Category: Video

President Trump Plays Video To Reporters Showing The Media Downplaying Coronavirus

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

President Trump turned the tables on the media Monday, showing a video montage of numerous times that they downplayed his concerns over the coronavirus crisis.

The President, weary of hearing the media falsely accuse him of not taking the threat of the pandemic seriously, blindsided reporters with the video.

It was a masterful move. Trump at his best, stealing the narrative from biased reporters and pointing a spotlight on their lies and half-truths.

Media Put To Shame

The video featured several instances in which mainstream media outlets and anti-Trump reporters scoffed at both the severity of the virus and the President’s actions in trying to protect the American people.

And now, they pretend as if they knew all along how bad things were going to get, sanctimoniously pointing accusatory fingers at the President for having blood on his hands.

Well, Trump wasn’t having it this time. And reporters got a heavy dose of shame at the press conference.

RELATED: CNN Panelist To Trump Voters: Now You’re Loved Ones Can Die

Media Downplayed COVID-19

The Washington Post said the flu is “much bigger threat than coronavirus.”

The New York Times claimed that fear “spreads faster than the coronavirus itself.”

CNN declared that “racist assaults and ignorant attacks against Asians” were spreading faster than the pandemic.

But it was President Trump – allegedly – who didn’t take things seriously?

“None of these people cared about you,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson complained. “They didn’t care about protecting public health, or sharing accurate information. They cared about being virtuous.”

“They put their wokeness above your life as they always do.”

RELATED: Chris Cuomo Goes On Shocking Rant, Blasts CNN Gig As ‘Trafficking In The Ridiculous’

Tried to Spin

Journos at the press conference did their best to take the focus off their own failures, accusing the President of having a meltdown.

They honestly don’t stand a chance. Their lies, numerous as they are, are on record for everybody to see. Trump pointing out those lies is not a meltdown – it’s the only way to get the truth out.

While the media was doing nothing other than covering impeachment for months, President Trump was setting up a coronavirus task force, ordering more testing and ventilators, restricting travel from countries known to be battling the virus, and declaring a national emergency.

On February 11th, Ron Klain, a top adviser to Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden, said the administration’s actions were “far from doing nothing.”

Senator Lindsey Graham said it best, noting that “most Democrats and the media were more worried about impeaching President [Trump]
than coronavirus.”

Glad to see they finally woke up. But the adults in the room were already handling the crisis, limiting lives lost and protecting the American people.

The post President Trump Plays Video To Reporters Showing The Media Downplaying Coronavirus appeared first on The Political Insider.

Trump’s new press secretary on Feb. 25: ‘We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here’

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

On Tuesday the White House announced that scam artist phantom Stephanie Grisham was out as press secretary. Vapid right-wing talking head Kayleigh McEnany was announced as the new White House lying machine. While Grisham decided to be mysteriously invisible during her time as the White House’s main liaison to the media, McEnany has a more boisterous personality with a more storied history of spewing lies and wrongheaded predictions. For example, here she is on Fox News with now-fired Trish Regan on Feb. 25 of this year. What’s she predicting? That Trump will stop the spread of COVID-19 by way of a travel ban on China? Yes. Let’s hear about it, Kayleigh!

KAYLEIGH MCENANY: This president will always put America first. He will always protect American citizens. We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here. We will not see terrorism come here, and isn't it refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama.

You can even watch her saying it!

On the same day Larry Kudlow said coronavirus was �contained� on Feb. 25th, Trump�s campaign spox made an even more bold claim. �We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here..and isn't it refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama." pic.twitter.com/O0DDH3Rvkw

— andrew kaczynskiðÂ�¤Â� (@KFILE) April 4, 2020

McEnany has been auditioning for this part for some time now, as has virtually everyone who appears regularly on state misinformation channel Fox News. She’s checked all of requisite boxes of fealty, like saying impeachment proceedings—and in fact any criticism of Donald Trump—amounted to participating in a coup d’etat of our government. 

McEnany began her right-wing career speaking on CNN as a talking head, but quickly found that running into even the most modest of pushback on her talking points led to her stressing out and blinking strangely, as can be seen in this clip from a couple of years ago.

