Substacks

September 29, 2023 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

10 months ago

September 30, 2023

“What a day we are having…. As a former director of emergency management, I know a disaster when I see one,” Representative Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) said yesterday in the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, overseen by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee chaired by James Comer (R-KY).

Moskowitz wasn’t wrong. After a hearing that lasted more than six hours, highlights of which Aaron Rupar of Public Notice reposted on social media, Neil Cavuto of the Fox News Channel was unimpressed. He said that although Comer had promised to present “a mountain of evidence” against President Biden, “none of the expert witnesses today presented…any proof for impeachment…. The way this was built up, ‘where there’s smoke there would be fire,’… but where’s there’s smoke today, we just got a lot more smoke.”

The Republicans on the committee repeatedly talked about the volume of evidence they have uncovered, but they were never able to link their piles of evidence to the president. Under questioning, their own witnesses said there was not enough evidence to impeach President Biden.

It seemed as if Republicans have become so accustomed to being able to say anything they want to on right-wing media without being challenged they thought a congressional committee would operate the same way. When the Democrats pushed back, they seemed flummoxed.

Comer lost control of the hearing as Democrats on the committee, thoroughly prepared, came out swinging. Representative Shontel Brown (D-OH) noted that “[t]he DOJ and FBI under former President Trump spent 5 long years looking into these Republican conspiracy theories, and debunked them. Repeatedly.” Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said, “The majority sits completely empty handed with no evidence of any presidential wrongdoing, no smoking gun, no gun, no smoke.”

Representative Summer Lee (D-PA) called out the Republicans by name for holding a sham impeachment hearing instead of funding the government and working for their constituents. She noted that 217,583 people living in the districts of the Republicans on the committee would lose their paychecks because of the Republican shutdown.

Most notably, the Democrats called out the places where witnesses or committee members had deleted words in quotations that changed their meanings. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) emphasized that the four Republican witnesses said they had not presented any first-hand witness accounts of crimes committed by President Biden, while the committee was blocking the testimony of witnesses who could testify to actual facts. She also noted that members of Congress could say anything they wanted because they are covered by the Constitution’s Speech and Debate clause protecting them,

Democrats also called out the many ways in which the Republicans were trying to discredit President Biden with speculation during an impeachment hearing to distract from the very real legal troubles of former president Trump. Representatives Mike Garcia (D-CA) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA) called out the Republicans for focusing on allegations about Hunter Biden and ignoring the very real issues involving Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who could not get a security clearance until Trump demanded he be given one, worked on Middle East issues in the White House, and then received a $2 billion investment from the Saudis shortly after Trump left office.

Most dramatically, Representative Greg Cesar (D-TX) asked the members of the Oversight Committee to raise their hands if they believe that both Hunter and Trump should be held accountable if they are found guilty on any of their indictments. The Democrats all raised their hands. The Republicans did not.

One senior republican aide told CNN’s Melanie Zanona: “This is an unmitigated disaster.”

It did not get better after the hearing ended. A fact-check by CNN’s Daniel Dale, Marshall Cohen and Annie Grayer tore apart the committee’s “evidence.” Although Comer said in his opening remarks that the committee has uncovered how “the Bidens and their associates…raked in over $20 million between 2014 and 2019,” all but about $7 million went to Hunter Biden’s business associates, who according to the Washington Post had “legitimate business interests,” and there is no evidence that President Biden himself received any of this money.

Comer’s accusation that money was wired to Joe Biden’s Delaware address did not note that the money was a loan, and it went to Hunter Biden’s bank account. Hunter Biden’s lawyers say that he used the Bidens’ Delaware home as his address at the time.

Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) claimed that documents released Wednesday from 2020 showed that the Department of Justice was protecting President Biden. But in 2020 Trump, not Biden, was president, and the official who urged Biden senior’s name be kept off a search warrant did so because there was no legal basis to include him in a search warrant concerning a business involving his adult son.

And on it went.

Charlie Sykes of The Bulwark wrote: “The charitable view is that the first hearing was a dumpster fire inside a clown car wrapped in a fiasco. To put it mildly, the GOP did not bring their best.”

At the end of the day, it seemed as if Democrats had flipped the script that has worked so well for so long on right-wing media. Rather than being on the defensive themselves, they put Republicans on the defensive. And because their hits were based in reality, rather than a false narrative, they left the Republican committee members with few options today other than to take to social media, once again, to boast of all the evidence they have accumulated against President Biden.

