Matt Gaetz’s impeachment schtick didn’t fly with CNN anchor

Posted on September 13, 2023 by Walter Einenkel

The main reason that Republicans and other conservative elected officials like to appear on Fox News and Newsmax while staying away from traditional media outlets: Their propaganda wilts under the softest pressure. On Wednesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz went on CNN to make his case for impeaching President Joe Biden. It didn’t go so great for the Florida man. This wasn’t anchor Abby Phillip’s first rodeo with a conservative trying to defend the indefensible.

Phillip understands that if she simply asks serious questions that are based in logic, Republicans like Gaetz will flail about helplessly (and sometimes angrily). The Achilles’ heel in the Republicans’ push for an impeachment inquiry is that they have no evidence of any crimes linking President Biden with his son Hunter’s business dealings—none at all. Phillip repeatedly reminded Gaetz of this very easy-to-understand fact, and Gaetz began flailing as expected, blathering about evidence that the Republicans’ own star witness contradicted in testimony.

Acting as if he was flabbergasted with Phillip’s inability to grasp the “evidence,” Gaetz stepped over the line, and Phillip shut down this one-man dog-and-pony show:

First of all, this is not about innuendo. It's not about what I believe. It's a question: Do you have evidence? If you had evidence that Joe Biden was linked to Hunter Biden's business deals in a way that is illegal, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You would probably have the votes for an impeachment inquiry, but you don't, because of people like Ken Buck and people like Don Bacon and many others in your conference.

Enjoy!

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Sign the petition: Denounce MAGA GOP's baseless impeachment inquiry against Biden

House Republican admits he can't find any Biden crimes

When you're defending Clarence Thomas, you know it'll end badly

Poll: Republicans clutch pearls over Biden’s age, shrug at Trump’s

Posted on September 13, 2023 by Kerry Eleveld

Election analysts and pollsters have clued in to a stubborn fact: Americans dislike that so many of the country's powerful politicians are, well, rather long in the tooth.

Broad voter disenchantment with aging politicians is proving particularly relevant to the 2024 presidential contest, which could feature a rematch between two candidates who have each spent roughly eight decades on the planet: President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Pundits are also quick to point out that, broadly speaking, voters are more concerned about 80-year-old Biden's age than 77-year-old Trump's age. Here's what they don't tell you: The main difference is that the Democratic Party isn't a cult.

In this month's co-branded Daily Kos/Civiqs poll, three-quarters of registered voters expressed concern about Biden's age "affecting his ability to serve as president," while roughly half said they were similarly concerned about Trump's age.

But the main reason for the difference stems from Republican voters mostly falling in lockstep behind Trump, with 71% saying they were "not concerned" about his age.

Among Democrats, however, a notably smaller 49% said they weren't concerned about the sitting president's age.

Here's the partisan breakdown on Trump:

Here's the partisan breakdown on Biden:

When Civiqs polling director Drew Linzer and I discussed the topic on this week's episode of The Brief, Linzer explained, "On the Republican side, these voters are committed to expressing good things about Donald Trump, period. No matter what we ask about."

Almost like a cult.

But on the Democratic side, there's "more willingness to be critical" in evaluating both Biden and Democrats more generally, Linzer noted.

All that said, in a potential head-to-head matchup, concerned Democrats are still going to vote for Biden over Trump.

"It doesn't mean they're not going to vote for Joe Biden. It just means that they're willing to be critical of Joe Biden," Linzer added.

It is worth noting, however, that young Democrats are the biggest skeptics of Biden's age, with 70% saying they are either very or somewhat concerned.

Here are the crosstabs on Democratic age groups:

Here's a clip of the segment from “The Brief,” in which I also razz Drew to spice things up a bit.

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Sign the petition: Denounce MAGA GOP's baseless impeachment inquiry against Biden

Kerry talks with Drew Linzer, director of the online polling company Civiqs. Drew tells us what the polls say about voters’ feelings toward President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and what the results would be if the two men were to, say … run against each other for president in 2024. Oh yeah, Drew polled to find out who thinks Donald Trump is guilty of the crimes he’s been indicted for, and whether or not he should see the inside of a jail cell.

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White House tells media to commit acts of journalism

Posted on September 13, 2023 by Laura Clawson

No media report on the House impeachment inquiry targeting President Joe Biden is complete without prominent coverage of the fact that Republicans have no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden, and are instead basing their drive to impeach on lies. Unfortunately, a lot of media coverage is incomplete in this exact way, leading the White House to send a letter to major media organizations, calling on them to do better at reporting the facts.

