Trump makes election history with these shameful firsts

 If Vice President Kamala Harris had won the 2024 election, inauguration day in 2025 would have seen several landmark firsts in American history: the first woman, the first Black woman, and the first Asian woman—sworn in as president.

Instead, Donald Trump won, and he will be the “first” in far more embarrassing ways.

Trump will be the first president in American history who will be sworn in after having been impeached. Twice. Trump was impeached for his plot to use the powers of the presidency to pressure Ukraine into smearing President Joe Biden. Later, Trump was impeached for his role in whipping up his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump will also be the first inaugurated U.S. president with two federal indictments under his belt. He has been indicted for attempting to interfere in the electoral process in the 2020 election following his defeat against Biden. Trump was also indicted for improperly taking classified documents and keeping them at his Mar-a-Lago estate, notably in the bathroom next to the toilet.

At a more local level, Trump’s conviction in New York on 34 felony counts will go with him into the Oval Office. Trump made history when he was convicted by a jury of his peers for trying to influence the outcome of the 2016 election via hush payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

That presidential first will be paired with Trump’s upcoming sentencing for those convictions—the kind of thing even former President Richard Nixon did not have to contend with.

Trump will also be the first president to be found liable for sexual abuse. In 2023, a New York jury awarded writer E. Jean Carroll $5 million for Trump abusing her in 1996. The jury also found that Trump had defamed Carroll in repeated public statements personally attacking her and her allegations.

There has never been a president sworn in with racketeering charges hanging over their head, but Trump has broken through that barrier. He is currently facing charges in Georgia related to his schemes to subvert the 2020 election in that state. The Georgia prosecutor who brought the case against Trump, Fani Willis, was reelected on Tuesday night.

These blots on Trump’s record were known for months and in spite of them—perhaps even because of them—Republicans chose him as their nominee and never backpedaled even as more details of his actions became public.

Now he and the party are breaking new ground ahead of his second inauguration, but it is a far cry from breaking the glass ceiling.

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Watch: Right-wing Washington Post columnist quits and walks off livestream

Conservative radio host and columnist Hugh Hewitt has quit The Washington Post following a meltdown on a livestream during a discussion of Donald Trump’s election lies.

On Friday’s edition of the Post’s “Washington Post Live” stream, columnists Jonathan Capehart and Ruth Marcus spoke about efforts by Trump to sow doubt about the election process.

“We’re news people, even though it’s the opinion section,” Hewitt complained before noting the Trump campaign’s recently successful effort to extend application times in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

“I don’t appreciate being lectured about reporting when, Hugh, many times you come here saying lots of things that aren’t based on fact,” Capehart responded.

“I won’t come back, Jonathan,” Hewitt said, taking out his earpiece and walking off the broadcast.

The New York Post later reported that Hewitt had quit his position at The Washington Post, where he has been a columnist for years.

Trump has constantly promoted conspiracy theories around elections and how votes are counted, repeatedly lying that he won elections that he lost. He has even lied about his loss in the popular vote in 2016 after he won the Electoral College.

Hewitt has spent years using his position in the media to shill for Trump, after noting in 2016 that Trump did not have “the temperament to be president” and that if he won the Republican Party’s nomination, he was like “Stage IV cancer.”

Hewitt also claimed in 2020 that it wasn’t a big deal that Trump paid a reported $750 in taxes despite purportedly being worth billions, and claimed that Trump’s attempt to use his  presidency to dig up dirt on Joe Biden before he ran that year was a “nothingburger.” Trump was later impeached for abusing his power.

Despite this kind of rhetoric, Hewitt was frequently employed by outlets like MSNBC, NBC News, and The Washington Post. He has also been a contributor to Fox News, where promoting Trump is a key part of the operation.

Hewitt’s confrontation with the Post comes on the same day that the Trump campaign filed a frivolous complaint with the Federal Elections Commission to complain about Facebook ads purchased by the paper to highlight its reporting.

