Category: MitchMcConnell

Pelosi serves well-deserved shade on McConnell, Chief Justice Roberts over sham impeachment

Posted on by Joan McCarter

No one can twist a political knife quite like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Think of the now-legendary clapback at impeached president Donald Trump at last year's State of the Union address. She's the queen of shade, and you just knew that Mitch McConnell was going to be on the receiving end of some of that. It hit Saturday morning in a brutal tweet that cast a wide penumbra, taking in the potted plant who presided over last week's sham impeachment trial.

"It is a sad day for America to see Senator McConnell humiliate the Chief Justice of the United States into presiding over a vote which rejected our nation's judicial norms, precedents and institutions which uphold the Constitution and the rule of law," she wrote. Ouch. That's all she said. That's all she needed to say. Chief Justice John Roberts is going to come out of this thing looking like a tool, and it's because of McConnell's machinations. It's because there was no way McConnell was going to let this impeachment trial be anything but a travesty.

History is not going to look kindly on either of those men.

It's time to end McConnell's destructive stranglehold on the republic. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as Senate majority leader.

Senate Republicans officially vote five more times for a cover up

Posted on by Joan McCarter

After a parliamentary inquiry from Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to Chief Justice John Roberts as to whether he was aware that presiding judge Salmon Chase broke ties in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, and Roberts said yes he was but he wasn't going to be doing that, the Senate Republicans killed the last-ditch efforts by Democrats to stop this cover-up of an impeachment trial.

The first was an amendment to subpoena Mick Mulvaney, John Bolton, Michael Duffey and Robert Blair as well as documents from White House, OMB and the Defense and State Departments, the Senate Republicans voted to table it unanimously and it failed 53-47. On the second amendment, to subpoena John Bolton, Republicans Susan Collins and Mitt Romney voted with Democrats, but it was still killed, 51-49. The third amendment was to both subpoena Bolton and further that he be deposed in a session presided over by Roberts, then requiring one day for live testimony before the Senate within the next five days. Again Collins and Romney voted with Democrats, but this amendment was also killed 51-49. The final amendment was Sen. Chris Van Hollen's amendment to require that Roberts rule on motions to subpoena witnesses and documents, and to rule on any assertions from Trump of privilege. Chief Snowflake Roberts was defended unanimously by Republicans, and they killed that one 53-47. The underlying resolution governing the remainder of the trial passed again on a party-line vote of 53-47.

We have to end their stranglehold on the republic. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as majority leader.

Republicans have hell to pay for torching our republic. Make. Them. Pay. NOW

Posted on (Updated by David Nir

It is darkness in the daytime, and the only light is cast by the bonfire of despotism into which the Republican Party is pitching our Constitution.

Donald Trump has transgressed two of the oldest and gravest injunctions known to humankind—thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not bear false witness—and Republican senators have admitted that he is guilty.

But for all their professed fealty to tradition, to law and order, to knowing right from wrong, they simply do not care. They have decided that it’s not against the law to commit a crime, so long as the wicked leader of their death cult is the criminal.

A reckoning is now due. The Republicans in the Senate have shown us that they will not deliver justice, so we must deliver justice ourselves.

While Republicans have confessed they will do everything in their power to rig these next elections, we must do everything in our power to ensure that they are free, that they are fair, and that Republicans lose—as badly as possible.

Let us show just how serious we are. We can contribute today to help unseat the most vulnerable Republican senators come November. The more we give, the greater the fear we will instill in them, and the more likely we are to prevail.

We are disgusted, we are dismayed, we are filled with sorrow. But we are also very, very angry, and we must channel that anger. Republicans want to put our democracy to the torch, but together we can douse those flames and build anew.

Please, give whatever you can right now. The future of our dear republic depends on it.

Senate Republicans vary from tortured to triumphant in abetting the Trump/McConnell cover-up

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Senate Republicans are taking various approaches in rationalizing their decision to cover up impeached president Donald Trump's crimes, depending on how much they care about their reputations. Sen. Marco Rubio, the Bible-verse-touting Republican from Florida, pretends to be thoughtful and statesmanlike in his statement. "For purposes of answering my threshold question I assumed what is alleged is true," he wrote. "And then I sought to answer the question of whether under these assumptions it would be in the interest of the nation to remove the president." Essentially, "Yeah, he did it. He tried to cheat in the 2020 election, but so what?"