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McEnany has done all the things one expects. She’s called the Mueller report an “exoneration” of Donald Trump; she’s done the softball interviews of truly awful Trump cabinet members like Betsy DeVos; and she’s tweeted out real through-the-looking-glass misinformation, like this:

BIG NEWS from President @realDonaldTrump�s Chinese Virus task force briefing! Dr. Birx shared that 40% of the country now have "EXTRAORDINARY LOW NUMBERS" of cases�� 19 of 50 states have less than 200 cases!

— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) March 26, 2020

But what may have finally gotten Kayleigh the job is her loud, fact-free, and enthusiastic delivery of conservative talking points with seemingly no shame whatsoever. But let’s never forget McEnany’s humble, racist, beginnings.

The new White House press secretary, ladies and gentlemen pic.twitter.com/y3m9YAPtAr

— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) April 7, 2020

Tuesday, Apr 7, 2020 ¡ 7:44:15 PM +00:00 ¡ Walter Einenkel

This quote from Grisham, given to Axios before she was officially replaced, is worth adding here: “Sounds like more palace intrigue to me, but I’ve also been in quarantine. If true, how ironic that the press secretary would hear about being replaced in the press.”

Delusional Trump supporter denies coronavirus exists

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Donald Trump’s handling of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, aka the coronavirus, has been terrible. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has lined up behind him to turn the whole affair into a partisan one. The Trump administration’s basic incompetence and the damage caused by GOP policies of cutting the CDC’s funding aside, the partisanship and rhetoric coming from the Republican Party have dire consequences. They include slowing down the process of getting emergency funding and dragging down the speed and efficacy of testing and diagnosing the true nature of the problem. But the biggest problem is the disinformation that results from turning medical experts’ fears into political footballs.

At a South Carolina rally last week, President Trump claimed that COVID-19 was a “hoax” being perpetrated by the Democratic Party. He analogized it with the impeachment probes and the Mueller investigations into his administration. Forget about the fact that, like COVID-19, the facts of Trump’s corruption are scientifically proven. Even if you believe Trump did nothing wrong and the Democratic Party is just trying to relitigate the 2016 election, COVID-19 is a virus that even world leaders have caught and are suffering from. But how dumb is the racist death cult following Donald Trump? 

CNN did a report on Trump’s misinformation and its consequences on the MAGA elite. The report included an interview from NBC where Trump supporters, possibly tailgating at some sporting event or waiting outside of a rally, told the reporter that COVID-19 isn’t worrying them because it isn’t real.

REPORTER: You don't believe coronavirus exists?

WOMAN: I don't.

REPORTER: So the two people who have been reported to have died from it in Washington state you don't trust that that's true?

WOMAN: I don't trust anything the democrats do or say.

The Centers for Disease Control already said in no uncertain terms that the coronavirus is not just real, it is in the United States. That means that this woman not only sticks to the most right-wing media outlets, she only pays attention to her television in the moments that Trump is talking.

The clip below made me wash my hands, and I haven’t even gone anywhere today.

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Highlights from the first two weeks of the Republican Party’s sham impeachment trial

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Two weeks of history came to something of a head on Friday. The Senate Impeachment trial, while a coverup orchestrated by the Republican Party, is also a historic attempt by American patriots to begin the process of fixing a corrupted executive branch before irreparable damage is done. Lead House Manager Adam Schiff began by explaining the seriousness of the charges against Donald Trump.

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And then a quick reminder of how Sen. Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republican party has hamstrung this essential Democratic process,

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House Manager Jerrold Nadler from New York spoke on the Senate floor on Thursday, and brought some receipts. First the fact that the evidence is overwhelming.

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And then a relentless barrage of video showing that the conservatives arguing on Trump’s behalf, with names like Alan Dershowitz and Lindsey Graham, arguing the absolute opposite just a few years ago. 

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One of the most glaring realities of the “perfect” phone call, and subsequent statements about Trump’s personal interest in getting an investigation started into the Bidens is the fact that he didn’t care if there were actual investigations into corruption … just the perception of investigations.