The hearing was designed to give the extremists of the Freedom Caucus one of their demands, likely in the hope that they would agree to pass a stopgap funding bill that would at least make it look like the House Republicans were trying to fund the government. But today, when House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) brought to the floor an extreme bill that would have made 30% cuts to food assistance, housing, education, funding for border agents, and so on, and insisted on closing the border while funding the government for only another 30 days, 21 extremists voted with the Democrats to kill it by a vote of 198 to 232.

This was a harsh blow not only to McCarthy but to all the Republicans in swing districts. House leaders forced them all to vote for a measure chock full of enormously unpopular cuts and then snatched away the prize of funding the government. Such a political disaster speaks very poorly of McCarthy, who should have never put members of his conference in such a position. Losing 21 of his members in this vote is an embarrassment. The loss weakens the party for 2024: the Democratic ads will pretty much write themselves.

And the members refusing to fund the government simply don’t appear to care, either about their colleagues or their constituents.

At any point, McCarthy could bring up before the House the bipartisan measure already passed by the Senate. Democrats would then likely make up the votes he would lose in his own conference. But the extremists would then challenge his speakership, and that is apparently a challenge he is unwilling to brave.

—

Notes:

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-impeachment-hearing-house-oversight-09-28-23/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/28/politics/fact-check-house-impeachment-hearing-biden/index.html

Morning Shots

Comer’s Fiasco

“Republicans are the party that says that government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.” — P.J. O’Rourke As we roll into the weekend: Dysfunction squared: Hardliners plot to replace McCarthy as government shutdown looms – The Washington Post…

19 hours ago · 365 likes · 462 comments · Charlie Sykes

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/conservative-rebels-threaten-tank-mccarthys-funding-bill-raising-odds-rcna118078

Twitter (X):

atrupar/status/1707469010978189499

RepCasar/status/1707486387803464177

acyn/status/1707490323281199560

MZanona/status/1707434463674671558

Substacks

July 25, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

10 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Substacks

TGIF: The Week Unburdened by the Week That Has Been Suzy Weiss

Published

17 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Pro-Palestinian protesters gather outside of Union Station to protest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States. (Probal Rashid via Getty Images)

Oh, no, it’s the sister again, for another slow news week. Let’s get to it.

→ Biden dropped out: Six years ago emotionally, but technically this past Sunday, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. He did it via X and promptly threw his support (and cash) behind Vice President Kamala Harris. Then he got Covid and hunkered down in Delaware—or depending on what hooch you’ve been drinking, died and was reanimated so he could appear before the cameras on Wednesday to address the nation. Joe’s family, including Hunter, sat along the wall of the Oval Office as he spoke. The president talked about the cancer moonshot, ending the war in Gaza, putting the party over himself, and Kamala’s tenacity, as Kamala’s pistol dug ever-so-slightly harder into his back. Right after, Jill, the First Lady of passive aggression, who apparently wanted to outdo her heart emoji, tweeted a handwritten note “to those who never wavered, to those who refused to doubt, to those who always believed.” I respect a First Lady who stands by her man and her energetic stepson. A First Lady who sees the high road way up there and says to herself, “If they want us out of here so bad, they can clean out the fridge and strip the beds themselves!”

→ Kamala is brat, Biden is boots, please God send the asteroid today: I’ve learned the hard way—and by that I mean my parents once asked me what “WAP” meant—that certain things should never be explained with words. It’s not that it’s impossible, it’s just that it embarrasses everyone.

That’s how I feel about the whole Kamala-is-brat thing. Brat is a good album about partying and getting older and having anxiety that was released earlier this summer by Charli XCX. But it’s since been adopted by too-online and very young people as a personality, and by Kamala Harris’s campaign as a mode to relate to those very young people. Her campaign is leaning into the whole green look of the album to try and win over Gen Z, and generally recasting her many viral moments—“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” “I love Venn diagrams” “What can be, unburdened but what has been”—as calling cards. It’s like when Hillary went on Broad City, only this time more cringe.

And now we have Jake Tapper and Greg Gutfeld grappling with the “essence” and the “aesthetic” and overall vibe of brat girl summer. We used to be a serious country. We used to make things.

Here’s the thing about Kamla: she is hilarious and campy, but unintentionally so. Any goodwill that her goofy dances or weird turns of phrase garner should be considered bonus points, not game play. Was there ever any doubt that Fire Island would go blue? We’ve been debating whether Kamala’s meme campaign is a good move for her prospects in the Free Press Slack, and here I’ll borrow from my older and wiser colleague Peter Savodnik: “There is nothing more pathetic than an older person who cares what a younger person thinks is cool.”

