During the same February 2021 impeachment trial speech in which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called Donald Trump "practically and morally responsible" for the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, McConnell also argued that impeachment alone was never intended to be "the final forum" for justice.
"Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office—as an ordinary citizen," McConnell said as he sought to explain away the vote he had cast to acquit Trump.
"We have a criminal justice system in this country," McConnell continued. "We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one."
Yet on Tuesday when McConnell was asked if he still believes Trump isn't immune from prosecution, McConnell dodged the question, choosing instead to reframe the legal query as an electoral matter.
"Well, my view of the presidential race is that I choose not to get involved in it, and comment about any of the people running for the Republican nomination," McConnell responded.
If anyone wonders why Trump now owns the GOP, they need look no further than the feckless leadership of McConnell, who has failed at every turn to challenge Trump's takeover of the party.
It's a point former Rep. Liz Cheney has made repeatedly during her book tour for "Oath and Honor." In the book, Cheney writes that McConnell originally seemed "firm in his view" that Trump should be impeached. But as the vote approached, he got squishy and ultimately folded.
“Leader McConnell, who had made a career out of savvy political calculation and behind-the-scenes maneuvering, got this one wrong,” Cheney writes.
After years of McConnell worship by Beltway journalists, the fact that he 100% whiffed on the most consequential issue of our time might finally be sinking into the psyche of some political journalists and analysts.
As former U.S. attorney, deputy assistant attorney general, and “Talking Feds” host Harry Litman noted this week on NPR's “Trump Trials” podcast, we would never be here if McConnell hadn't "blinked" on convicting Trump.
"When you think of all the forks in the road over the last several years, that one moment with McConnell who was obviously saying that [Trump] was guilty and should have been convicted, stands out to me as the absolute road not taken," Litman observed.
That would have been the most "straight-forward" and appropriate way for McConnell to have "solved this national nightmare," Litman added, "and he blinked."
Campaign ActionThe Republican House Homeland Security Committee will kick off the new year in a complete waste of time and energy with its first hearing in its impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The charges are ”failed leadership and his refusal to enforce the laws passed by Congress,” and are not real. This is, as New York Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman told reporters Tuesday, “an embarrassment to the impeachment clause of the Constitution.”
It will not be taken up by the Senate, but will give Republicans on the committee (like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene) some camera time. That’s what matters most to them. You can follow along here and on C-SPAN.
Thompson: "This impeachment sham is not about facts. It's not about the law. It's about politics."
“You can not impeach a cabinet secretary because you do not like the president’s policies,” Thompson said, saying Republicans are just mad that President Biden is not “taking babies away from their mothers and putting kids in cages” like his predecessor.
Thompson making a good argument—with quotes from border control chiefs—that they need the funding and additional resources that Republicans have refused to provide. “Democrats want to give agents the resources they need to secure the border. Republicans do not.”
Thompson (that’s Bennie—forgive the typo in previous update) is listing the massive failures of the House GOP in 2023, arguing that this is all a political stunt for them to distract.
Rep. Benny Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the committee, opens. He starts with a recording of Green promising big political donors at a campaign event that he would impeach Mayorkas. This is a “preplanned political stunt,” to “keep that campaign cash coming.”
Chairman Green justifying this impeachment by insisting that what his calls Mayorkas’ incompetence is grounds, and the constitution doesn’t actually require “high crimes and misdemeanors” to impeach. Expect Democrats to come back hard on that point.
This is a long, but not exactly explosive, opening statement from Chairman Mark Green. He is showing a snippet from a previous hearing that he says is a smoking gun for Mayorkas lying to Congress which is pretty contorted and also mostly demonstrates that Republicans refused to allow him to actually answer the questions.
Chairman Green now focusing on humanitarian parole which the White House can use to allow immigration, saying that Mayorkas has abused it. This has emerged as a key fight in the Senate’s negotiations on immigration, the hostage Senate Republicans have taken in exchange for their votes on Ukraine aid. This hearing is probably also intended to give the Senate Republicans more (baseless) fodder for their fight.
