Category: Congress

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Congress Crime Donald Trump

House January 6 Committee Believes There’s Video Evidence Proving Trump’s Guilt

The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol has reason to believe there’s video evidence which would prove that former President Donald Trump didn’t want his supporters to vacate the premises and instead expected them to remain until he had been declared the winner of the 2020 election.

The committee has requested from the National Archives all of the video recordings Trump made as the rioting grew more intense, because in some of them Trump didn’t tell the rioters to disperse, but only expressed his love and support for them.

Based on reporting in a new book from ABC News White House correspondent Jon Karl, we know that several versions of Trump’s video message were recorded.

In the book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, Karl writes, according to ABC News:

The former president liked what he saw, boasted about the size of the crowd and argued with aides who wanted him to tell his supporters to stop rioting, according to Karl’s sources.

Two hours after the riot started, Trump finally acquiesced to recording a video statement. In the message posted to Twitter, he asked his supporters to go home but also praised them. “We love you. You are special,” Trump said in the video.

An aide present for the recording said, “Trump had to tape the message several times before they thought he got it right.”

In earlier versions he neglected to tell his supporters to leave the Capitol, according to Karl.

And that, Ryan Goodman of Just Security notes, is why the Select Committee wants to see every version of the video Trump recorded:

That would indeed be evidence of Trump’s guilt. It would prove his intent and that he didn’t want the violence to stop until he got what he wanted; until he could remain as head of state.

Trump filed suit to block the committee from getting any videos. Why would he want to keep that information hidden if he didn’t do anything wrong, as he repeatedly suggests? Because he knows it will prove his culpability and likely send him to prison for decades.

 

Categories
Congress Elections GOP Whining

Congressional Republicans Blasted As ‘Cowards’ After Skipping Rally For Capitol Rioters

On Saturday, a couple hundred protesters showed up at the “Justice for J6” rally in Washington, D.C. The crowd was reportedly so sparse that media and police outnumbered the people there to show their support for the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, many of whom are still in custody and facing years in prison.

Most notably absent at the rally were Congressional Republicans, including Reps. Matt Gaetz (FL) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), both of whom have said they think the Jan. 6 rioters are being treated unfairly.

The absence of the elected GOP members was certainly noticed by the rallygoers, according to the right-wing Washington Times:

“Where’s McCarthy? Where’s McConnell? They’re all useless,” one demonstrator in the crowd yelled.

Steve Merkel of Baltimore who attended the rally called Republicans “cowards,” and said it was wrong that no one came out to support nonviolent offenders charged over the riot.

Merkel added:

“They’re cowards because they’re not standing up for those constitutional rights. They’re supposed to be protected. I call them political animals who are afraid of bad media coverage.”

What’s this? Trouble in right-wing insurrectionist paradise? Sure sounds that way.

As Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) later remarked, the pathetic turnout and lack of any elected Republicans in attendance suggests that the Cult of Trump may be dissipating:

“The police showed up in force, and they had the presence that they should have had on January 6th, considering what Donald Trump was promising, and I think that may have been a deterrent. Also, perhaps Donald Trump’s ability to inspire people to show up on his behalf may also be fading.”

Let’s hope so, because Trump and his minions are clearly a national security threat to the United States.

 

Categories
Congress Donald Trump

Nancy Pelosi Reveals How She Now Refers To Trump – And It’s Perfect

During an appearance at the University of Cambridge in the UK recently, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi didn’t pull her punches as she discussed the current state of the Republican Party and its unending devotion to Donald Trump, a man who will likely go down in history as the worst president in U.S. history.

Pelosi began by talking about the GOP, Newsweek notes:

“I say to my Republican friends—and I do have some—take back your party, you’re the grand old party of America, you’ve done wonderful things for our country. You’re now being hijacked by a cult that is just not good for our country.

“Take back your party, don’t let it be dominated by those who want to suppress the vote because they have no positive message to win, they want to suppress the vote and that’s how they would win.”

The House Speaker added that today’s Republicans seem determined to ignore the fact that the vast majority of Americans support a woman’s right to make her own reproductive choices and requiring background checks to purchase a gun:

“Take back your party so it’s more of a reflection of Republicans in the country than allegiance to the former president [Trump] and one of the ways we can help improve that situation would be to pass H01, which would have redistricting in a way, that is again agnostic, along the lines of a voting rights act. It may not benefit Democrats, but it may benefit the country because it would make Republican districts more open to people other than the ones that are in Congress now.”