“It's time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” the White House wrote. The memo details how "Covering impeachment as a process story—Republicans say X, but the White House says Y—is a disservice to the American public who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable.”

And in the modern media environment, where every day liars and hucksters peddle disinformation and lies everywhere from Facebook to Fox, process stories that fail to unpack the illegitimacy of the claims on which House Republicans are basing all their actions only serve to generate confusion, put false premises in people’s feeds, and obscure the truth.

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That’s the crux of it: If House Republicans can rely on the media to help spread their lies under the guise of neutral reporting, without a full explanation that these claims are false, then people are going to believe things that are not true. The media cannot fully combat the spread of disinformation, of course, and right-wing media organizations like Fox News are more interested in spreading it themselves. But traditional media shouldn’t let itself be used to launder false claims.

Predictably, the right-wing media immediately started stirring up outrage about the White House issuing “marching orders,” as go-to Republican legal expert Jonathan Turley put it. It’s a dynamic we’ve seen repeatedly.

The White House: Hey, guys, could you try to stick to the facts and identify misinformation as such?

Right-wing media: How dare they??? This is oppression.

That outrage is a reflexive response; in this case it’s also intended to distract from the 14-page appendix accompanying the White House letter, which offers thorough debunkings of seven key lies on which Republicans are basing their claims about the need for an impeachment inquiry. For instance, Republicans insist, “Joe Biden ‘engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national.’” But that allegation is based on an FBI document recording an unverified allegation that was initially investigated and dismissed by the Justice Department under Donald Trump.

In short: A claim about something Biden allegedly did before he was president that the Trump Justice Department couldn’t substantiate at a time when Trump was looking for ways to discredit Biden has now become an exhibit in a push to impeach him.

Another of the Republican claims, that "Biden has participated in his family's global business ventures with America's adversaries,” was directly refuted by testimony from two of Hunter Biden’s former business partners—witnesses House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer bragged were going to help him show Biden’s corruption. No such ties have been revealed in the thousands of pages of bank records House Republicans have obtained.

Everything the White House offers there is exhaustively documented, with many of the sources coming from the same media organizations the letter is begging to fairly cover this impeachment inquiry. The facts are widely available, and now they’re neatly summarized in a very transparent 14-page document with lots of links. Reporters and their editors need to use those facts—and not in the eighth paragraph following seven paragraphs of Republicans lying, but right up front, every single time.

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The Trump-inspired emasculation of Kevin McCarthy

Posted on September 13, 2023 by Laura Clawson

House Republicans are launching a baseless impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden for a few reasons: to distract Biden and make him less effective, and to create the public impression of corruption as a 2024 election strategy. And never discount the Republican urge to suck up to former President Donald Trump.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had dinner with Trump on Sunday, The New York Times reports. Greene said that at that dinner, “I did brief him on the strategy that I want to see laid out with impeachment.” Specifically, she told Trump she wanted the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.” Gosh, what a commitment to going where the evidence leads and finding the truth.

She would not say what Mr. Trump said in response, but she said her ultimate goal was to have a “long list of names” — people whom she claimed were co-conspirators involved in Biden family crimes. She said she was confident Mr. Trump would win back the White House in 2024 and that she wanted “to go after every single one of them and use the Department of Justice to prosecute them.”

So Republicans are launching an impeachment inquiry without a House vote on doing so, something Speaker Kevin McCarthy had in the past repeatedly insisted was a requirement for such an inquiry. And one of McCarthy’s close allies is openly saying the point of the proceeding is to make the process “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden” and to lead to a “long list of names” to tee up for future prosecution by a Trump Justice Department.

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Sounds above board. Very legal and very cool.

Greene isn’t the only House Republican talking to Trump about impeaching Biden. Trump has had regular conversations on the subject with members of the Freedom Caucus and other impeachment enthusiasts, the Times reports, although “[a] person familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking said that despite his eagerness to see an inquiry move forward, the former president has not been twisting Mr. McCarthy’s arm.” Instead, Trump has been pushing hardest to get his own impeachments expunged.