Green showing video of news reports from Fox News and other right-wing outlets on “chaos” at the border, in case you were wondering if this was going to be a serious venture.
Trust the Republican House to make a difficult situation exponentially worse. Not content with establishing a new record of dysfunction and ineffectiveness in the first session of the 118th Congress, they’re kicking off the second year with another waste of precious time: a second baseless impeachment, this time against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It’s basically the first thing on their agenda when they return to work next week, with the first hearing scheduled for Jan. 10.
Never mind that the first deadline for a partial government shutdown is Jan. 19, and the House has made zero progress in meeting it. Instead, Republican leadership has chosen to start impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas for his “decision-making and refusal to enforce the laws passed by Congress, and that his failure to fulfill his oath of office demands accountability,” according to Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green of Tennessee.
Mayorkas’ team at DHS slapped back. “The House majority is wasting valuable time and taxpayer dollars pursuing a baseless political exercise that has been rejected by members of both parties and already failed on a bipartisan vote,” spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement.
The White House was equally scathing. “Actions speak louder than words,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement. “House Republicans’ anti-border security record is defined by attempting to cut Customs and Border Protection personnel, opposing President Biden’s record-breaking border security funding, and refusing to take up the President’s supplemental funding request.”
“After voting in 2023 to eliminate over 2,000 Border Patrol agents and erode our capacity to seize fentanyl earlier in 2023, House Republicans left Washington in mid-December even as President Biden and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate remained to forge ahead on a bipartisan agreement,” Bates said.
That Senate effort—which aims to find a compromise on immigration that will get enough Republican votes to allow aid to Ukraine to continue—is ongoing, though its success is far from certain since the House GOP is working to poison it. Senate Republicans will point to the House GOP’s opposition to justify their refusal to support any agreement. To that end, House Speaker Mike Johnson is spearheading another stunt, leading a delegation of about 60 Republican House members to visit a border facility near Eagle Pass, Texas, on Wednesday.
Johnson’s trip is fueling the hard-line stance on immigration, but he’s also painting himself into a corner with the House extremists. Catering to the hard right on immigration is extremely unlikely to help him avert a government shutdown—since a government shutdown is what the Freedom Caucus wants.
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a prominent member of the caucus, made that clear enough in a letter Tuesday, writing that he was skipping this trip to the border because it is not enough. "Our people—law enforcement, ranchers, local leaders—are tired of meetings, speeches, and press conferences,” he said, adding that the House should be “withholding funding for the vast majority of the federal government until it performs its basic duty to defend the borders of a supposedly sovereign nation."
The more Johnson bends to extremists on immigration, the more emboldened they will be to force a shutdown over the issue. He’s setting himself up for failure, for the very same trap that every Republican speaker since John Boehner has fallen into. Either Johnson bucks the Freedom Caucus and risks being ousted like former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, or he allows a disastrous shutdown.
Meanwhile, there’s reality: In the past week, illegal border crossings have decreased. But reality isn’t likely to make any difference to Republicans; it rarely does.
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Campaign ActionIt’s keenly ironic that House Republicans acted on a raft of sketchy, Rudy Giuliani-exhumed allegations to launch a presidential impeachment inquiry in the very same week that he was ordered to pay $148 million for lying on Donald Trump’s behalf. But that’s the difference between our courts and our Congress. In court, you have to tell the truth.
Of course, every House Republican—to a person—is now doing what Rudy did years ago: Appeasing their ocher overlord by conjuring nonsense in a cynical bid to put the faux stink of corruption on President Joe Biden. We’ll have to wait to find out if those congressional fiends eventually get their comeuppance. In the meantime, we’ve got Sunday show clips! So let’s get on with it, shall we?
It’s been glaringly obvious for some time now why House Republicans are trying to impeach President Biden: It’s because Donald Trump wants them to. They’re wholly in thrall to a lifelong punchline who steals top secret government documents and sounds like Hitler slipped on the basement stairs and can’t get up.