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Schiff came back and delivered what many called an “historic” 30-minute closing argument to end day two of the Senate Impeachment trial. The final eight minutes included a powerfully stark reminder of what is at stake.

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On Friday, House Manager Hakeem Jeffries once again reminded the world that this is not a partisan process—at least it is not supposed to be one.

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On Saturday, the Republican Party—who has made this a thoroughly partisan procedure—had their chance to begin the defense of Donald Trump. As all the president’s men began their disinformation campaign to muddy the waters with conspiracy theories, news began circulating of an almost 90-minute long audio tape purportedly secretly recorded by Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas. Highlights included Trump angrily saying he wanted people to “get rid of” then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Besides the myriad questions this should bring to anyone’s mind didn’t seem to faze Republican lawmakers: 1) Does Donald Trump not realize he has the right, as president, to replace her, and if he does 2) What was he suggesting be done with Yovanovitch, and 3) What kind of crap national security is being run if any dubious character can record the president secretly for almost 90 minutes? 

On Sunday, news came out that former Ambassador John Bolton’s new memoir would feature smoking gun statements of Trump’s guilt in the Ukraine affair. Calls for witness testimony were reinvigorated. It would seem that allowing for such testimony as Bolton’s would be a fait accompli but, with the republic under fire from inside, there is nothing we can take for granted.

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This, of course, was followed by the deafening silence of Republican officials, and vitriol on Twitter from the the chief executive of our country. On Monday, all the president’s men went back to their posts to defend the indefensible. This might have to do with their fear of their fearful leader. Who is more cowardly, the coward or the cowards afraid of him? And while they went to work, trying to figure out what to do about the John Bolton-sized elephant in the room, the Trump defense spewed lie after lie after lie.

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Oops. Sorry, that’s a different Republican Senator clearly from an alternate reality.

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It is hard to sum up how outrageous the Trump-defense presentation on Monday was.

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A considerable amount of Monday’s “defense” was dedicated to figuring out ways to use old-fashioned phraseology that could be succinctly grabbed for headlines. Words like “poppycock” provided the deepest defense Trump’s team had to offer. The day ended with a promise of one thing, though.

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To place you in time, Monday also included Iowa Sen. Jodi Ernst embarrassing herself in remarkable fashion.

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By Tuesday it became more and more clear that the leaked John Bolton manuscript was becoming too hard to control and witnesses would likely need to be called in to testify. However, the plan for Republican leadership at this point was how best to hide testimony from the public, so that the rightwing propaganda machine could more easily lie about the framing and characterization of said testimonies. The summary of Trump’s defense by the end of Tuesday was best summarized by Steve Vladeck.

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By the end of Tuesday, Republican Majority Leader McConnell had brought fellow GOP senators into his lair for a closed-door session, to discuss whether or not they had the votes to stop witnesses from actually being called during this “trial.” Reports from numerous media outlets contradicted one another, with the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post reporting that McConnell did not have the votes secured to stop something resembling a real impeachment trial from breaking out, while Politico and The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman saying he did. 

By Wednesday morning, it seemed that the Republican Party was exactly where they’ve always been—inside of Donald Trump’s pocket. The White House, after telling everybody that John Bolton’s memoir meant nothing, decided to threaten legal action against Bolton and his publisher. Republican leadership sent out the new day’s talking points which consisted of admitting that Donald Trump did indeed hold up money in order to force Ukraine to publicly “investigate” a political rival, but … so what? “#WeWantWitnesses” went viral as protestors descended upon our nation’s capital.

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And then the questions began:

Sens. Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz thought they were able to put together a real stumper, using the old Obama whataboutism.

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Trump attorney Dershowitz took the fragments of what was left of his career and integrity and flushed them down the drain of history, by arguing that a president couldn’t be impeached for crimes, because his belief in himself as being awesome made it not a crime. The law scholar he repeatedly cited during this extraordinary argument went on television and also wrote an op-ed in The New York Times to say that Alan Dershowitz was as full of shit as you suspected him to be.