Greene, though, is a close ally of McCarthy’s. It’s not a stretch to suspect that he’s been hearing about impeachment from her. And Rep. Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking House Republican, has reportedly had weekly calls with Trump, including one on Tuesday shortly after McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry. Even if McCarthy isn’t personally on the phone with Trump or across the dinner table from him at Bedminster, trying to appease him, people close to McCarthy are.

House Republicans have worked throughout 2023 to turn up any kind of impeachment-worthy evidence against Biden, and they’ve failed to do so. Finding that evidence was Plan A. Now they’re turning to Plan B, which is to pretend they did find the evidence and go ahead with an impeachment inquiry, seeking to persuade the public that their lies about finding proof of Biden corruption are true, to cause “excruciating” pain to the president for their own political gain, and to get revenge for Trump’s two impeachments and dozens of criminal charges. They’re yelling lies about Biden’s alleged corruption, while they’re engaged in a completely corrupt abuse of power themselves. And the thing is when that comes from the Republican Party, no one is surprised.

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Child poverty skyrocketed last year, thanks to GOP and Joe Manchin

Posted on September 13, 2023 by Hunter

The U.S. Census Bureau says that child poverty in this nation skyrocketed last year. Child poverty rates in 2021 had reached an all-time low of 5.2%. In 2022, however, that number soared to 12.4%.

The reasons child poverty in the United States more than doubled in a single year are not disputed. It’s because of the expiration of the Republican-hated expanded child tax credit and the shift away from providing direct monthly payments to at-risk families.

The Washington Post:

“By far this is the largest annual increase in U.S. history for both children and the overall population in terms of poverty, going back to 1967,” said Zachary Parolin, a senior research fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. “In 2021 we had the lowest child poverty rate on record, largely due to the expansion of the child tax credit. It worked in reducing poverty; it worked in making life better for people. Then it expired, and Congress did not renew it. And now we are seeing the largest increase in child poverty in U.S. history. We are back to around where we were pre-pandemic.”

Also The Washington Post, same story:

Tuesday’s Census release is “a story of what could have been,” said Arloc Sherman, vice president for data analysis and research at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “The pandemic showed that we could stand up policies that could help families. These numbers underscore how much poverty is a policy choice.”

So there you go. We discovered a way to slash the number of children in poverty by over half, quick and simple. Then we stopped because Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin demanded we stop. It won’t be enacted again so long as the same pro-coup Republicans are in control of the House and can stop it.

It’s because they don't care. There's no larger story there. We know how to lift children out of poverty. It's cheap and straightforward. But the people huffing and puffing for fossil fuel companies to get better tax treatment and for rich people to always pay less in tax each year than they did the year before do. Not. Care. They’ve never cared. They pride themselves on not caring. They go to church and quote from Bibles and will tell you up, down, and sideways how truly offensive it would be to feed children when the nation’s richest people could instead buy slightly larger private jets.

In a statement, President Joe Biden said, "Today's Census report shows the dire consequences of congressional Republicans' refusal to extend the enhanced Child Tax Credit, even as they advance costly corporate tax cuts. ... The rise reported today in child poverty is no accident—it is the result of a deliberate policy choice congressional Republicans made." That statement ignores Manchin's role in sabotaging the program, but it's true Manchin wouldn't be in that position if there were any Republicans in the Senate who have a flying damn about anything but the lobbyist class.

We can't spoil grade-schoolers by letting them eat, not when there are new defense contracts to be had and oil companies are practically withering away with the expense of having to pay a pittance to drill on public land.

"I will continue to fight to restore the expanded Child Tax Credits to give tens of millions of families the tax relief and breathing room they deserve," said Biden. This is the sort of statement that should make decent people curl up and die, because having to "fight" for a relatively cheap, obviously helpful program makes us sound like a garbage country filled with dirtbags rather than whomever your average flag-waver imagines themselves to be when they're watching Fox News or attending their little Trump rallies.

We could fix this tomorrow if we wanted. A couple of votes and a signature are all it takes. Republicans aren't going to do that, because they don't give a shit. They’d rather impeach Biden in retaliation for their guy getting indicted. They’d rather strip federal funds from those investigating Donald Trump. And then these assholes, almost every one of them, strolls into church on Sunday and claims to be better than everyone else.

We have seen this too many times, and we know exactly how it plays out. The cruelty is the point, and it's always been the point, and it's not going to change anytime soon because the more vicious politicians can be toward poor children, the more the conservative base giggles and waves their cheap imported flags.