Fortunately, some still see the current Republican Party for what it truly is: a pathetic cult of personality.
Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen appeared on “The Katie Phang Show” to discuss the GOP’s fake Biden impeachment, and he very quickly got to the crux of the matter.
PHANG: “Let’s start first … with the absurd impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Republicans on three House committees have been investigating President Biden and his son for months now with zero evidence of wrongdoing being discovered. Can you share with our viewers why there was a unanimous vote by House Republicans? Did you hear anything from your Republican colleagues on why they would do, across straight party lines, a vote in favor of this baseless inquiry?”
COHEN: “Totally political. Unfortunately, we have a child speaker. He went down to see his daddy, Donald Trump, at Mar-a-Lago, and he told him, ‘Go back to Washington and impeach Joe Biden. That will make me feel good because I was impeached twice, and I want to say he was impeached, too.’ So this is juvenile. It’s unfortunately an inexperienced speaker who’s dealing with an irrational man, and the Republican Party basically is responding to that as well. The MAGA Republicans do what Trump tells them to. So they’re going to do that, and they’re doing that with Ukraine, too. To keep his deal going with Putin that was so successful, him getting elected president, that he’s … [he doesn't want] to give Ukraine any money because he wants Putin to win the war and he wants Putin to help him in 2024. Trump’s looking at 2024 and Putin’s looking at posterity, and working together.”
Wow, that sure makes Republicans sound cynical and soulless, doesn’t it? But when you’re right, you’re right. And Rep. Cohen is most definitely right.
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If anyone knows about selling his soul to appease Trump, it’s Sen. Lindsey Graham. So it’s particularly noteworthy that even he can’t figure out what House Republicans are impeaching Biden over.
Graham joined Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” and was asked to weigh in on the GOP’s disingenuous impeachment push. It looked like he would have preferred to discuss just about anything else.
WELKER: “Okay, let’s turn to the other big story on Capitol Hill, the impeachment, of course—the impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Your colleague Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said that he does not see any evidence, quote, that the president is guilty of anything. Do you agree with him? Is there any evidence so far?”
GRAHAM: “You know, I haven’t really been paying that much attention to it. They have to prove that President Biden somehow financially benefited from the business enterprises of Hunter Biden. We’ll see.”
WELKER: “Have they done it yet, in your mind?”
GRAHAM: “If there were a smoking gun, I think we’d be talking about it ...”
Look, it was obvious from the outset that Republicans would try to impeach Biden for something. But this is really a stretch—particularly since Trump continually took money from foreign interests while he was cosplaying as president, and did so out in the open.
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Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tells the truth on exactly one topic: Donald Trump. And he didn’t start doing that until Trump decided he’d try to garrote American democracy. He was fine with Happy Meal Hitler trying to kill him and turning our country into a WWE cage match, but lying about the election and trying to overthrow the government were the final straws. Which is good, of course. He’s ahead of the curve as far as Republicans go. That said, as the following clip shows, Christie always knew about Trump’s strong affinity for indiscriminate murder enthusiast Vladimir Putin, and he still tried to get Trump reelected.
Go figure.
Christie joined Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” to warn America about Trump’s increasingly authoritarian rhetoric.
TAPPER: “Gov. Christie, you just heard Donald Trump approvingly quoting Vladimir Putin about American democracy, about the American legal system, attacking the criminal charges against him and the ‘rottenness’ of the American political system, quote, unquote. What’s your reaction?”