The Post purchased those ads following backlash to the decision by billionaire Post owner Jeff Bezos against publishing an editorial endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. More than 250,000 subscribers have dropped the paper since the announcement.

When she was asked about Bezos’ decision, Harris noted that he is a member of the billionaire “club” that stands to disproportionately benefit from the policies Trump hopes to enact if he is elected president.

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Trump shares totally normal fantasy of Liz Cheney facing a firing squad

 Donald Trump fantasized about guns being put in the face of former Rep. Liz Cheney during a campaign event on Thursday night.

“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her where the rifle’s standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about—you know when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said.

Cheney responded to Trump’s comments after the video was posted online.

“This is how dictators destroy free nations,” she wrote on X. “They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”

Ian Sams, a senior adviser for the Harris-Walz campaign, slammed Trump’s remarks in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday morning.

“Think about the contrast between these two candidates: You have Donald Trump, who’s talking about sending a prominent Republican to the firing squad and you have Vice President [Kamala] Harris talking about sending one to her Cabinet,” Sams said.

Trump’s comments come just days after he attempted to cast himself as a “protector” of women, “whether the women like it or not.” The venue for Trump’s attack on Cheney was an interview with disgraced former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has a long history of misogynist remarks.

Trump has expressed anger at Cheney for crossing the aisle and endorsing Harris’ presidential campaign. Cheney has said she backs Harris, despite disagreeing with her on a host of issues, because Trump represents a threat to American democracy.

At a campaign event in Wisconsin in early October, Cheney specifically called out Trump’s actions during and after the Jan.6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“He praised the rioters. He did not condemn them. That’s who Donald Trump is.”

Cheney was the vice chair of the Jan. 6 congressional committee that investigated the attack and was one of only two Republicans (the other was former Rep. Adam Kinzinger) willing to cross the aisle to do so. She was later defeated in Wyoming’s Republican congressional primary by a pro-Trump Republican, Rep. Harriet Hageman.

Both Cheney and Kinzinger also voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the Capitol attack. The vote was Trump’s second impeachment.

The former representatives are joined by a host of former Republican officials—including some who served in Trump’s administration—who are now supporting Harris’ campaign. 

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Read it and weep, MAGA: Trump meets dictionary definition of fascist

Retired Gen. John Kelly, Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, created a stir when he told The New York Times in an interview that Donald Trump met the dictionary definition of a fascist. Soon after, Vice President Kamala Harris said she agreed with the assessment, as have several other former Trump White House staffers who worked with Kelly.

Trump has repeatedly fumed about the moment, while his allies like House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have called on Democrats to stop echoing Kelly.

But a closer examination of the definition that Kelly appears to have cited, combined with Trump’s actions, behavior and rhetoric, show frequent examples of Trump living down to the standard cited by Kelly.

The dictionary with a definition that most closely matches Kelly’s argument is the Merriam-Webster definition of “fascism,” to which the page for “fascist” redirects.

Merriam-Webster: Fascism is “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual.”

From early on in his time as a political figure, Trump branded the effort to elect him as the “America First” movement. And he has invoked populist rhetoric, such as promising (and failing) to open U.S. factories while jobs significantly declined on his watch.

Trump’s “America First” approach has been more accurately reflected in his habit of abandoning long-term allies, such as his rhetoric denigrating NATO nations during his presidency. Trump also put America alone when he chose to abandon the Paris agreement on climate change, reneging on the commitment made under former President Barack Obama’s administration. Trump also chose to launch a trade war with China under the “America First” philosophy, and the net result was a costly pursuit of policy that did not contribute to a growing economy and instead cost taxpayers over $230 billion.

Merriam-Webster: Fascism is about a “a centralized autocratic government.”

In his time in office, Trump used his presidential powers to create harmful policies without congressional input. His administration implemented an executive order which attempted to restrict travel to the United States from nations with large Muslim populations.

