GOP impeachment inquiry pronounced dead and ‘dunzo’ after latest hearing flops

On Wednesday, the Republican Party attempted, once again, to slander President Joe Biden. Using their control over the House Oversight Committee to hold yet another stunt hearing, ostensibly in their investigation of the president for possible impeachment. The hearing went so poorly that many are calling the evidence-free impeachment shenanigans officially dead. 

The fact that Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz wore a Vladimir Putin Halloween mask to the committee hearing, in a playful bit of political theater, illustrated how absurd this farce has become. Media Matters’ Matthew Gertz pointed out that even Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Donald Trump’s bestest buddy, chose to bury the hearing on his nightly show. If you can’t get the same bozos who ran your evidence-free propaganda to run it anymore … them’s the breaks. 

Rep. Eric Swalwell used his time to pronounce the sham inquiry “Dunzo. Bye bye. Rigor mortis. Lights out. Curtain drop. Mic drop. Peace. Adios. Sayonara. Au revoir. Or a language that you all understand, ‘Do svidaniya.’” 

Swalwell even put a time on the death of the impeachment!

Like previous Republican-led hearings on the matter, this latest hearing was one Democratic representatives pulled no punches. Rep. Jasmine Crockett took her time to remind everyone that Hunter Biden testified for hours, and the GOP got nothing out of it. Crockett pointed out that the only person Republicans seem to be unwilling to subpoena is the person who generated the “evidence” they claim they are investigating: Rudy Giuliani. 

“But, you know, kind of like when we were trying to get his cell phone, they shut it down, right?” Crockett said. “Like, they don't want the facts.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin allowed former Trump aide Lev Parnas to give some of the most damning testimony, casting absolute doubt on Giuliani’s “fact-finding” mission in Ukraine, and highlighting the complicity of right-wing propaganda operators like Sean Hannity in spreading misinformation.

The GOP “case” against the Biden family has consisted of disappointing "bombshell" evidence and star witnesses who contradict the Republican narrative. Last week, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee brought in former special counsel Robert Hur in an attempt to characterize the president as mentally unfit for office. It went poorly. Democratic members of Congress put together not one, not two, but three supercuts showing how bizarre Donald Trump is, once again making Biden’s competency as a world leader that much more striking.

Thoughts and prayers.

The president of the Center for American Progress, Patrick Gaspard, joins us to give his thoughts on what the Republican Party’s actual message is.

Campaign Action

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.

Campaign Action

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.”

Campaign Action

Rep. Crockett says House GOP ‘pushing lies and lunacy on behalf of a multitime loser’

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas stepped into the spotlight during the Republican sham-impeachment inquiry on Thursday. She began by modestly reminding everyone that the so-called “evidence” the Republicans keep pointing to is not evidence at all, and never has been. “Repeating the same lies will not somehow turn them into truths,” she said. Then Crockett turned up the heat: “Kind of like the election that Trump lost. Say it with me: He lost it. Repeating the same lie that he won wasn't going to turn the election around.” Hot enough? How about this: “The ‘lost’ in this chamber keep pushing lies and lunacy on behalf of a multitime loser.”

That’s minute one. Crockett proceeded to drop microphones all over the inquiry chamber as she spent the rest of her time hammering home every fact out there about Donald Trump, his dirty dealings, and the charges against him while continuously throwing well-deserved shade at Republicans. Crockett joked that if Republicans “continue to say ‘if’ or ‘Hunter,’ and we were playing a drinking game, I would be drunk by now.”

One of the highlights was when Crockett held up a picture of the boxes of classified documents discovered by the FBI in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago bathroom, saying that when Democratic officials “start talking about things that look like evidence, [Republicans] want to act like they blind.” She then turned the gas all the way up, motioning to the image she was holding up: “They don't know what this is. These are our national secrets. Looks like—in the shitter to me.”

And she didn’t stop there.

Enjoy.