CHRISTIE: “My reaction is that he gets worse and worse by the day, Jake. And voters better start paying attention to exactly what he’s saying. He has always been approving of Putin right from the beginning of his presidency. That was something that he and I had regular arguments about going all the way back to 2017. And the fact is that—Vladimir Putin as an expert on democracy? This is a guy who doesn’t even know what democracy is and, quite frankly, has spent most of his life trying to undercut democracy all over the world, and Donald Trump is citing him as his expert witness that he’s being persecuted and is innocent. Look, this is a guy who just believes ‘woe is me, woe is me, I can’t believe that I got caught.’ But let’s remember something, and everyone needs to know this. It’s not going to be Vladimir Putin on the witness stand in Washington, D.C., this spring. It’s not going to be some left-wing prosecutor making the case. Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, has accepted immunity. I did this for seven years, Jake. The reason he’s accepted immunity is because he has admitted he had committed crimes himself, or he wouldn’t need immunity. And he’s going to testify that Donald Trump committed crimes on his watch—a founder of the Freedom Caucus, his former chief of staff who he called the next James Baker. Donald Trump realizes the walls are closing in. He’s becoming crazier. And now he’s citing Vladimir Putin as a character witness, a guy who’s a murderous thug all around the world. It’s time to send Donald Trump back to Mar-a-Lago permanently.”
Hey, thanks for piping up, Chris! Better late than never, right?
Then again, it’s kind of soothing to hear an ex-prosecutor describe exactly how much legal peril Trump is in these days. Hopefully, at least one of the four criminal cases against Trump sees the light of day before he has a chance to send his tank columns into Fulton County, Georgia.
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Speaking of Putin, his American Super PAC—aka the GOP—is doing all it can these days to support his Ukrainian war effort. House Republicans are holding up aid to Ukraine so they can play political games with our southern border—a cynical tactic that could help them get elected, which in turn would help Putin, who would then further interfere in our elections on their behalf, and on and on into infinity.
Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen joined Jon Karl on ABC’s “This Week” to discuss this ongoing betrayal of our ally on Putin’s behalf.
KARL: “What do you think of this idea of having significant changes to the border tied to funding for Ukraine and Israel? Among the changes that Republicans have been demanding are changes to our asylum laws—making it harder for people to declare asylum, restricting that. And even, you know, Republicans want a return to Remain in Mexico, the policy of the Trump administration, which is ‘ask for asylum before you come to the United States and come after, or if, it’s been granted.’”
VAN HOLLEN: “Well, first of all, I think it’s essential that we provide military assistance to Ukraine. This is a pivotal moment in American leadership and history, and we need to make sure that we help our Ukrainian friends against Putin’s aggression—not just to protect their freedom, but because it would send a terrible signal around the world to our allies who would no longer trust us, and to our adversaries, who would be emboldened if we’re not doing that. In terms of border security, I have to look at the details, and the big question, Jon, is, who’s at the table on the Republican side? I don’t mean the individual, but are they really working with the president to try to get border security? Because the president has proposed historical increases in resources for border security.”
KARL: “And they’re asking for policy changes more than resources.”
VAN HOLLEN: “So we have to look at it, you know.”
Well, Republicans ask for a lot of things. Most of those requests are either disingenuous or downright bonkers. After all, Republicans’ proof that Biden favors open borders is that his administration keeps arresting record numbers of border crossers and sending them back. Try to make sense of that one.
Meanwhile, comprehensive immigration reform would go a long way toward solving our problems at the border, but Republicans prefer they remain unsolved so Fox News can continue scaring its viewers with caravans of brown people. Because if conservatives can’t frighten people, all they’ve got left is a Hitler See ‘n Say as their putative presidential nominee and undisputed standard-bearer.
But wait! There’s more!
That’s all for now! Note: Sunday Four-Play will be on hiatus next week in honor of my annual holiday sugar coma. Hope to see you all again on the cusp of a new year.
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
As inflation continues to ebb and we begin to see truly gaudy economic numbers (a 3.7% unemployment rate, an almost unheard of 5.2% GDP growth rate, and a surging stock market!), President Joe Biden has a great story to tell. Trump also has a story to tell, but it’s not based on economic metrics so much as the pornographic Plinko game in his head.
When America expectorated Donald Trump from its quavering corpus in November 2020, he left office as the worst jobs president since the Great Depression. So when he talks about President Joe Biden potentially leading us into a new depression, he kind of—in a weird way—knows what he’s talking about.