That's taking a page from Sens. Lamar Alexander and Lisa Murkowski, bemoaning that they can't find the awful impeachable behavior of Trump impeachable because of the nasty, nasty partisan House forcing them to destroy the republic. Add into that pile the guy who loves to position himself as very troubled by Trump, Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska. He can only offer up, "Let me be clear; Lamar speaks for lots and lots of us." Brave Sasse can't even use his own words.

Please give $3 to our nominee fund to bury them. The Democrats must take the Senate back.

New Bolton revelation: ‘The kind of bombshell Mitch McConnell has been afraid of all along’

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Former national security adviser John Bolton’s new revelation about White House counsel Pat Cipollone being in on Trump’s Ukraine conspiracy as early as May 2019 is dropping like a bomb on Washington. "This is the kind of bombshell that Mitch McConnell has been afraid of all along," reporter Kasie Hunt said on MSNBC.

Indeed, a day that seemed almost certainly headed toward a no-witness vote and fast acquittal just in time for Donald Trump’s victory laps on Fox News and at next week’s State of the Union address now holds a slew of question marks. Hill reporters are now musing that the Senate trial could go into next week, “maybe even mid-week,” tweeted Politico’s John Bresnahan. Trump’s already in damage control, tweeting out fantasies like a drunken sailor on hallucinogens. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski still hasn’t announced her vote on witnesses, which is bad news for McConnell because she hasn’t owed the GOP caucus anything since 2010, when she won reelection as a write-in candidate. Murkowski’s now a “no” on witnesses.

As Americans, we should still be rooting for witnesses. The citizenry deserves to hear from Bolton in his own words, among others.

But as Democrats, we can also feast on the political peril this represents for Republicans, who have now admitted that Trump did everything House managers said he did and that they just don’t care. As commentators on MSNBC absorbed the new Bolton bombshell, they almost unanimously declared it an electoral disaster in the making for Senate Republicans, especially given where public opinion has been on witnesses all along. 

"This makes that vote against witnesses political suicide,” former GOP operative Nicolle Wallace observed, adding, “I hope they take it."

Even former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill was bullish on the prospects for Democrats. “If these Republicans shut this trial down and say, No more,” she said, “it is a great gift to the Democrats in November.”

As Sen. Kamala Harris noted before the news dropped, "There can be no true exoneration if there's not been a fair trial. Period." Now more than ever, Senate Republicans are also on trial. At least some of them seem to know it.

Let’s make sure there’s hell to pay for Moscow Mitch’s impeachment evil

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Thursday night's highly choreographed dance between Sens. Susan Collins and Lamar Alexander in impeached president Donald Trump's trial demonstrated one thing: It is as critical to take away Mitch McConnell's Senate majority as it is to defeat Trump in November.

Collins didn't decide to vote for witnesses after hearing all the facts. She negotiated her opportunity to feign independence from Trump on a vote Maine is watching. The fact that she had a three-paragraph statement ready to tweet out mere moments after Thursday night's session was gaveled out proves it. Moments after that, Alexander was cued to announce his decision in a series of 15 tweets, clearly not written on the fly and admitting that, yeah, the entire Republican conference admits that he did it but they don't give a damn. And no, Lisa Murkowski is not going to save the day—this was all too carefully engineered to leave that as a possibility. So the cover-up McConnell promised from day one is complete, as will be Trump's acquittal.

What does that mean for us now? Payback in November. Moscow Mitch's majority gone. It won't be easy. We'll be fighting against everything an emboldened Trump—and Putin—throw at us. It means we unify behind the Democratic candidate for president and we don't get distracted for one second from giving the new president a Senate that will help her save the republic. It starts today.

It's time to end McConnell's destructive stranglehold on the republic. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as Senate majority leader.

Cartoon: The Grand Ol’ Adaptable Party

Posted on by Mark Fiore

x Vimeo Video

With each new revelation or bit of evidence, Republicans in the Senate (and the House, for that matter), soften their spines a little more. Remember when Lindsey Graham thought withholding an Oval Office meeting wasn’t that big of a deal but withholding military aid, well, that would be just wrong!