Under Trump, the Department of Homeland Security instituted the family separation policy that took young migrant children away from their families at an especially vulnerable time. The Trump administration also implemented policies like the “1776 Report,” which sought to purge narratives about marginalized voices from school curricula. He is tried to limit the use of federal funds to promote diversity initiatives.

Merriam-Webster: Fascism features “a dictatorial leader.”

Trump has admitted to this one, with his promise to be a dictator on “day one.” But even before he was first elected president, Trump complained about accurate reporting with a threat to pull broadcast licenses following unfavorable coverage. Trump has returned to this argument lately, pushing for CBS News to have its license revoked after the network said it would fact check him.

Merriam-Webster: Fascism is “characterized by severe economic and social regimentation.”

Perhaps the starkest example of this under Trump is the 6-3 decision by the conservative majority of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, which has had the effect of rescinding abortion rights for millions of Americans. Trump praised the three justices he appointed, which made up half of that six-vote majority, for their purported “genius.”

He also infamously praised neo-Nazi protesters as “very fine people,” called on police to abuse people under arrest, and signed into law the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which disproportionately favored the ultrawealthy over the middle class.

Merriam-Webster: Fascism is about “forcible suppression of opposition.”

When he occupied the presidency, Trump had federal law enforcement tear-gas and forcibly remove protesters from Lafayette Square next to the White House so that he could pose before a nearby church while holding a Bible. In his capacity as president, Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate then-candidate Joe Biden and his family—an action that eventually led to Trump’s impeachment (the first of two).

In recent weeks—and at his racist Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday—Trump referred to his political opponents as the “enemy within” and has mused about using the military to go after them.

Trump’s actions and rhetoric bring clarity to Kelly’s remarks. No matter what the relationship between the two men was, the evidence shows Trump meeting the fascist definition line by line.

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McConnell called Trump a stupid narcissist but will vote for him anyway

Proving that a broken clock is right twice a day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell trashed former President Donald Trump in private following the 2020 election, calling Trump “stupid,” a “narcissist,” and a “despicable human being,” according to a soon-to-be-released biography of the Kentucky Republican.

McConnell’s frank assessments of the leader of the GOP were made in recorded diaries given to Michael Tackett, the Associated Press deputy Washington bureau chief, for his new McConnell biography titled “The Price of Power.” According to publisher Simon & Schuster, it’s based on “thousands of pages of archival materials, letters, and more than 100 interviews with associates, colleagues, and McConnell himself.”

In those diaries, McConnell said “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump was out of the White House, adding that Trump’s 2020 loss “only underscores the good judgment of the American people.”

"They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him," McConnell said.

Yet despite McConnell’s disdain for Trump, he gave up on the best opportunity to rid his party and the country of the man he called a liar when he voted against convicting Trump for inciting the violent and deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Had McConnell worked to rally the Republican senators he leads to vote to convict Trump on the single impeachment charge of inciting insurrection, Trump could have been barred from running for office again in the future. McConnell’s decision to let Trump slide helped pave the way for Trump to wage his current comeback bid. Trump has vowed to destabilize American democracy by threatening to jail his political enemies and using the military to go after American citizens whom he described as “the enemy from within.” 

What’s more, even though McConnell thinks Trump is “stupid” and a “despicable human being,” he endorsed Trump in his 2024 comeback bid, saying in March: “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

McConnell endorsed Trump because he is trying to prevent what he called his “worst nightmare” which he described as a Democratic sweep of the White House, the House, and the Senate. 

While McConnell has stuck by Trump, a number of other Republicans have said they won’t be voting for him and instead endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, declaring that they are putting “country over party.”

Those Republicans include: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Wyoming Rep Liz Cheney; former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois; former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan; Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general in former President George W. Bush’s administration; and former Trump White House aides Cassidy Hutchinson, Stephanie Grisham, and Olivia Troye, among others.