 

Asked for the thoughts on Trump, she said she rarely talks about him anymore, but did get one zinger in that’s certain to enrage the ex-president:

“I reference him from time to time with ‘what’s-his-name.’”

She then attached this addendum to the subject of Trump:

“If he wants to run again, he’ll be the first president who was impeached twice and defeated twice.”

That line drew tremendous applause from the audience, and it’s only a matter of time before the failed, one-term loser POTUS will feel a need to respond.

Here’s the video:

 

Categories
Congress GOP Religion WTF?!

Lauren Boebert Says The Church Should Always Have Authority Over The Government

Proving yet again that many Republicans in Congress either haven’t read the U.S. Constitution or read it and didn’t comprehend a word it says, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is urging Christians to help her “remove” President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris because the church should always have authority over the government.

Speaking over the weekend at a conference hosted by the right-wing Truth & Liberty Coalition at Charis Bible College in Woodland Park, Colorado, Right Wing Watch reports, Boebert began her rant by demanding that Biden and Harris be impeached:

“When we see Biden address the nation and the world and show more contempt and aggravation and aggression towards unvaccinated Americans than he does terrorists, we have a problem. And that’s why I have articles of impeachment to impeach Joe Biden, Kamala Harris.”

“We cannot take another 18 months, we cannot take another three years of this poor, failed leadership. We are sons and daughters of revolutionaries. They went to battle for a lot less. They took a stand for a lot less. And it’s time we get involved. I need you involved in every local level. I need you speaking up. I need the world to hear your voice. You know the word of God, and you know that there is power in your words, that the world was framed by words. You have the Lord God Almighty on your side. I need you to use your voice and speak.”

And then Boebert declared that the government must do whatever the church wants:

“You have the God kind of faith, and that faith speaks. That faith speaks to mountains, those impossible, immovable situations, and I think there’s some mountains they need to hear your voice. … It’s time the church speaks up. The church has relinquished too much authority to government. We should not be taking orders from the government; the government needs to be looking at the church and saying, ‘How do we do this effectively?'”

From beyond the grave, Thomas Jefferson responds to Lauren Boebert, having written in 1802:

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

The name “God,” it should be noted, is not found anywhere in the Constitution. Not even once. That’s how seriously the Founding Fathers took the idea that religion and government should be separated.

As for Boebert’s absurd call for Biden and Harris to be impeached, that’s just sour grapes because her real Lord and Savior, Donald Trump, was impeached twice, the only man in U.S. history to carry that dubious distinction.

If Lauren Boebert wants to live in a theocracy, there are planes leaving most airports that will take her to Iran or Saudi Arabia. And almost no one back here in the U.S. will miss her.

Categories
Congress GOP

Matt Gaetz Publicly Humiliates Kevin McCarthy As The GOP Civil War Descends To The Gutter

Though they try to keep their disagreements behind closed doors most of the time, there’s a civil war taking place inside the Republican Party, with once faction representing the pragmatic but conservative view that’s traditional for the GOP and the other eagerly making common cause with domestic terror groups and insisting Donald Trump must be allowed to serve as president for as long as he wants.

In other words, it’s the pre-Trump GOP vs. the Neo-Fascist GOP.

One of the most controversial of the new Republicans is Rep. Matt Gaetz (FL), a man who seems to believe that it’s perfectly acceptable that he dated underage girls and took them across state lines for the purposes of having sex with them. For that, Gaetz is now facing life in prison if he’s indicted and convicted.

But there are also some Republicans who try to walk the line between the old GOP and the new version of the party. People like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA), who spoke with Donald Trump on the day of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and is worried details of that call will be provided to the House Select Committee investigating the riots.

Such was the topic for Gaetz on his podcast, Firebrand, and he noted that “McCarthy doesn’t have strong reactions to things. It’s not his style. Following the targeting of our members, he surprised and said this.”:

And yet, Gaetz then took a very real cheap shot at McCarthy:

“That’s some huffing and puffing indeed. No low T (testosterone) today. But how can we trust Kevin McCarthy to go beyond talking tough to Nancy Pelosi when he won’t even stand up to Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger? You see, Cheney and Kinzinger sit as Nancy Pelosi appointees on the January 6th committee. They’ve crossed the Rubicon, joined the other side.”

So McCarthy can’t be trusted because he won’t punish Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger? That means there’s a very real war taking place inside the GOP and they’re aiming their guns at each other. It’s a circular firing squad, and that won’t end well for Republicans.

How should we respond to this? We should applaud with glee and hope for more. The sooner the Trump-infested GOP destroys itself, the better for this country.