Meanwhile, news broke that Chief Justice Roberts had denied Republicans from outing the “whistleblower,” in the most cowardly fashion available to them: by getting Chief Justice Roberts to read their name as one of the submitted questions. Chief coward amongst them, Sen. Rand Paul.

Lead Manager Schiff  presented the Joseph Heller-level Catch-22 breaking news story of Trump’s Department of Justice, arguing in federal court—resisting subpoenas—that a president can’t be impeached by the House if they cannot be in court to fight for subpoenas … because they are in the Senate making their case for impeachment. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

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And sadly, none of us have made any of this up. It’s just the lazy writing of corruption and cowardice and incompetence. Americans rolled out of their beds on Friday to news that Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander, and Cory Gardner—all possible swing votes—were all in agreement that there was no such thing as crime. Just as Donald Trump’s new favorite lawyer Alan Dershowitz instructed. The rest of the day was filled with the bad, illogical theater one has come to expect from this Republican Party. Sen. Murkowski voted against new witnesses and new evidence, even with Bolton revelation after Bolton revelation getting leaked to the public. Her statement on the matter should truly disabuse anyone of the belief that Lisa Murkowski is anything but a corrupt tool of a politician, with zero ethical convictions whatsoever.

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#RIPAmerica began trending on Twitter.

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And the cowards we have come to know under Donald Trump continued to fly their bright yellow colors.

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The Republican Party made their decision clear. Our democracy means far less to them than the promise of short-term power. As Friday wore down, we were left with murmurs of amendments and promises of votes to come.

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In the end, this was the takeaway for next week, when the United States Senate, led by the Republican Party, decide to set the precedent that a president can be corrupt as long as he—and they are definitely talking about a man—thinks it is in his best interests to be corrupt.

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But before the very end of Friday, Republican Senators all stepped up to write the first line of their obituaries, voting to nix witnesses and to block five amendments Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put up.

Commiserate below in the comments. If you feel up to it.

‘Get your facts straight!’ Chris Wallace gets testy with Fox News pundit’s spin on Bolton

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Fox News’ Chris Wallace slammed conservative pundit Katie Pavlich on air, telling her to “Get your facts straight” after she tried to claim all kinds of made-up facts in her defense of Donald Trump. In question was Pavlich’s revisionist retelling of how the Democratic House’s impeachment inquiry was hampered by obstruction. In Pavlich’s imagineering, the Democratic Party is breaking with impeachment tradition by pushing an incomplete case, “and every impeachment beforehand, the witnesses that were called had been called in the House before being brought to the Senate. So there are questions here about the process.”

That’s not true. It’s not even a little bit true, and Wallace cut Pavlich off to tell her as much: “They hadn’t all been called in the House, and in the Clinton impeachment, they’d been called by the general independent counsel. They had not been called by the House.” 

Right-wing pundit Katie Pavlich is just the kind of dumb that Trump’s Republican Party loves: willing to toe any line of misinformation, no matter how many obvious facts and contradictions there are. Appearing on Fox News with conservative luminaries such as Brett Baier, Pavlich was promoting the old conservative trope that the difference between Clinton’s impeachment trial and Trump’s is that the Democratic Party keeps trying to add new things to it, because it’s going so terribly. The basis of this bit of bullshit is that Donald Trump’s White House has refused to allow anyone to testify, while his Department of Justice has done more work trying to cover up his criminal behavior than any of the actual work it’s supposed to do as a department. 

Wallace has been as critical of President Trump as anyone can be on the Fox News network, even admitting to the public that Trump has damaged our freedom of the press. But it’s hard to tell whether Wallace is angry at the lies being spread, or how stupid the spin is. The segment opened with Wallace saying proof that the John Bolton news that broke over the weekend was “big” was how intensely people like Pavlich were trying to spin it. 