It really has come down to the “So What?” defense for Donald Trump and his supporters. Wrapped in a little Alan Dershowitz legalese about the Founders only intending to impeach a president who robbed a bank for his own personal gain, and it’s looking even more likely Senate Republicans won’t budge.

Apparently a president has to say “I am presently going to commit high crimes and misdemeanors” while the offending act is witnessed by a Senate Sergeant at Arms in order to be convicted and removed from office. Enjoy the cartoon, and keep those fingers and toes crossed. (And be sure to visit me over on Patreon for prints, sketches and other behind-the-scenes goodies!)

Collins, Alexander prove that fix has been in all along on Trump’s impeachment trial

Posted on by Joan McCarter

There will almost certainly not be a 50-50 tie in the Senate impeachment trial on whether to have additional witnesses and documents. Sen. Susan Collins, almost immediately following the closing of Thursday night's session, showed that she'd been given the "hall pass" from McConnell to vote "yes" on witnesses. In a three-paragraph statement that was probably written before the trial even began.

Moments after Collins’ statement, as if it were totally choreographed to try to make her look like the hero, Sen. Lamar Alexander announced that he is a "no" because "there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the U.S. Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense." He goes on to say essentially, yes Trump definitely did it, but we don't need to impeach him over it.

If, as expected, Sen. Mitt Romney votes for witnesses, that leaves just Sen. Lisa Murkowski as an unknown. She’s said she's thinking on it. That's most likely false, because the main thing has been trying to give Collins cover, and McConnell is not going to allow Chief Justice Roberts being in the position of having to decide whether or not to break a tie.

We have to end their hold on the Senate. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as majority leader.

Rand Paul continues his efforts to get the Ukraine whistleblower killed

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Sen. Rand Paul has not been getting enough attention during this impeachment process, so he executed his predictable and promised stunt on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, submitting a question to Chief Justice John Roberts during the Q&A session that presumably contained the name of the whistleblower. Roberts refused to read the question, so Paul left the floor to have an "impromptu" press conference (and probably hit the send button on a fundraising email).

CNN's Manu Raju reports, "At press conference, Paul says: 'I can tell you my question made no reference to any whistleblower.' Then Paul reads aloud his question which names a Schiff's staff member and names the individual who has been reported as possible whistleblower—and asks about their contacts." This was an apparent effort to get the press to publish the name, since he seems intent on getting the whistleblower killed.

It likely won't work. One reporter asked, "With all due respect, shouldn't you be at the impeachment hearing right now?" Of course he should have been, and the sergeant-at-arms should be putting him in the Senate jail right now. He should also be disqualified from sitting as a juror in this impeachment trial and have his vote taken away—if either Roberts or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to save this trial from being a total farce.

Moscow Mitch’s 2020 campaign fund helped out by Trump’s impeachment defense team

Posted on by Joan McCarter

You can't make this degree of corruption up. Moscow Mitch McConnell, the guy who has promised again and again that he is working with Donald Trump's impeachment lawyers to make sure that Trump will not be convicted and removed from office, has gotten campaign donations from those lawyers. This year. For his 2020 reelection campaign.

The Louisville Courier Journal reviewed campaign finance data for McConnell, finding that Ken Starr gave the maximum allowed, $2,800, on July 31, 2019. He's been a donor to every one of McConnell's campaigns since 2020. McConnell's gotten two separate donations from Robert Ray for a total of $5,600. Those were on Sept. 30, 2019, 12 days after The Washington Post reported on the whistleblower report that Trump was withholding aid to Ukraine until the country agreed to announce an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden.

McConnell's campaign blew off the glaring appearance of corruption in the transaction, taking a swipe at House Democrats. "The absence of any adequate arguments by House impeachment managers seems to be playing a pretty meaningful role however," McConnell's campaign manager Kevin Golden said. Clearly the money isn't a bribe for McConnell to ensure Trump's acquittal, because that's been a foregone conclusion from the get-go. Moscow Mitch promised it. So it must be a reward.

It's time to end McConnell's destructive stranglehold on the republic. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as Senate majority leader.