Crockett: Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Before I begin my questioning, I want to remind everyone that the information recorded in the FBI Form 1023 that my Republican colleagues keep citing is not evidence of anything. This form reflects the years-old secondhand unverified information from a Ukrainian oligarch as relayed to the FBI by a confidential human source. These unverified second-hand allegations have been repeatedly debunked and undermined, including by the confidential human source who relayed this information to the FBI.

The tip, recorded in the Form 1023, was thoroughly explored by the U.S. attorney handpicked by Donald Trump, which was Attorney General William Barr and the assessment was closed. Finally, Devin Archer, Hunter Biden's former business partner who worked with the Ukrainian oligarch in question, told this committee in a transcribed interview in July that he had no knowledge of any such payments allegedly described in this form.

Repeating the same lies will not somehow turn them into truths. Kind of like the election that Trump lost: Say it with me. He lost it. Repeating the same lie that he won wasn't going to turn the election around. The “lost” in this chamber keep pushing lies and lunacy on behalf of a multitime loser. So if we gon’ talk about China, let's go ahead and talk about China.

And let's talk about the dealings. And let me point out the fact that right now each of you has admitted that none of you are fact witnesses. We walked in without facts. And unfortunately, because what we say isn't necessarily evidence, we have wasted the American people's time and we are going to walk out of this chamber, and we still have no facts that are leading to anything.

But let me give y’all a little bit of tea while we're here. So: I have a document that I will ask for unanimous consent to enter into the record. It’s a fact sheet on President Trump's shady business dealings with the Chinese government.

Comer: What are you entering in? A record from who?

Crockett: This is from the Congressional Integrity.

Comer: Congressional Integrity Project, the dark-money PAC. I object. Object to that too.

Crockett: Of course y’all are going to object, but we gon’ talk about it. So it says Trump has extensive financial ties to the Chinese government. President Trump collected millions from Chinese government-owned entities while in office: ‘“I have the best tenants in the world.”President Trump was well aware of the multiple million-dollar lease to Chinese interests. President Trump promised to donate foreign government profits while in office, but he donated less than a third of his proceeds from the Chinese government.

President Trump maintained three foreign bank accounts while in office, including one in China. President Trump's business with China raises legal and ethical concerns. President Trump: “President Xi loves the people of China. He loves his country, and he's doing a very good job.”

Let me tell you something: I don't want to talk about what y’all want to act like is some big mystery because we keep sitting here. And Professor Gerhardt, just just to be clear: As my colleagues have even tried to provide evidence, which they're not the ones to provide evidence. Have you ever heard them say if since we've been sitting here for I don't know how long?

Gerhardt: Yes, I. I've been taking a tally.

Crockett: Oh, okay. Can you show us what the tally is?

Gerhardt: More than 35 times the Republican witnesses and Republican members of the committee have used the word ‘if.’

Crockett: Thank you so much for that. Because honestly, if they would continue to say “if” or “Hunter,” and we were playing a drinking game, I would be drunk by now. Because I promise you, they have not talked about the subject of this, which would be the president. But let me tell you something that was so disturbing as I walked into this chamber today. As I prepared, I said, “What is the crime?”

Because when you're talking about impeachment, you're talking about high crimes or misdemeanors. And I can't seem to find the crime. And honestly, no one has testified of what crime they believe the president of the United States has committed. But when we start talking about things that look like evidence, they want to act like they blind. They don't know what this is.

These are our national secrets. Looks like in the shitter to me. This looks like more evidence of our national secrets—say on a stage at Mar-a-Lago. When we're talking about somebody that’s committed high crimes, it’s at least indictments.  Let's say 32 counts related to unauthorized retention of national security secrets. Seven counts related to obstructing the investigation. Three false statements. One count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.Falsifying business records.Conspiracy to defraud the United States.Two counts related to efforts to obstruct the vote certification proceedings. One count of conspiracy to violate civil rights.Twenty-three counts related to forgery or false document statements.Eight counts related to soliciting. And I could go on because he's got 91 counts pending right now.

But I will tell you what the president has been guilty of: He has, unfortunately, been guilty of loving his child unconditionally. And that is the only evidence that they have brought forward. And honestly, I hope and pray that my parents love me half as much as he loves his child. Until they find some evidence, we need to get back to the people's work, which means keeping this government open so that people don't go hungry in the streets of the United States.