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Watch Fox host contort himself as new damaging info emerges in Trump impeachment trial

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

The Republican Party continues forward with its oblique defense of Donald Trump’s impeachable crimes. This on the heels of bombshell news that former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his soon-to-be-published memoir that Trump froze the congressionally earmarked financial aid to Ukraine subject to them opening up a public corruption investigation into the Biden family. By any measure this would be a smoking gun. In fact, back in September, even Fox & friends’ Steve Doocy could agree to that. In a clip you can watch below from Sept. 24, 2019, Doocy explains how the whistleblower complaint only means something if someone could truly point to Donald Trump withholding aid because he wanted an investigation into a campaign rival—Joe Biden.

STEVE DOOCY: If the president said, you know, “I’ll give you the money but you’ve got to investigate Joe Biden,” that is really off-the-rails wrong.

Ainsley Earhardt agreed.

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Steve Doocy spent Monday pushing back those goal posts, while Fox News brought on corrupt politician after corrupt politician to pooh-pooh these bombshell revelations. Speaking with alleged sexual molestation accessory after the fact Rep. Jim Jordan, Doocy asked this of the new Bolton allegations. Calling these allegations something that “we have heard before,” Doocy went on to both illustrate exactly why the news is damning, while also saying it didn’t matter now, for no reason.

DOOCY: This is something we have heard before but now, because it’s John Bolton, and he was in the room, what does this change?

Media Matters put together this clip showing Doocy in September and Doocy on Monday.

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Listen, everybody has the right to change their minds about things. In fact, as more and more evidence is revealed, one should be able to change their mind as they now have new information to work with. And yet, somehow, Steve Doocy is so filled with the poison of cynicism, he is able to seamlessly change the parameters of the argument in such a way that it makes me wonder if Steve Doocy’s mind is simply filled with a gaseous sulfur-smelling void.

Rep. Adam Schiff makes the irrefutable case for Bolton’s testimony

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Donald Trump impeachment trial manager Rep. Adam Schiff has been so very stolid in his handling of the Republican-sham impeachment circus being orchestrated by the White House and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. As another day of appearances by Trump’s impeachment defense team began, House impeachment managers spoke to reporters in front of the Senate. The last question reporters asked was whether Schiff trusted former national security adviser John Bolton. Schiff used his response to point out the important issue: that the testimony of a witness such as Bolton is vital to a fair trial in the Senate.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: It's not a question of whether I trust John Bolton or the Republican senators [trust] John Bolton, or the Democratic senators. He should be placed under oath. And this is why we think the testimony should be public. It should be live. Let the American people, along with the senators, evaluate John Bolton’s credibility when he testifies, and make their own judgment. But to say that we’re going to blind ourselves from a witness who has so clearly relevant testimony to one of the central most serious allegations against the president, I don't see how you could have a fair trial without testimony like that.

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‘Right matters and the truth matters’: Read Adam Schiff’s history-making impeachment trial speech

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Thursday evening marked the end of a second long day on the Senate floor in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. Democratic officials presented the evidence to America, detailing how and why Donald Trump must be removed from office. The highlight was lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff's powerful 30-minute argument that closed out the day.

Schiff once again detailed some of the steps Trump and his White House took to obstruct the inquiry into his abuses of power. He underlined how the Trump White House went to his handpicked attorney general, William Barr, and got him to refuse to release evidence to Congress. “I know what the law says and it says you shall, doesn't say you may, doesn't say you might, doesn't say you can if you like to, doesn't say if the president doesn't object—it says you shall.” Just like at every other turn in this saga, it’s only because of the Democratic Party’s insistence that a whistleblower’s warnings be heeded that we even discovered how deep our executive branch’s corruption goes. 

Finally, Rep. Schiff finished with the powerful, already often-quoted conclusion of his argument, where he tied together why Donald Trump must be removed from office with what’s at stake for America. The final nine minutes of Schiff’s speech is transcribed below.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: But even now, our ally can’t get his foot in the door. Even now, our ally can’t get his foot in the door. And this brings me to the last point I want to make tonight, which is, when we’re done, we believe that we will have made the case overwhelmingly of the president’s guilt. That is, he’s done what he’s charged with. He withheld the money. He withheld the meeting. He used it to coerce Ukraine to do these political investigations. He covered it up. He obstructed us. He’s trying to obstruct you and he’s violated the Constitution. But I want to address one other thing tonight. Okay, he’s guilty. Okay, he’s guilty. Does he really need to be removed? Does he really need to be removed? We have an election coming up. Does he really need to be removed? He’s guilty. You know, is there really any doubt about this? Do we really have any doubt about the facts here? Does anybody really question whether the president is capable of what he’s charged with? No one is really making the argument “Donald Trump would never do such a thing,” because of course we know that he would, and of course we know that he did. It’s a somewhat different question though to ask, okay, it’s pretty obvious whether we can say it publicly or we can’t say it publicly. We all know what we’re dealing here with this president, but does he really need to be removed? And this is why he needs to be removed.

