During a 15-hour long hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday evening to discuss the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Rep. Rob Menendez (D-NJ) excoriated his Republican colleagues for using the issue of border security to boost their likely 2020 presidential nominee, Donald Trump.
According to HuffPost, Menendez “said the House Homeland Security Committee has held 17 hearings on the border, but zero full committee hearings on other issues within its jurisdiction such as emergency preparedness, cyber threats, infrastructure protection and more.”
“We have not lived up to our oversight obligation here on this committee because you all are obsessed with the border,” Menendez said. “Because you bend the knee to the ‘Orange Jesus’ as you refer to him across the aisle.”
Menendez: We have not lived up to our oversight obligation on this committee because you all bend the knee to the orange Jesus pic.twitter.com/kGjacyunOr
Former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney (WY) revealed in her 2023 book that Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) referred to Trump as the Orange Jesus. Green is now chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
Menendez went on to call the impeachment hearings a “sham,” adding, “I’ve tried to listen here. I try to be a team player, I really do. I try not to engage in the partisanship. But I’ve had it.”
Video of Menendez’s comments has garnered over 170,000 views and drew praise on social media.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 thank you @RepMenendez for expressing exactly what many citizens feel. Thank you @HouseDemocrats@HouseGOP 😤 most of you are wasting tax payer’s $$$ time trying to appease a man child.
As he prepares to leave Congress and head back to the California district he’s represented since 2007, Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy may be anticipating that he’ll be well-received by his constituents.
But based on a fascinating report from Andrew Gumbel of The Guardian, many residents of the district — the largest city of which is Bakersfield — aren’t exactly eager to see McCarthy back in in their midst.
“If you went through the wringer he went through, I suspect there’s a little humiliation, a little embarrassment. Maybe he’s licking his wounds and wants to go off into the sunset,” said Greg Perrone, president of the Greater Bakersfield Republican Assembly, an activist group that hews to McCarthy’s right. “Still, I’m a little disappointed that he didn’t finish the term that he was elected to serve. That’s not what we expect from our elected leaders.”
Consider some of the letters to the editor of The Bakersfield Californian, many of which are filled with stinging rebukes of McCarthy, including calling him quitter for retiring early.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Kevin,” two of them wrote last week. One added: “You haven’t represented us in a very long time.”
Even Bakersfield mayor Karen Goh gave McCarthy the back of her hand, saying she was “too busy” to provide even a brief quote regarding the former speaker.
Some in the district complain that McCarthy has never been interested in their needs and has instead spent most of his time in other parts of California in an effort to raise fundraising dollars for himself and the GOP, which doesn’t exactly do them any good.
McCarthy’s district, California’s 20th, extends well beyond Bakersfield into the farmlands of Kern and Tulare counties and into the suburbs of Fresno, the largest city in the Central Valley. It was redrawn before the last election to make it more solidly Republican, relieving McCarthy of any significant pressure to fight for his own congressional seat. He scarcely visited during last year’s campaign, focusing instead on raising hundreds of millions of dollars for more competitive districts in California and the rest of the country.
For his part, McCarthy is making it clear he’s still interested in politics on a national level, especially if a future Republican president has a cabinet post that needs to be filled by an insider who has lots of contacts in Congress and can always be counted when it comes time to ask donors to write a check or two for the GOP effort.
Historically, McCarthy will go down as a lesson in the personal greed for power that drove both his rise to the top and the crash that left him as little more than a historical footnote who is only interested in what he can do for himself.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg walked right into the proverbial lion’s den when he testified before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and he quickly schooled committee Republicans on topics ranging from climate change to subsidies for Big Oil.
U.S. Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) suggested that Buttigieg was personally to blame for “killing” the U.S. auto industry by supporting the development of electric vehicles.
“I don’t know if you can justify or how you justify forcing my constituents to pay for EVs [electric vehicles] and EV infrastructure for coastal elites and wealthy people, but somehow you do,” Perry remarked.
Buttigieg: “Well, I need to point out that wealthy people were specifically excluded from the Inflation Reduction Act.”
Perry: “Well. Do you dispute that two-thirds of EV owners, are owned by people over 100,000, that make over 100,000?”
Buttigieg noted that the price of electric vehicles is going down and wondered if Perry was opposed “cutting their costs.”
“I’m not against cutting the cost. The market should do it,” Perry replied. “But you want the government, you want my taxpayers to pay to cut the cost.”
That led to Buttigieg asking about taxpayer-funded subsidies for the oil and gas industry.
“If you are of the view that there should be no subsidy to propulsion vehicles, then are you against oil and gas subsidies?”
Another GOP congressman told the secretary, “Nobody wants these electric vehicles unless you’re an elite that can afford them – people in may district sure as hell don’t want them.”