→ Boomer behavior: While Kamala’s campaign is being run by a 24-year-old twink with an Adderall prescription, J.D. Vance’s speechwriter seems to be a drunk Boomer who just got kicked out of a 7-11. Vance, appearing this week at a rally in Middletown, Ohio, riffed, “Democrats say that it is racist to believe. . . well, they say it’s racist to do anything. I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today, and I’m sure they’re going to call that racist too.” Crickets. Horror. Major “Thanks, Obama” energy. There was also a bit on fried bologna sandwiches and a lot of “lemme tell you another story.” The guy is 39 but sounds older than Biden.

Fresher, 35-to-60-year-old blood is exactly what we’ve been begging for. Let the Boomers boom, let the Zoomers zoom. Kamala and J.D.: act your age.

Substacks

July 25, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

Published

21 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Momentum continues to build behind Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, and the national narrative as a whole has shifted.

Democrats appear to be generating significant enthusiasm among younger Americans. Yesterday, for the first time in their history, the March for Our Lives organization endorsed a presidential candidate: Kamala Harris. Students from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, organized March for Our Lives after the shooting there in 2018. Executive director Natalie Fall said that the organization “will work to mobilize young people across the country to support Vice President Harris and other down-ballot candidates, with a particular focus on the states and races where we can make up the margin of victory—in Arizona, New York, Michigan, and Florida.”

Andrea Hailey of Vote.org announced that in the 48 hours after President Biden said he would not accept the Democratic nomination, nearly 40,000 people registered to vote. That meant a daily increase in new registrations of almost 700%.

People are turning out for Harris in impressive numbers. In the hours after she launched her campaign, Win With Black Women rallied 44,000 Black women on Zoom and raised $1.6 million. On Monday, around 20,000 Black men rallied to raise $1.2 million. Tonight, challenged to “answer the call,” 164,000 white women joined an event that “broke Zoom” and raised more than $2 million and tens of thousands of new volunteers.

Another significant endorsement for Harris came yesterday from Geoff Duncan, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia, who wrote on social media: “I’m committed to beating Donald Trump. The only vehicle left for me to do that with is the Democratic Party. If that requires me to vote for, speak for, or endorse [Kamala Harris] then count me in!” Duncan’s public announcement offers permission for other Georgia Republicans to make a similar shift. In 1964, South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond similarly paved the way for southern Democrats to vote for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

Harris’s appearances are generating such enthusiasm from audiences that when she delivered the keynote address this morning at the convention of the American Federation of Teachers in Houston, Texas, the applause delayed her ability to begin. After a speech defending education and calling out the cuts to it in Project 2025, Harris ended by demonstrating that after decades of Democrats being accused of being anti-American, Trump’s denigration of the country has enabled the party to claim the position of being America’s defenders.

“When we vote, we make our voices heard,” Harris said. “So today, I ask you, AFT, are you ready to make your voices heard? Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in opportunity? Do we believe in the promise of America? And are we ready to fight for it? And when we fight, we win! God bless you and God bless the United States of America.”

Today the Commerce Department reported that economic growth in the second quarter was higher than expected, coming in at 2.8%, thanks to higher spending driven by higher wages. The country’s changing momentum is showing in media stories hyping the booming economy Biden’s team tried for years to get traction on. “Full Employment is Joe Biden’s True Legacy” was the title of a story by Zachary Carter that appeared yesterday in Slate; CNN responded to today’s good economic news with an article by Bryan Mena titled: “The US economy is pulling off something historic.”

With Harris appearing to have sewn up the nomination, the question has turned to her vice presidential pick. That question is fueling the sense of excitement as potential choices are in front of cameras and on social media advocating Democratic positions and defending the United States from Trump’s denigration. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro listed the economic gains of the past years, and said: “Trump, you’ve got to stop sh*t talking America. We’ve got to start standing tall and being patriotic and showing how much we love this amazing nation.”

The vice presidential hopefuls appear to be having some fun with showcasing their personalities, as Minnesota governor Tim Walz did in his video from the Minnesota State Fair where he and his daughter went on an extreme ride. So are social media users who have dug up old videos of, for example, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explaining how he would pilot a small starfighter that had lost its auxiliary shields, or Arizona senator Mark Kelly’s identical twin brother Scott pranking a fellow astronaut on the Space Station with a gorilla suit Mark smuggled on board.