Donald Trump chose Rudy Giuliani over his own intelligence agencies. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own FBI director. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own national security advisers. When all of them were telling him this Ukraine 2016 stuff is kooky, crazy Russian propaganda, he chose not to believe them. He chose to believe Rudy Giuliani. That makes him dangerous to us, to our country. That was Donald Trump’s choice. Now, why would Donald Trump believe a man like Rudy Giuliani over a man like Christopher Wray? Okay. Why would anyone in their right mind believe Rudy Giuliani over Christopher Wray? Because he wanted to and because what Rudy was offering him was something that would help him personally. And what Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the truth. What Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the information he needed to protect his country and its elections, but that’s not good enough. What’s in it for him? What’s in it for Donald Trump? This is why he needs to be removed.

Now, you may be asking how much damage can he really do in the next several months until the election? A lot. A lot of damage. Now, we just saw last week, a report that Russia tried to hack or maybe did hack Burisma. Okay. I don’t know if they got in. I’m trying to find out. My colleagues on the Intel Committee, House and Senate, we’re trying to find out, did the Russians get in? What are the Russian plans and intentions? Well, let’s say they got in and let’s say they start dumping documents to interfere in the next election.

Let’s say they start dumping some real things they hack from Burisma. Let’s say they start dumping some fake things they didn’t hack from Burisma, but they want you to believe they did. Let’s say they start blatantly interfering in our election again to help Donald Trump. Can you have the least bit of confidence that Donald Trump will stand up to them and protect our national interest over his own personal interest? You know you can’t, which makes him dangerous to this country. You know you can’t. You know you can’t count on him. None of us can. None of us can. What happens if China got the message? Now you can say, he’s just joking of course. He didn’t really mean China should investigate the Bidens. You know that’s no joke.

Now maybe you could have argued three years ago when he said, “Hey Russia, if you’re listening, hack Hillary’s emails.” Maybe you could give him a freebie and say he was joking, but now we know better. Hours after he did that Russia did, in fact, try to hack Hillary’s emails. There’s no Mulligan here when it comes to our national security. So what if China does overtly or covertly start to help the Trump campaign? You think he’s going to call them out on it or you think he’s going to give them a better trade deal on it? Can any of us really have the confidence that Donald Trump will put his personal interests ahead of the national interests? Is there really any evidence in this presidency that should give us the iron-clad confidence that he would do so?

You know you can’t count on him to do that. That’s the sad truth. You know you can’t count on him to do that. The American people deserve a president they can count on to put their interests first, to put their interests first. Colonel Vindman said, “Here, right matters. Here, right matters.” Well, let me tell you something, if right doesn’t matter, if right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. Doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. Doesn’t matter how well-written the Oath of Impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost. Framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves, if right and truth don’t matter. And you know that what he did was not right.

That’s what they do in the old country that Colonel Vindman’s father came from. Or the old country that my great grandfather came from, or the old countries that your ancestors came from, or maybe you came from. But here, right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No Constitution can protect us, right doesn’t matter any more. And you know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to. This is why if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters and the truth matters.

Otherwise, we are lost.

You can watch Rep. Adam Schiff’s closing argument in three parts below.