And so on Wednesday, the same day the Dow reached an all-time high, Trump warned Iowa rallygoers that Biden’s economic stewardship will soon plunge us into another Great Depression. And it's possible that Trump knows something economists don’t and we’ll soon be standing in bread lines and scooping up Trump NFTs at bargain-basement prices. It’s also possible Matt Gaetz will win the Nobel Prize for beach.
In other words, don’t hold your breath.
RELATED STORY: Even Fox News is having trouble trashing Biden's economy
Watch:
But as Rolling Stone reports:
Trump, who accomplished the feat of becoming the first president since Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression to leave the country with fewer jobs by the end of his one-term presidency, claimed that the “Biden administration is running on the fumes of the great success of the Trump Administration.” He added, addressing his supporters: “Without us this thing would have crashed to levels never seen before, and if we’re not elected we’ll have a depression the likes of which I don’t believe anybody has ever seen… maybe 1929?”
While Trump’s economic legacy has been hotly debated, under his administration the unemployment rate surged to 14.7 percent in April [2020] and by the time he left office the following January, the rate had receded to 6.3 percent. Many economists have pointed to the former president’s disastrous leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic as having exacerbated the country’s economic downturn at the time.
By now, we should all be keenly aware that Trump just says stuff. Whether it’s true or not hardly concerns him. For instance, anyone who criticizes him—even a little—is automatically the worst person ever. Just ask super-overrated 21-time Oscar nominee—and three-time winner—Meryl Streep.
Case in point: In 2020, Trump predicted Biden would crash the economy if he won. (Narrator: He didn’t.)
But Trump’s latest statement is particularly risible given the current state of our economy, which has shown steady growth and improvement—despite those unavoidable spikes in inflation—since Biden fumigated the Oval Office nearly three years ago.
Furthermore? If we took Trump’s timeless advice, the House would definitely not be launching an impeachment inquiry into Biden for the high crime of being a Democrat in the White House. Consider this 2019 tweet (there’s always a tweet):
Of course, many Americans are only too happy to excuse Pervert Hoover’s awful economic legacy in light of the pandemic-related disruptions we experienced, which would have almost certainly challenged anyone in office at the time. Which is fair. It’s also fair to ask how much the Trump administration’s botched COVID-19 response led to our Great Depression-like economic numbers.
What’s clearly unfair, though, is blaming Biden for post-pandemic-related inflation while giving Trump a pass for the truly awful economy he left behind—especially since Biden has handled post-COVID price surges better than almost every other wealthy countries’ leaders.
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Meanwhile, in case you still doubt that Trump just regurgitates whatever barmy bits bedevil his brain from one moment to the next, he’s also still obsessed with the fact that he’s inferior to former President Barack Obama in every way. So much so that he feels the need to say outrageously untrue things in order to soothe his creaky ego.
At the same Iowa rally, Trump cited the professional—and very weird—opinion of Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, a former White House doctor, to claim he’s in better physical shape than Obama. Shocker: He couched this assertion in a signature “sir” story.
“He was Obama’s doctor, too, by the way,” the ex-real estate tycoon reminded the crowd at the Hyatt Hotel.
“I said, ‘Who’s healthier?’ He said, ‘Sir, there’s no contest.’ I won’t tell you the answer, but you know the answer, okay? It was me.”
He went even further, quoting his old physician as saying: “‘If he didn’t eat junk food, he’d live to 200 years old.’ That’s my kind of a doctor.”
On whether he believed his advanced years could become an issue – as he has repeatedly insisted is the case for 81-year-old Mr Biden – Mr Trump said: “I’ll be the first to know. But I feel that right now I’m sharper than I was 20 years ago, and I don’t know why.
That’s a mystery for the ages. And is it really possible he can spot the difference between a lion and a rhinoceros even faster than he could 20 years ago? Because that would be scary. Before you know it, he’ll be Bradley Cooper in “Limitless.” Or maybe the lab mouse in “Flowers for Algernon.”
Come to think of it, that seems slightly more on-brand.