That sense of fun is an enormous relief after years of political weight, and it has spilled over into making fun of the Republican ticket, most notably with a false story that vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance wrote about—and I cannot believe I am typing this—having sex with a couch. The story is stupid, but worse are the denials of it, which have spread the story into populations that otherwise would likely not have seen it.

Just two weeks ago, Vance appeared to be the leader of the next generation of extremist MAGA Republicans, but now that calculation seems to have been hasty. Vance is a staunch opponent of abortion—the key issue in 2024—and he has been vocal in his disdain of women who have not given birth, saying in 2021, for example, that the U.S. was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He went on to say that people who don’t have children “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country.

Republican commentator Meghan McCain noted that Vance’s “comments are activating women across all sides, including my most conservative Trump supporting friends. These comments have caused real pain and are just innately unchristian.” Actor Jennifer Aniston, who tends to stay out of politics, posted: “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States.” Vance had called out Harris by name in those 2021 comments, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s ex-wife Kerstin Emhoff took to social media to defend Harris from Vance’s attacks on her as “childless,” calling her “a co-parent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.” Harris’s stepdaughter chimed in: “I love my three parents.”

Vance also ties the Republican ticket firmly to Project 2025. The Trump camp has worked to distance itself from Project 2025—not convincingly, since the two are obviously closely tied, but it turns out that Vance wrote the introduction for a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who was the lead author of Project 2025. The book appears to popularize that plan, right down to its endorsement of a “Second American Revolution,” and according to the book deal report, proceeds from the book will go to the Heritage Foundation “and aligned nonprofits.”

Now Vance’s words praising Project 2025 will be in print, just in time for the election. Yesterday, Trump posted: “I have nothing to do with, and know nothing about, Project 25 [sic]. The fact that I do is merely disinformation put out by the Radical Left Democrat Thugs. Do not believe them!”

Trump is clearly aware of, and concerned about, the changing narrative. This morning, he called in to Fox & Friends, saying, “We don’t need the votes. I have so many votes. I’m in Florida now…and every house has a Trump-Vance sign on it. Every single house…. It’s amazing the spirit…. This election has more spirit than I’ve ever seen ever before.” Tonight the Trump campaign proved their worry by backing out of debates with Harris, saying debates can’t be scheduled until she is the official nominee, although Biden was not the official nominee when they met in June.

The larger narrative shift has affected the media approach to Trump, who is accustomed to shaping perceptions as he wishes. Now, 12 days after the mass shooting at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, there is increasing media attention to the fact that there has still been no medical report on Trump’s injuries, although he wore a large bandage on his ear at the Republican National Convention and said at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday that he “took a bullet for democracy.”

Yesterday, FBI director Christopher Wray told Congress that it is not clear whether Trump was “grazed” by a bullet or by shrapnel, words that former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance called “FBI speak for, ‘it’s unlikely it was a bullet.’”

CNN chief medical consultant Dr. Sanjay Gupta noted last week that the people need a real medical evaluation of Trump’s injuries, explaining that “gunshot blasts near the head can cause injuries that aren’t immediately noticeable, such as bleeding in or on the brain, damage to the inner ear or even psychological trauma.” But, as Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has noted, much of the press has kept mum about the story.

Media outlets have reported Wray’s testimony, though, and in a social media post today, Trump called on Wray, whom he appointed to head the FBI, to resign from his post for “LYING TO CONGRESS.” Tonight, he reiterated that “it was…a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard.”

Perhaps eager to get back to their districts, House Republicans canceled their expected votes on appropriations bills scheduled for next week and left town today for their August recess. The House will not reconvene until early September. The government’s fiscal year 2025 begins on October 1.

—

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/opinion/trump-lies-charts-data.html

https://marchforourlives.org/in-a-first-ever-endorsement-march-for-our-lives-endorses-kamala-harris-for-president/

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-economic-growth-regains-steam-second-quarter-inflation-slows-2024-07-25/

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/biden-economy-employment-inflation.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/entertainment/jennifer-aniston-jd-vance/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/25/economy/us-economy-gdp-second-quarter/index.html

https://www.mediamatters.org/heritage-foundation/jd-vance-wrote-foreword-book-project-2025-architect-kevin-roberts-and-proceeds

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-might-not-shot-1930037

https://people.com/was-trump-struck-by-bullet-or-shrapnel-fbi-director-testifies-8683340

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-wants-fbi-director-resign-immediately-chris-wray-rcna163641