Harris and her campaign have been reaching out to Republicans, hoping that their defections from Trump could be decisive in what’s currently predicted to be a toss-up election in November.

She held a rally on Wednesday in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with over 100 Republicans who are supporting her campaign. Two of those Republicans, Bob and Kristina Lange, spoke at the event, describing themselves as lifelong Republicans who voted for Trump. 

“Never in a million years did either of us think that we'd be standing here supporting a Democrat. But we've had enough. We've had enough,” Kristina Lange said at the event.

If only McConnell had as much courage as the Langes. 

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Outside of his bubble, Trump flails at Univision town hall

Donald Trump participated in a town hall with voters hosted by Univision on Wednesday night, and the event was a showcase of the headwinds Trump faces when he ventures outside of his right-wing bubble.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump has rarely faced questions from those who aren’t already supporters, and he has largely avoided media outlets that do not have a conservative bias. The voters who spoke to Trump at the Univision event respectfully questioned Trump on important issues, but he often veered off into unrelated ranting or avoiding the subject.

Ramiro González, a former registered Republican, told Trump he was disillusioned by the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and Trump’s role in inciting the attack. He asked Trump to win back his vote by explaining his behavior during the attack and his mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump restated his claim that he did nothing wrong on the day of the attack, despite his speech that day telling supporters to “fight like hell.” Trump also lied and said there were no guns at the attack, but there were.

“That was a day of love,” Trump said, as González looked on skeptically.

Another voter asked Trump why he pressured Republicans to kill a bipartisan border-security bill. Instead of answering, Trump filibustered and discussed his support for “strong” borders and complained about crime in cities run by Democratic officials.

Trump also continued to promote the debunked racist conspiracy theory that he and running mate JD Vance have advanced. Trump told voters he claimed Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating domestic animals because “I was just saying what was reported,” adding that migrants “are eating other things, too, that they’re not supposed to be.”

Trump’s poor showing on Wednesday comes after Vice President Kamala Harris was the guest of a Univision town hall last week. At that event, Harris expressed sympathy for a woman whose mother died after her immigration status held up medical care.

The troubled outing for Trump also stands in contrast to his appearance at an all-woman town hall event on Fox News, which the network aired Wednesday morning. That audience was more receptive to Trump, but the network failed to disclose that the crowd was packed with supporters picked out by the Georgia Federation of Republican Women.

At around the same time as Trump’s Univision event, Harris sat for an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier. Despite his hostile questioning, Harris deftly handled the inquiry and even called out the network for deceptively editing comments from Trump.

Earlier on the day of Trump’s Univision town hall, which took place in Doral, Florida, the Harris campaign hosted a nearby press conference with families who had been impacted by Trump’s policy of separating families at the border.

“I had no bed sheets, no bed, no nothing,” a young man identified as Billy told reporters, recounting his experience in detention. He said he was held in a room where the temperature was set to around 54 to 55 degrees.

Trump’s family-separation policy was widely condemned across the world, and the Biden-Harris administration has since devoted resources to reunifying affected families.

 

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Prosecutors: Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ in failed bid to cling to power

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump laid the groundwork to try to overturn the 2020 election even before he lost, knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to crimes” in his failed bid to cling to power, according to a newly unsealed court filing from prosecutors that offers new evidence from the landmark criminal case against the former president.

The filing from special counsel Jack Smith's team offers the most comprehensive view to date of what prosecutors intend to prove if the case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election reaches trial. Though a months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself have chronicled in stark detail Trump's efforts to undo the election, the filing cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump's closest aides to paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who while losing his grip on the White House “used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.”

“So what?” the filing quotes Trump as telling an aide after being alerted that his vice president, Mike Pence, was in potential danger after a crowd of violent Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 to try to halt the counting of electoral votes.

“The details don't matter,” Trump said, when told by an adviser that a lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges wouldn’t be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing states.