Sign the petition: Child poverty has doubled. Bring back the child tax credit

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Joe Manchin is big mad because Biden is using climate bill to fight climate change

How Wall Street is killing the middle class dream of owning a home

Greene throws tantrum over Gaetz stealing her impeachment thunder

Posted on September 12, 2023 by Laura Clawson

House Republicans are moving toward impeaching President Joe Biden for absolutely no wrongdoing—which is exactly what Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has wanted all along. And once again she’s furious, because someone else is taking the credit.

Today, the target of her ire is Rep. Matt Gaetz, who did a victory lap on the claim that his recent threats against Kevin McCarthy’s speakership had made the difference.

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In June, Greene had a public fight with Rep. Lauren Boebert over Boebert’s impeachment push. “I had already introduced articles of impeachment on Joe Biden for the border, asked her to co-sponsor mine—she didn’t,” Greene said at the time. “She basically copied my articles and then introduced them and then changed them to a privileged resolution.”

In short: “Me, me, me! I did it first! How dare they take credit for my idea?”

This is all incredibly petty, showing conclusively that all of these people are in it for the attention—in the form of Fox News hits and lucrative fundraising emails. But it also shows what a terrible organizer Greene is. This has been her big issue for months, and she couldn’t get Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz to sign on? Where exactly did she think she was getting the rest of the votes she needed? Sure, both Boebert and Gaetz may have been waiting for the moment they could individually make a splash with a big show on impeachment, but wouldn’t a good organizer committed to a specific outcome have spent months cultivating them and offering them the opportunities their egos demanded, even if it meant stepping out of the spotlight a little bit?

But no, Greene’s commitment to sole credit is so intense that she doesn't see other people pushing the same issue as opportunities. She doesn't try to court them and work together to build pressure. If what you really want is a specific outcome, you welcome people to the effort. If what you really want is attention, you view other people’s support for the same idea as a threat.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is in this for the attention. And the fact that so many of her fellow House Republicans take the same approach is one of the major reasons they are so ineffective at everything they claim to want to do.

Gaetz attacks McCarthy in wild House speech

Posted on September 12, 2023 by Walter Einenkel

On Monday, Rep. Matt Gaetz announced plans to give a fiery speech on the House floor Tuesday to denounce the lack of political will to impeach President Joe Biden on zero evidence. The Florida man’s promised speech came after a week of public attacks on Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. But just hours before Gaetz’s speech, McCarthy announced that he was calling for an impeachment inquiry into the president.

Some might assume Gaetz was sufficiently undercut by McCarthy’s brief press conference. Some might be wrong. The political theater-loving looney toon took to the floor of the House and began by chastising the speaker for being “out of compliance with the agreement that allowed you to assume this role,” and threatening his party leader with expulsion from his leadership position.

I’m no Sherlock Holmes or anything, but it sounds a lot like the rumored “three-page deal”—the one between McCarthy and wackadoos like Gaetz in the Freedom Caucus that the Republican Party denied existed—might actually exist? But that was all preamble, as Gaetz proceeded to give a speech about the terrible job McCarthy is doing. It included him calling McCarthy’s press conference announcing the impeachment inquiry a “rushed” and “somewhat rattled performance.” Grab some popcorn!

A couple of quick notes on Gaetz’s speech:

He said that his agenda is “the last, best hope for tens of millions of Republicans.” There were more than 158 million votes cast in the 2022 election. Just sayin’
Gaetz also said, “Mr. Speaker, dust off our written January agreement. You have a copy.” Paging Sherlock Holmes!
He accused the speaker of trying to build a “Biden/McCarthy/Jeffries” government. Teehee!
When Gaetz was done filling the House chamber with hot air, the chair made an announcement reminding representatives to “direct your remarks to the chair and not to a perceived viewing audience.”

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Transcript has been lightly edited for clarity:

REP. MATT GAETZ: On this very floor in January, the whole world witnessed a historic contest for House Speaker. I rise today to serve notice, Mr. Speaker, you are out of compliance with the agreement that allowed you to assume this role. The path forward for the House of Representatives is to either bring you into immediate, total compliance or remove you pursuant to a motion to vacate the chair.
We have had no vote on term limits or on balanced budgets as the agreement demanded and required. There has been no full release of the January 6 tapes, as you promised. There has been insufficient accountability for the Biden crime family, and instead of cutting spending to raise the debt limit, you relied on budgetary gimmicks and rescissions, so that you ultimately ended up serving as the valet to underwrite Biden's debt and advance his spending agenda.