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Adam Schiff’s perfect shutdown of Trump’s ‘executive privilege’ claims is mandatory viewing

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Rep. Adam Schiff took time away from wiping the floor of the U.S. Senate with Donald Trump’s weak-sauce arguments, to go in front of cameras outside of the Senate to … wipe the floor with the president’s weak-sauce arguments. Speaking alongside the other House Impeachment managers, Rep. Schiff wanted to disabuse the Republican-media narrative that the reason there are zero witnesses being allowed into the Senate’s trial is because of some kind of legitimate claim on Trump’s behalf of executive privilege. Calling it a “camouflage” and explaining that the Chief Justice has already been empowered to make those determinations in the trial, Schiff very adeptly and succinctly debunks what will likely be a large part of the upcoming Trump defense.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: I do want to address one issue that the president's team has been pushing out, not in the senate chamber but evidently everywhere else. And that is their last refuge. The last refuge of the Republican—not the Republican—of the president's team’s effort to conceal the evidence from the American people, and that is this claim of executive privilege. Now, we urged at the beginning of the trial that any witness issues be resolved at the beginning of the trial. The president's team wished to push that off, as did Senator McConnell, so that later in the process they could say, “well, if we were to entertain those questions now that would simply take too long.” That's nonsense. This is not a trial for a speeding ticket or shoplifting.

This is an impeachment trial involving the president of the United States. These witnesses have important firsthand testimony to offer. The House wishes to call them in the name of the American people and the American people overwhelmingly want to hear what they have to say. Now unlike in the House where the president could play rope-a-dope in the courts for years—that is not an option for the president's team here—and it gives no refuge to people who want to hide behind executive privilege to avoid the truth coming out. We have a very capable justice sitting in that Senate chamber empowered by the Senate rules to decide issues of evidence and privilege. And so if any of these witnesses have a colorful claim that they wish to make, or the president on their behalf, we have a justice who is able to make those determinations, and we trust that the chief justice can do so.

The Senate will always have the opportunity to overrule the justice, but what they fear, what the president’s team fears, is that the justice will, in fact, apply executive privilege to that very narrow category where it may apply. And here that category may be nowhere at all. Because you cannot use executive privilege to hide wrongdoing or criminality or impeachable misconduct. And that is exactly the purpose for which they seek to use it.

And finally, they have withheld hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of documents for which there is no colorable claim of privilege. Several of the witnesses that we seek to call have no even colorable claim of privilege. This is merely the latest camouflage and merely the latest effort to obstruct the Congress in its investigation and now to obstruct the Senate in the trial.

That’s a fact. Rep. Schiff continues to just land devastating body blow after body blow.

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New clip of young Lindsey Graham talking about impeachment confirms his hypocrisy knows no bounds

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Republican hypocrisy knows no bounds. It is hard to write this in new ways every few minutes, but it is the job of any honest person to acknowledge it. With Donald Trump’s impeachment trial playing out in the Senate and a Republican Party now actively colluding to cover up his crimes, old videos of very visible Republicans and Trump allies contradicting their current positions have started springing up.

Sen. Lindsey Graham is one of the more obvious examples because his 180-degree turnabout on executive powers, the abuse of those powers, and the subject of impeachment is arguably the most transparent example of how craven the Republican Party has become in its amoral quest for power. 

Dating back to Jan. 23, 1999, the clip below shows a younger Sen. Graham speaking at a press conference and basking in that camera limelight he so clearly desired and now requires.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: The law allows a different disposition if the offender comes before the court: “yes I’m guilty and I’m sorry and I throw myself on the mercy of the court.”  The sentence is usually different in a case like that versus someone who takes the legal system to the bitter end, and uses every twist and turn, and every gimmick, to try and beat the charges, for lack of a better word. So I’m going to argue that proportionality is something we need to consider, but is something that the defendant usually has to earn. And when you have someone who has flouted the law at every turn, then usually the sanctions are much more severe.

This was Sen. Graham’s attempt to dismiss the fact that the Republican Party’s “high crime” against then president Bill Clinton was that he obstructed justice in order to hide and lie about an extramarital affair he was having. The “proportionality” being brought to his mouth was the fact that none of it seemed very high crime-like, and Graham wanted to angle for the idea that Clinton’s lack of remorse showed an elitism and a belief he was above the law.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has arguably committed high crimes not only every day that he has been president, but every day since he began running for president.

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