an alternate slate of electors” was some kind of common practice, “just like Democrats have done repeatedly in all kinds of different states.” Collins reminded Johnson that these fake electors have admitted that what they did was at the very least “improper,” and Johnson responded by saying all the civil cases against them were “a travesty of justice.” That led to this exchange:

Collins: You think it's fine that someone who tried to overturn a legitimate election is still on a board that helps certify [elections]--

Johnson: –Democrat electors have done that repeatedly. Democrats have done the same thing.

Collins: Which one? In Wisconsin—fake slates of electors?

Johnson: No, it's, it's happened in different states …

Collins: Which ones, sir?

Johnson: I didn’t come prepared to give you the exact states but it’s happened repeatedly. It has happened repeatedly, just go check the books.

Collins: Which books?

Johnson: There have been alternate slates of electors by Democrat electors in our history. Again, you didn't—this wasn't what this interview is going to be about. I'll come and I'll provide you that information.

Not long after Johnson’s pathetic appearance, the senator went to his X (formerly Twitter) account to post his “examples,” which included Democratic reps objecting to the election results in 2017 and did not involve fake electors. Surprisingly, this also didn’t include creating a revolt at the Capitol building, and Donald Trump was certified without anyone being killed or injured.

His other example is the 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Nixon had lost the election, but Hawaii was initially called for Nixon by 140 votes. Three Democratic electors chose to sign a slate saying Kennedy won. Of course, at that time there was a recount underway that would eventually reveal Kennedy got more votes.

Johnson’s part in the attempted coup on Jan. 6 has been the subject of much speculation, as the things he’s said in public and his alibi do not square with the evidence. Johnson has been secretly recorded admitting that there was no election fraud, and definitely not the kind of Big Lie-mythologized fraud that might have actually reversed the outcome in Wisconsin.

Since the failed coup, Johnson has consistently tried to downplay the severity of what happened at the Capitol and across the country after the 2020 election.

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After embarrassing interview, James Comer runs to Newsmax to call CNN a ‘low-IQ audience’

 House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer went on CNN last Friday and gave a sad defense of his tax-dollar-wasting impeachment investigation into President Joe Biden. Host Jake Tapper’s willingness to ask about the glaring holes in Comer’s conspiracy theories once again exposed the absurdity of the pointless Republican witch hunt. It was embarrassing.

On Monday, Comer was forced to answer another hard question, this time from Newsmax host Rob Finnerty: How does the Kentucky Republican deal with the fact that half the country sees his investigation as a joke?

Rob Finnerty: [Tapper is] making your investigations sound like a joke, and he's trying to make you look like a joke. And then half of America sees that and they think your investigation is a joke. How do you work around that? How do you work through that?

James Comer: Well, that's the first time I went on CNN in three months. We thought we would give it a try. You know, Jake Tapper is an intelligent guy, but he's playing to a low-IQ audience.

A pretty famous study from the past decade shows that conservative ideologies and prejudice are both linked to low intelligence. These people then seek out their information from conservative propaganda outlets like Fox News and Newsmax, which, in turn, loops their poorly developed ideologies back to them, reinforcing the cycle. One of the best ways to manage people with poorly thought-out ideologies is to tell them everybody else is stupid—with their facts and all. 

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Markos and Kerry give their thoughts on what the country is facing in 2024. The Republican Party is running on losing issues like abortion and repealing the ACA—with no explanation of what they plan on replacing it with. Trump has a lot of criming to atone for, and the Republican platform remains set on destroying democracy.

Comer isn’t even trying as Jake Tapper makes fun of his Biden conspiracy theory on live TV

On Friday, Rep. James Comer brought his catastrophic mess of an impeachment inquiry to CNN. Speaking with host Jake Tapper, the chair of the House Oversight Committee couldn’t even be bothered to pretend he had any evidence against President Joe Biden and his family and instead tried to promote such a twisted joke of a conspiracy theory that Tapper just made fun of him by repeating it back.

The theory, of course, is that Hunter Biden has been indicted in order to protect him … from indictment.

James Comer: My concern is that [special counsel David] Weiss may have indicted Hunter Biden to protect him from having to be deposed.

Jake Tapper: Ahh yes, yes! He indicted him to protect him. Yes, the classic rubric. He indicted him to protect him. I got it.

Comer: This whole thing, Jake, has been about a coverup, you know, you’ve got two …

Tapper: That's why he decided to do it? To protect him, to cover it up?

Comer:  Well, look, you indict him on the least little things, the gun charge and not paying tax …

Tapper: He's facing 17 additional years in prison! These are felonies.

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The audacity of cope: Good news for the country means sad Fox News personalities

Friday wrapped up a week of good news for America. The Department of Labor reported that 199,000 jobs were added in November, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.7%. And unfortunately for Republican messaging, a steep recession has not materialized.

Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, who promoted dire predictions of a recession, is now managing that right-wing cope. “You gotta look at this jobs report as a big positive,” she admitted. “We’ve got more jobs created than expected.”

In other good (albeit frustrating) news, the Republican Party has yet to provide any meaningful evidence of financial wrongdoing on the part of President Joe Biden, even as the GOP presses forward on an impeachment inquiry. So while they all might like to believe that the current Democratic president of the United States is even one-eighth as corrupt a person as the disgraced former guy, he isn’t. Here’s “lousy reporter” Peter Doocy begrudgingly putting things into perspective for the audience.

The House Oversight Committee has been at this for years, and they have so far not been able to provide any concrete evidence that Joe Biden personally profited from his son Hunter's overseas business, but they are going to try again with this impeachment inquiry that is set to start next week.

The holidays are here. No matter what you and your loved ones celebrate, the gift of right-wing cope always warms the heart.

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Markos and Kerry give their thoughts on what the country is facing in 2024. The Republican Party is running on losing issues like abortion and repealing the ACA—with no explanation of what they plan on replacing it with. Trump has a lot of criming to atone for, and the Republican platform remains set on destroying democracy.

Rep. James Comer’s newest ‘smoking gun’ debunked in record time

Rep. James Comer put a considerable amount of product in his hair Monday before recording a video claiming to have new smoking-gun evidence of President Joe Biden’s corruption. Comer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, dramatically announced that “Hunter Biden's legal team and the White House's media allies claim Hunter's corporate entities never made payments directly to Joe Biden. We can officially add this latest talking point to the list of lies. Today, the House Oversight Committee is releasing subpoenaed bank records that show Hunter Biden's business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden.”

Sounds devastating. Right-wing media outlets excitedly pushed out the details, specifically that Hunter Biden set up “recurring payments” of $1,380 in late 2018. Besides being an extraordinarily small amount of money in the grand scheme of corruption, the thinnest digging revealed that Joe Biden was not president in 2018. In fact, deeper investigation reveals that Biden wasn’t even in any political office at the time!

Receipts were then posted that revealed Hunter Biden was paying his father back for helping to cover car payments while he was in between jobs. The three monthly payments totaled $4,140.

Thx to @yashar and @Fritschner for the heads up: these were reimbursements to Biden for car payments on a truck that Biden has paid while Hunter changed career paths. Big ol’ swing and a miss https://t.co/utabINBNWL pic.twitter.com/1LdwNj7sRB

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) December 4, 2023

Selling out our country for three monthly payments of $1,380, eh? Comer’s list of embarrassments and Rep. Jim Jordan’s disastrous failure of an impeachment inquiry continues to float about as high as a whoopee cushion filled with water. In fact, every single smoking gun these guys announce seems to prove that President Joe Biden has been a very supportive father. He sure hasn’t helped his son-in-law get $2 billion in Saudi money, but we all can’t be that good at “winning.”

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