The secretary responded, “We’re doing this for three reasons, even though the EV revolution’s going to happen.”
Buttigieg also told Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) that “climate change is real,” which led the congressman to reply, “This one’s called Autumn.”
“Yeah, that’s the seasons changing which respectfully is not the same as the climate changing,” Buttigieg retorted.
But perhaps the best exchange was between Buttigieg and U.S. Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO), who asked the secretary about the cost of his “private” flights, to which he responded:
“I knew this might come up, so I brought some numbers. Since getting the job, I have taken—these are estimates, give or take a couple—but I’ve taken 638 flights.”
“607 of them were commercial, 10 of them were on military aircraft such as Air Force One, and 21 were on FAA aircraft—representing about 3 percent of the flights.”
He added, “Just once again, the way I usually travel is an economy class aboard an airliner like everybody else, when we do it differently, it’s often because it will save taxpayer money.”
Here’s some video clips from Buttigieg’s testimony:
Buttigieg turns the tables on a hostile Rep. Perry on subsidies: There are some people who I suppose believe there should be no subsidies for anything involving transportation. And I assume in the spirit of philosophical consistency, they would be against subsidizing oil and gas pic.twitter.com/HOH1xhBM96
Oh my god a GOP member of congress actually brought up the bogus “private flights” story to Buttigieg’s face. Immediate regret. pic.twitter.com/8gvPt01a6C
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) masterfully swatted down Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) this morning after she fired off a hateful tweet aimed at him on Sunday.
Here’s what Greene tweeted out:
The Senate no longer enforcing a dress code for Senators to appease Fetterman is disgraceful.
Dress code is one of society’s standards that set etiquette and respect for our institutions.
What does it matter if Fetterman wears jeans and a hoodie instead of a suit and tie? Some of the biggest douchebags in the Senate (i.e. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley) always wear a suit, but they also try to overturn the will of the voters and invalidate an election as they smugly sit and adjust their ties.
Also, Margie is in no position to complain about how anyone dresses considering that she often looks like her outfits came from the markdown rack at Walmart.
“Thankfully, the nation’s lower chamber lives by a higher code of conduct: displaying ding-a-ling pics in public hearings.”
Fetterman is referring to Greene showing nude photos of Hunter Biden during a House hearing in July:
“Displaying a pornographic image of Hunter Biden, Greene continued:
“So when Hunter Biden paid for this woman to do this with him, to travel across state lines from California to Washington, DC, on June 15th, this is a violation of the Mann Act. This was prostitution.”
“Greene then added, ‘This is evidence of Hunter Biden making sex, excuse me, this is my time, making pornography.'”
Others joined Fetterman in swatting down Margie.
The House dropped the bar on the ground when they let MTG in!
Peach Tree Dish specialist and insurrectionist Marge Greene blathering about “lowering the bar”, is like Trump complaining about someone’s poor spelling.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has scheduled a hearing on crime in the city of Manhattan for next Monday, April 17 as part of spotlighting what Jordan claims are the “victims” of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who indicted failed former president Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records last month.
But the hearing may wind up turning into a massive public relations nightmare for Jordan, according to Greg Sargent of The Washington Post.
The emerging details are already shining a harsh light on what you might call the ‘governing by Fox News’ problem, in which Republicans use committee hearings to create right-wing media boomlets but ultimately run into the buzzsaw of outside scrutiny, Sargent reports.
Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), who sits on the committee chaired by Jordan, says he’s looking forward to the “field hearing” planned by the chairman.
“We are eager to use this as an opportunity to highlight what is the real pressing issue in terms of public safety around the country. And that’s the prevalence of assault weapons.”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, Sargent adds. Others Democrats on the committee are also planning to give Jordan a humiliating fact-check to counter his bullshit.
Committee Democrats, led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), also plan to push back against lurid and widely debunked GOP claims about Bragg, New York City and crime. Among these claims: Bragg didn’t prosecute an alleged murder on the subway (he did); crime in Manhattan is at record highs (that’s nonsense); Bragg is a wholly owned puppet of George Soros (that’s pure fantasy talk); and the judge hearing Trump’s case is a Trump-hater (even Trump’s own lawyer won’t say this).
And there will also be plenty of facts presented by Democrats that tie House Republicans to Trump, serving as a taxpayer-funded “Trump legal team,” according to Congressman Goldman.
“It’s an opportunity for the public to learn exactly the degree of coordination and collusion between House Republican leadership and Donald Trump.”
It should be fun to watch as Jordan loses his temper and proves that he’s nothing more than a whore for Trump and the most extremist elements of the GOP. Grab your popcorn and settle in for a show.