Mr. Speaker, you boasted in January that we would use “the power of the subpoena and the power of the purse,” but here we are eight months later, and we haven't even sent the first subpoena to Hunter Biden. That's how you know that the rushed and, you know, somewhat rattled performance you just saw from the speaker isn't real at this point.

During Democratic control over the House of Representatives, they had already brought in Don Junior three times, and we haven't even sent the first subpoena to Hunter Biden. Power of the subpoena and power of the purse. Only thing the 118th Congress is known for at this point is electing Kevin McCarthy speaker and underwriting Biden's debt, and unfortunately there's only one of those things we can remediate at this time.

Power of the purse. Our leadership right now is asking us to vote for a continuing resolution. A vote for a continuing resolution is a vote to continue the Green New Deal. A vote to continue inflationary spending. And in the most troubling of fashions, a vote for a continuing resolution is a vote to continue the election interference of Jack Smith.

Mr. Speaker, we told you how to use the power of the purse. Individual single-subject spending bills that would allow us to have specific review, programmatic analysis, and it would allow us to zero out the salaries of the bureaucrats who have broken bad, targeted President Trump, or cut sweetheart deals for Hunter Biden. September 30th is rapidly approaching, and you have not put us in a position to succeed.

There is no way to pass all the individual appropriations bills now. And it's not like we didn't know when September 30th was going to show up on the calendar. I must be better. You must be better and this House must be better, for it is the last, best hope for tens of millions of Republicans. We demand real oversight against this weaponized government.

Just look at the bribery. If tens of millions of dollars flowing from foreign corrupt people into the bank accounts of the Biden family wasn't enough for actual impeachment, why were we even looking? Joe Biden deserves impeachment for converting the vice presidency into an ATM machine for virtually his entire family. We all see it. We all know it. Now, moments ago, Speaker McCarthy endorsed an impeachment inquiry.

This is a baby step following weeks of pressure from House conservatives to do more. We must move faster. Now, I will concede that the votes I have called for will likely fail. Term limits, balanced budgets, maybe even impeachment. I am prepared for that eventuality because at least if we take votes, the American people get to see who's fighting for them and who's willing to tolerate more corruption and business as usual.

Mr. Speaker, dust off our written January agreement. You have a copy. Reflect on the spirit of that agreement and build on the start that we had moments ago began to comply. No continuing resolutions, individual spending bills or bust, votes on balanced budgets and term limits. Subpoenas for Hunter Biden and the members of the Biden family who've been grifting off of this country, and the impeachment for Joe Biden that he so richly deserves.

Do these things or face a motion to vacate the chair. And let me alert the country: A motion to vacate might not pass at first, but it might before the 15th vote. And if Democrats bail out McCarthy, as they may do, then I will lead the resistance to this uni-party and the Biden/McCarthy/Jeffries government that they are attempting to build.

I know that Washington isn't a town where people are known for keeping their word. Well, Speaker McCarthy, I'm here to hold you to yours. I yield back.

Those on the other side of the aisle are understandably baffled.

So let me get this straight: Republicans are threatening to remove their own Speaker, impeach the President, and shut down the government on September 30th - disrupting everyday people’s paychecks and general public operations. For what? I don’t think even they know. Chaos vibes https://t.co/qJyR3e4JWk
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 12, 2023

Why does it seem like Republicans have such a hard time recruiting Senate candidates who actually live in the states they want to run in? We're discussing this strange but persistent phenomenon on this week's edition of "The Downballot." The latest example is former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, who's been spending his time in Florida since leaving the House in 2015, but he's not the only one. Republican Senate hopefuls in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Montana, and Wisconsin all have questionable ties to their home states—a problem that Democrats have gleefully exploited in recent years. (Remember Dr. Oz? Of course you do.)

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House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry is all vibes, no evidence

Posted on September 12, 2023 by Kerry Eleveld

House Republicans have a sense—a deep intuition—that their political adversary, Democratic President Joe Biden, just might have done something wrong. They are not sure what he did or when he did it, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced Tuesday his caucus would open a formal impeachment inquiry to get to the bottom of it once and for all.

Think of it as the "all vibes, no evidence" impeachment inquiry—a perfect encapsulation of the MAGA agenda in action.