And I will yield.

I could listen to this all day long.

Sign and send the petition: NO to MAGA impeachment. Focus on what matters.

Newsmax host draws mockery after he makes scene at McDonald’s and they called him a ‘male Karen’

Newsmax is to Fox News what movie theater pre-movie advertisements are to the movies being shown: inexplicably 10 to 15 years behind in the graphics department and production. Greg Kelly is one of the hosts of one of the shows that interview people like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and pretend she isn’t completely out to lunch in her ideas. But this morning Kelly’s got a gripe. It turns out that he claims to have gone to a McDonald’d and could not find a “MCFISH” on the menu. When he freaked out about this and “demanded to see the ‘manager,’” he says he was called a “MALE KAREN.” Are you confused? Here’s his exact tweet, verbatim, with all of his typing and spelling and factual errors, which he presented with a photo of the establishment he was railing against.

I just went to a MACDONALD’S and there was no MCFISH on the menu. When the hell did that happen? Is it permanently banned? Or is just my “local” MACDONALD’S. I demanded to see the “manager” but they accused me of being a “MALE KAREN” so i walked out.

Before we get into the fact that there is no such thing as a MCFISH sandwich, and in fact never has been; before we get into the fact that he misspelled a proper noun in a tweet—even though he also included a picture of the correct spelling of that proper noun—and before we wonder aloud about why he put the word “local” in quotation marks; let us all remember this Kurt Vonnegut quote: “Enjoy the little things in life because one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.” Twitter responded to this tweet to bring us all joy over the little things about Greg Kelly, male Karen.

First off, let’s just point out some of the glaring problems with this tweet.

Impressive. You both spelled McDonald's wrong and also complained about not getting a product... that doesn't exist. pic.twitter.com/uex6n37r0q

— Daniel Wexler (@WexlerRules) February 4, 2021

I just... like... THE PICTURE OF THE RESTAURANT SPELLED PROPERLY IS IN THE TWEET! And, even though he doesn't know it's called "Filet-o-Fish"... he intuitively thinks it should be called "McFish" not "MACFish" ... AND YET HE STILL DOESN'T GET THE NAME OF THE CHAIN RIGHT? https://t.co/sLTFvSsEax

— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) February 4, 2021

And there are questions to be answered by fake news host Kelly.

Things that never happened, for $100 Alex (RIP)

— Rich Swinton 🇺🇸 (@RicoSuaveJD) February 4, 2021

And some punch-up.

I just went to a WENDIES and there was no BACON DELIGHT on the menu. When the hell did that happen? Is it permanently banned? Or is just my “local” WENDIES. I demanded to see the “manager” but they accused me of being a “MALE KAREN” so i walked out. pic.twitter.com/UTtobEB35s

— Twice-Impeached, One-Term Trumpy (parody) (@outofcontroljb) February 4, 2021

I went to BURGER KANG once & the WHIPPER wasn't on the "menu" so I was like dudes what the "fuck" where is my WHIPPER but then they called me a "MAN HALLUCINATING IN A BURGER KANG" so I walked out and what day is it now?

— Mark Hughes (@markhughesfilms) February 4, 2021

And a throwback to a movie that will soon have a sequel.

I just went to a MCDOWELL’S and there was no BIG MAC on the menu. When the hell did that happen? Is it permanently banned? Or is just my “local” MCDOWELL’S. I demanded to see the “manager” but they accused me of being a “DISEASED RHINOCEROS PIZZLE” so I walked out. pic.twitter.com/ypKsmJJ9te

— Santa Claus, CEO (@SantaInc) February 4, 2021

And a refresher.

top 5 things here: 5. MCFISH (it's fillet-o-fish, dude) 4. MACDONALDS (...like, bro) 3. MALE KAREN 2. 9:58 AM 1. """""manager""""""

— Erikk (@erikk38) February 4, 2021

But what about Newsmax?

I can see why Newsmax gave you your own “show.” https://t.co/se20sHpPwE

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 4, 2021