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Campaign ActionCheck out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
House Republicans unanimously voted on Wednesday to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, despite no evidence of any high crimes or misdemeanors by the president. Also despite the fact that the face of their effort, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, has become a national laughingstock because of it.
But this isn’t about Biden. It’s about proving loyalty to Donald Trump, and plenty of Republicans will happily admit that. For example, when Rolling Stone asked what Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas hopes to gain through this, Nehls replied, “All I can say is Donald J. Trump 2024, baby.” GOP Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee made it clear they're doing the MAGA base’s bidding: “If we don’t go down these impeachment routes, a huge part of America is going to just say, ‘You know, we’re not supporting Republicans any more.’” In other words, they’re afraid of the MAGA base.
That makes the decision of the group now known as the “Biden 17” (following the expulsion of Rep. George Santos) even more questionable. For the 17 House Republicans who occupy districts that voted for Biden in 2020, it couldn’t be clearer that this is all about fealty to Trump, and they all happily signed on. They weren’t necessarily happy to talk about it, however.
Rep. Michelle Steel of California declined to talk to The Orange County Register about her vote at all. In a statement to the paper, California Rep. Young Kim pretended there was some higher principle involved about oversight: “This inquiry allows relevant committees to get more information on serious allegations, follow the facts and be transparent with the American people.” She also made it clear that she doesn’t sit on the committees, so it’s not her idea. But she voted for it anyway.
The New York freshmen among the Biden 17 were all for Trump, too. They also tried to dress it up and make it sound legitimate. “I think that the President needs to be held accountable and that there needs to be answers to some very serious questions regarding impropriety,” said Rep. Marc Molinaro. A spokesman for Rep. Anthony D’Esposito said they need to advance “this inquiry in a level-headed manner” because the allegations about Biden are “troubling.” Rep. Mike Lawler tried to minimize the vote. “Impeachment is a far ways off, but the inquiry is important,” he said.
Impeachment is entirely likely with this crew in the House. A conviction isn’t going to happen. The Senate won’t do that. There are few Republicans in the Senate who will straight-up endorse the idea without qualifications
They largely understand that while the MAGA base might be all wound up for it, the voting public as a whole is lukewarm about the idea at best, according to a recent Morning Consult poll. That includes independent votes, a plurality of which—43%—say the inquiry should not happen. Now that the inquiry is official, it seems likely that the non-MAGA American public is going to sour on it.
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Campaign ActionHouse Republicans voted unanimously Wednesday to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. They will live to regret it.
Even under the best and most convincing of circumstances, impeachments are typically unpopular. After Donald Trump sicced a violent mob on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, only a slender majority of Americans supported impeaching him. A Monmouth University poll conducted shortly after Trump's impeachment on Jan. 13 found that 56% of Americans favored his impeachment and Senate conviction, including 92% of Democrats but just 52% of independents, despite the Jan. 6 insurrection unfolding on live television for all of America to see.
Fast forward to this week, with Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado telling CNN Monday, "This is not the way to run a Congress. This is not the way to run a House. We should not be engaging in retribution politics, in retribution impeachments.”
Still, Buck couldn’t bring himself to buck his fellow Republicans on the party-line vote.
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa admitted Wednesday that Republicans had "no evidence" on which to conclude the president is guilty of any high crimes or misdemeanors.
"I'm going to follow the facts where they are, and the facts haven't taken me to that point where I can say the president is guilty of anything," Grassley told CNN's Manu Raju.
This impeachment should be embarrassing to Republicans, and yet the bubble of far-right politics has given them the courage of their fact-free convictions.
Democrats should thank them. After months of polling showing a tight 2024 presidential contest with whiffs of sagging Democratic enthusiasm for Biden's reelection, Republicans have handed Democrats a base-energizer.
Democratic voters will be rightfully outraged that Republicans would launch an inquiry when they have zero supporting evidence despite a year-long investigation into Biden’s supposed misdeeds that turned up squat.
Just wait for the polling. Republicans may be hermetically sealed from reality, but the majority of voters are not—particularly those in some 17 Biden-won swing districts that are currently represented by Republicans.
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