Naturally, reality-based commentators on the right and left had thoughts. Pro-democracy conservative David Frum summed up McCarthy's "plan" in a telling tweet:

1) Impeach Biden for his son's sad life.

2) Shut down the government.

3) Federal abortion ban.

4) Impunity for Trump's coup, document thefts, commercial frauds, Kushner's Saudi $2 billion, etc.

5) Find a lobbying job before November 2024.

On the Democratic side, veteran strategist and Hopium Chronicles substacker Simon Rosenberg enumerated "what MAGA is fighting for”:

- The end of American democracy

- Recession, economic ruin, plutocratic tax policy

- Warmer planet, rolling back climate gains

- More guns, more dead kids

- 10 year olds giving birth to their rapist's babies

- Russian victory in Ukraine

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, still manages to serve up some occasional gems, despite being gutted by tech bro Elon Musk. These takes on House Republicans' "all vibes, no evidence" impeachment inquiry certainly qualify.

Freedom Caucus stalwart opposes impeachment, becomes GOP target

Posted on September 12, 2023 by Joan McCarter

Rep. Ken Buck is a prototypical Freedom Caucus member. The Colorado Republican relishes being a maverick, voting his conscience, and fighting with leadership—or with his extremist colleagues—when he feels like it. Now Buck finds himself enmeshed in that “perfect storm” he warned Speaker Kevin McCarthy was coming, and the House Republican majority is turned inside out. Buck is now on the outside of a ridiculous scheme, which has been put into motion by McCarthy, to move forward on impeaching President Joe Biden.

The problem is that Buck remains reality-based. He used to be a federal prosecutor, so he knows some stuff—like the fact that in order to impeach a president, you have to have evidence that they’ve done something impeachable. “The time for impeachment is the time when there’s evidence linking President Biden — if there’s evidence linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor. That doesn’t exist right now,” Buck said in an interview on MSNBC last weekend.

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He called Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s threat to shut the government down if McCarthy didn’t agree to start an impeachment inquiry “absurd.” Now Greene is on the warpath. “This is the same guy that wrote a book called ‘Drain the Swamp’, who is now arguing against an impeachment inquiry,” Greene said. “I really don’t see how we can have a member on Judiciary that is flat out refusing to impeach. … It seems like, can he even be trusted to do his job at this point?”

It’s possible that Buck was involved in ousting Greene from the Freedom Caucus (he had a lot to say about it) a few months ago, or that Greene thinks he was, so she might be going after him for that. One of the reasons Greene was booted was because she was too cozy with leadership—specifically with McCarthy. Whatever the case, there is now a contingent in the House GOP that is aligning themselves with Greene—and apparently leadership—against Buck.

A number of sources told CNN that “there is growing frustration” in the conference, “including among the leadership ranks,” over a number of Buck’s positions, probably stemming back to his vote to certify the 2020 election and his defense of former Rep. Liz Cheney when Republican leadership was kicking her out. He’s also voted against some bills McCarthy considers key to demonstrating his leadership, like the debt ceiling deal and the defense authorization act. These are very Freedom Caucus things to do; Buck has never voted for a debt ceiling authorization because he hates the debt. About half of his fellow caucus members also voted against it.

It’s a hell of a thing. One of the most Freedom Caucus-ish members of the Freedom Caucus is now sounding like a reasonable, sensible, establishment kind of Republican, and leadership is running with the hare-brained impeachment idea. There’s clearly no room for being reality-based in the House with Kevin McCarthy (at least nominally) in charge.

That’s a Republican Party in disarray.

‘MAGA circus’ steamrolls over McCarthy, again

Greene owns McCarthy, and he doesn’t even realize it

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McCarthy announces formal impeachment inquiry, bypassing House vote

Posted on September 12, 2023 by Laura Clawson

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is calling for a formal impeachment inquiry targeting President Joe Biden, despite the total lack of evidence of wrongdoing turned up by months of Republican investigations. The plan all along was to justify an impeachment inquiry, and when they failed to justify it, they decided to pretend they had, and to go ahead anyway. In a statement on Tuesday, McCarthy repeated allegations regarding Biden’s son’s business dealings, which Republicans have failed to connect to the president himself. He also alleged that Biden’s family has gotten “special treatment by Biden’s own administration.” This would be true only if McCarthy meant that Biden has bent over backward to enable investigations of his son to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest.

“These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption, and they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives,” McCarthy said. “That’s why today I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.” Again, months of investigation by these very same House committees has not turned up any evidence.