The brief was made public over the Trump legal team’s objections in the final month of a closely contested presidential race in which Democrats have sought to make Trump’s refusal to accept the election results four years ago central to their claims that he is unfit for office. The issue surfaced as recently as Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate when Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, recounted the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, while Republican opponent, Sen. JD Vance, refused to directly answer when asked whether Trump had lost the 2020 race.

The filing was submitted, initially under seal, following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office, a decision that narrowed the scope of the prosecution and eliminated the possibility of a trial before next month's election.

The purpose of the brief is to persuade U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the offenses charged in the indictment are private, rather than official, acts and can therefore remain part of the case as it moves forward. Chutkan permitted a redacted version to be made public even though Trump's lawyers argued that it was unfair to unseal it so close to the election.

 

Though the prospects of a trial are uncertain, particularly in the event that Trump wins the presidency and a new attorney general dismisses the case, the brief nonetheless functions as a roadmap for the testimony prosecutors would elicit before a jury.

“Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith’s team wrote, adding, “When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office."

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional” and repeated oft-stated allegations that Smith and Democrats were “hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to cling to power." Trump, in a separate post on his Truth Social platform, said the case would end with his “complete victory.”

The filing alleges that Trump “laid the groundwork” for rejecting the election results before the contest was over, telling advisers that in the event he held an early lead he would “declare victory before the ballots were counted and any winner was projected.”

Immediately after the election, prosecutors say, his advisers sought to sow chaos in the counting of votes. In one instance, a campaign employee, who is also described as a Trump co-conspirator, was told that results favoring Democrat Joe Biden at a Michigan polling center appeared accurate. The person is alleged to have replied: “find a reason it isnt” and “give me options to file litigation.”

The filing also includes details of conversations between Trump and Pence, including a private lunch the two had on Nov. 12, 2020, in which Pence “reiterated a face-saving option” for Trump, telling him, “don’t concede but recognize the process is over,” according to prosecutors.

In another private lunch days later, Pence urged Trump to accept the results of the election and run again in 2024.

“I don’t know, 2024 is so far off,” Trump told him, according to the filing.

But Trump “disregarded” Pence “in the same way he disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies’ legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states — including those in his own party — who stated publicly that he had lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false,” prosecutors wrote.

The filing says by Dec. 5, the defendant was starting to think about Congress’ role in the process.

“For the first time, he mentioned to Pence the possibility of challenging the election results in the House of Representatives,” it says, citing a phone call.

Pence chronicled some of his interactions with Trump, and his eventual split with him, in a 2022 book he wrote called “So Help Me God.” He also was ordered to appear before the grand jury investigating Trump after courts rejected claims of executive privilege, giving prosecutors a first-hand account.

Prosecutors also argue Trump used his Twitter account to further his illegal scheme by spreading false claims of election fraud, attacking “those speaking the truth” about his election loss and exhorting his supporters to travel to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021, certification. They intend to use "forensic evidence” from Trump’s iPhone to provide insight into Trump’s actions after the mob of his supporters began to attack the Capitol.

Of the more than 1,200 Tweets Trump sent during the weeks detailed in the indictment, the vast majority were about the 2020 election, prosecutors say. They cite a slew of Trump tweets throughout the filing, including those falsely claiming Pence could reject electors even though the vice president had told Trump that he had no such power.

That “steady stream of disinformation” in the weeks after the election culminated in his speech at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, in which Trump “used these lies to inflame and motivate the large and angry crowd of his supporters to march to the Capitol and disrupt the certification proceeding,” prosecutors wrote.

His “personal desperation was at its zenith” that morning as he was “only hours from the certification proceeding that spelled the end,” prosecutors wrote.

Trump makes meeting with Ukrainian president all about Trump

 Donald Trump met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday and used the occasion to tout his poll numbers, complain at length about his first impeachment, and praise Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

“We’re leading in the polls,” Trump told reporters at Trump Tower in New York, as Zelenskyy looked on. This is false. Trump is behind Vice President Kamala Harris in most national polls and averages of those polls, and is also trailing in many swing state polls.

After acknowledging that the war in Ukraine is a “terrible situation,” Trump claimed he has had a “great relationship” with Zelenskyy and brought up his first impeachment.

Donald Trump: When they did the impeachment hoax, it was a hoax, just a Democrat hoax, which we won, one of the reasons we won it so easily is that when the president was asked—it was over a phone call—with the president, and he said, he could have grandstanded and played cute, but he didn’t do that. He said, “President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong.” He said it loud and clear. And the impeachment hoax died right there.

Trump was impeached in 2019 on the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The charges stemmed from Trump’s decision to initially withhold military aid to Ukraine while attempting to solicit political dirt on his rivals, like President Joe Biden. A key piece of evidence against Trump was a phone call in which he repeatedly pressured Zelenskyy to instigate an investigation into the Biden family, which Trump has repeatedly falsely categorized as a “perfect” call.

The articles of impeachment ultimately passed in the House and Trump was later acquitted on a party-line vote in the Republican-held Senate. Trump was also later impeached for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, becoming the only president in U.S. history to be impeached twice.

In addition to relegating domestic political battles, Trump also used the occasion of his discussion with the Ukrainian leader to reiterate his long-standing habit of saying good things about Putin—who launched an invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“[Putin] wants it to end, and he wants it to end as quickly as possible,” Trump said, adding, “I’m sure President Putin wants it to stop.”

According to the United Nations, over 11,520 civilians in Ukraine have been killed since the war began, with an additional 23,640 who have been wounded. The U.S. government has estimated a death toll of 500,000 for military troops of both nations.

Putin has not ceased his aggression despite global condemnation of his actions, including from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and other NATO allies.

Trump has threatened to cut U.S. aid to Ukraine if he wins the election and attacked Zelenskyy at a June rally as “the greatest salesman of all time” for securing financial support from the U.S.

“It never ends,” Trump complained.

By contrast, during her meeting on Thursday with Zelenskyy, Harris reiterated her support for Ukraine.

“The United States supports Ukraine not out of charity, but because it’s in our strategic interest,” she said.

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GOP held a hearing to bash Biden. Watch this Democrat turn the tables

GOP Rep. James Comer held a House Accountability and Oversight Committee hearing on Thursday titled, “A Legacy of Incompetence: Consequences of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Policy Failures.” The laughably biased display is the latest Republican attempt to bash President Joe Biden, tarnish Vice President Kamala Harris’ record, and bolster Donald Trump's flailing presidential campaign.

Not unlike the committee’s abject failure to find a single shred of evidence to impeach Biden, this new attempt did not go the Republican Party’s way. Instead of creating angry and aggrieved sound bites for MAGA minions to salivate over, the hearing was mostly a boring stream of conservative lies. 

Enter Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, who used his time to detail the Biden administration’s many accomplishments on behalf of the American people. Connolly enlisted Skye Perryman, CEO of public policy organization Democracy Forward and the only witness the Democrats were allowed to call during the hearing, as his willing accomplice in this brief history lesson.

He began by countering the GOP claims that the Biden administration’s environmental regulations preventing energy industries from drilling for oil willy-nilly are “impeding energy production.”

Not only are Trump and Republicans lying about how superior they are when it comes to American energy production, they are lying about the Biden administration’s historic success in reaching new levels of energy independence.

Connolly moved on from there, asking Perryman about the Trump administration’s attempts to pass an infrastructure bill.

Connolly: Did they ever pass an infrastructure bill?

Perryman: They did not.

Connolly: Did President Biden pass an infrastructure bill?

Perryman: He did.

Connolly: Is it also the largest infrastructure bill in American history?

Perryman: The Biden-Harris infrastructure bill is the largest in American history.

Connolly: And pretty comprehensive, covers lots of different kinds of infrastructure. Is that correct?

Perryman: Many infrastructure and lots of investment.