Notably, McCarthy had previously pledged that an impeachment inquiry would happen only if the House voted for one, a pledge he’s abandoning now, under pressure from the far right of his conference.

Kevin McCarthy: "That’s why today I am directing our House Committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden." So not putting this up for a vote in the House. He doesn't take any questions after his brief statement pic.twitter.com/AJg7lLJiyJ
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 12, 2023

McCarthy’s announcement came after Punchbowl reported that in a closed-door Republican meeting this week, McCarthy would tell his members that an impeachment inquiry is the “logical next step.” If by "logical" McCarthy means "we've intended to do it all along, and we're just following the plan," then sure. House Republicans are not letting the fact that their months of investigations have turned up no evidence of wrongdoing by the president get in the way of their long-standing plans. Because make no mistake, those months of Republican investigations haven’t found anything on the president other than that he loves his son. No bank records showing illicit payments, no witness testimony that he was involved in his son’s business—nothing.

But McCarthy is under pressure—and not just from Rep. Matt Gaetz, whose efforts to threaten McCarthy’s job are not gaining much traction. While the biggest showboaters of his caucus are pressing for impeachment, McCarthy has to find a way to keep the government open by negotiating a continuing resolution—something the Freedom Caucus has said it will go along with only if there are massive funding cuts. This isn’t just a matter of poor timing. As Rep. Ken Buck, an impeachment skeptic, told MSNBC's Jen Psaki, “So you take those things put together, and Kevin McCarthy, the speaker, has made promises on each of those issues to different groups. And now it is all coming due at the same time.”

McCarthy is weak. That’s been clear since before it took him 15 ballots to get his hands on the speaker’s gavel, and that process made him even weaker since he had to make so many promises to so many different groups.

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The fact that we’re even talking about impeachment is ridiculous, though. Republicans have looked and looked for anything the president did wrong. They have gotten 12,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records and more than 2,000 pages of suspicious activity reports. They’ve interviewed multiple witnesses, and they have found nothing. They have dabbled in revenge porn, publicly showing nude photos of the president’s son. They have had Fox News insinuate that they had proof of things they did not have. House Oversight Chair James Comer has shamelessly lied about what his own committee’s investigations have shown.

And while a few Republicans, like Buck or Rep. Don Bacon, are expressing concern about their party’s rush to impeach without evidence, many others are lining up to help make the (fraudulent) case that an impeachment inquiry is warranted. On Monday, Rep. Nancy Mace—a Republican who occasionally tries to appear independent and reasonable in a very media-friendly way—expressed her support for an impeachment inquiry in the absence of any evidence that impeachment is warranted. Because, she said, maybe the inquiry would find evidence that months of investigation hadn’t—an argument we can expect to crop up often as Republicans positioned ideologically between Bacon and Gaetz look for excuses to fall in line.

“The people deserve the truth and nothing but the truth,” Mace said, hilariously.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins responded, “Isn’t it supposed to be the evidence that leads you to pursue impeachment, an impeachment inquiry?”

“Well, that’s what the inquiry is for,” Mace said, “is to get more evidence.” As if it were the normal course of events to attempt to impeach a president before you had evidence that it was warranted.

But there have already been investigations, Collins replied. “I think that’s where people are confused, because it's not like there’s no investigations.”

“We don’t have Joe Biden’s bank records yet,” Mace replied. “And so one way to do that, my understanding, would be through an impeachment inquiry. So if that’s what gets us those bank records, then I’m going to support it.”

Collins: Isn’t it supposed to be the evidence that leads you to pursue an impeachment inquiry? Mace: That's what the inquiry is for, to get more evidence. pic.twitter.com/e2ETP3gW7g
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 12, 2023

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel was a little more blunt, saying McCarthy's support for impeachment was welcome because "[o]ur voters are sick and tired of Republicans getting attacked all the time through the courts, through whatever, and it's time to go after Biden."

This week marks a new stage in the House Republican drive toward impeachment. This stage surely won’t bring any more facts supporting an impeachment inquiry. It may bring the country closer to a government shutdown as Republicans put their attention and energy toward lying about the basis for an impeachment inquiry rather than coming up with a continuing resolution. But it’s going to happen because that’s the “logical next step”—not in following the evidence regarding Biden, but in executing Republicans’ long-standing plan to impeach no matter what.