The Biden administration did indeed pass an infrastructure bill with nearly zero support from the Republican Party. 

Connolly then detailed the Trump administration's failures in Afghanistan, including the rushed withdrawal timeline that Republicans now decry and blame on Biden. Trump tried to make his already terrible plan catastrophic by ordering a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan after he lost the election in 2020. Thankfully, senior military staff did not follow through.

The GOP and Trump have also blamed Biden for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. So Connolly walked down memory lane to recall why, unlike Biden, Trump was first impeached in 2019. We all remember how Trump tried to extort Ukraine into interfering in the 2020 election by withholding weapons for the country’s defense.

“Would it be fair to say that that development, that threat and that withholding of weapons, might be construed—if you were Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin—as a sign of weakness on the part of Ukraine and a sign that maybe the United States wasn't going to be there should something bad happen between Russia and Ukraine?” Connolly asked.

“It seems plausible,” Perryman agreed.

Finally, in light of the right wing’s frequent fearmongering over nuclear war and Iran, Connolly gave everyone watching the hearing a quick history lesson.

Connolly: Iran and nuclear weapons: Was there not an agreement that the United States actually led that involved Russia and China, Europe and Iran, to limit nuclear weapon production in Iran?

Perryman: There was a historic agreement.

Connolly: And was it working?

Perryman: Yes.

Connolly: In all respects?

Perryman: I believe so.

Connolly: Inspected by IAEA [the International Atomic Energy Agency] and the Trump administration, and certified by both.

Perryman: Yes.

Connolly: Is that correct? And what happened to that treaty?

Perryman: President Trump pulled out.

Connolly:  And has Iran been less active in producing nuclear weapons, or more?

Perryman: Iran is now a greater threat because of that failure.

Connolly: So much for efficacy. Just thought I'd revisit that revisionist history.

Comer seems to have found a novel way to waste taxpayer money: using his position as chairman of the Accountability and Oversight Committee to nakedly campaign against the Biden-Harris administration and prop up Trump’s dogged quest to return to the White House.

If Thursday’s display was any indication, this latest effort will be about as effective as Comer’s last set of bogus hearings.

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‘I was stunned. Sickened’: Hillary Clinton shares her Jan. 6 story

In an interview on Thursday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed her family’s shock and anguish as they watched the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters.

Clinton appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” as part of a promotional tour for her new memoir, “Something Lost, Something Gained.”

“Bill [Clinton] told me that there were rioters who were doing what they thought to be Trump’s bidding, trying to interrupt the certification of the election in the Congress and were in full riot mode,” Clinton said. “Bill had his—literally—head in his hands, he just could not believe it. I was looking at a place I’d gone to work in for eight years, I was stunned. Sickened.”

Clinton also noted that her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, who grew up in the public eye and has had cordial relationships with members of both parties, joined her and her husband “in a state of deep, deep worry and despair” watching the events unfold.

Clinton said her family questioned Trump’s failure to call off his supporters as they ransacked the building.

“[Trump] was enjoying what he was watching on television, that’s the only conclusion one can draw,” Clinton said. She cited Trump’s support of “raw power, intimidation, domination” and praise for authoritarian leaders like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to explain the motivation for his inaction on “one of the worst days in American history.”

Seven people died as a result of the attack and at least 174 police officers were assaulted. Trump was impeached—for a historic second time—for inciting the attack, and has been charged with federal crimes for attempting to interfere in the election process.

During his current presidential campaign, Trump has said if elected he would grant pardons to Jan. 6 rioters that have been convicted.

At the Sept. 10 presidential debate, Vice President Kamala Harris said the Jan. 6 events were the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” and a key element of Trump’s presidential legacy.

Harris also said, “I was at the Capitol on January 6th. I was the vice president elect. I was also an acting senator. I was there. And on that day, the president of the United States incited a violent mob to attack our nation's capital to desecrate our nation's capital on that day.”

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