Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) doubts there are enough votes in the Senate to quickly dismiss any articles of impeachment against President Trump.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1261982
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1261982
Wait - what? Somebody was able to flush John Cornyn out of his undisclosed location long enough to corner him for a question?
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“Schiff has been interviewing people behind closed doors and then selectively leaking information that supports their narrative, finally they’re going to open it to the public,” Cornyn said.
I guess he forgot the part where all Republican members in the 3 committees could be in the room and had an equal opportunity and amount of time to question witnesses. Oh, and that complete transcripts of testimony are being released. Oh, yeah, and that public hearings are now being held. And that this is just the way it worked with Nixon and Clinton, except this time it’s probably more fair.
Lying. Piece. Of. Shit.
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Cornyn is starting to backpedal, just a little bit, but it will be telling to see if it continues.
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Who ya gonna believe - Cornyn or your lying ears?
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Cornyn is testing the waters to set up a Senate rules declaration of a secret vote to convict. If reports are true about a good number of GOP Senators being willing to abandon T rumpp if their names are not attached to their vote, then he is a gonner. Let’s hope.
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That’s interesting. Maybe not the solid bloc assumed?
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The jury can drop the case?
One would think the judge would be the arbiter.
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The rats are beginning to get nervous, wondering why the waters rising, and no lifeboats in sight…
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Flood the zone. The impeachment investigation is illegitimate. We’ll give it a fair trial in the senate. But we don’t have to bother reading any of the evidence.
They’re going to take so many positions in the next few months that it will make a clownfish look monotone. And expect Fox to push only whatever turns out to have ultimately been politically prudent.
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The bunker is getting crowded, standing room only…
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I wonder what Cornyn is going to doubt after Vindman talks.
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Cornyn’s gonna personally poison Blondi and the Goebbels kids to make more room.
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If he’s angling for a secret vote - he might be the tip of the spear.
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Testimony supported by data, corroboration and proper SOP will outdo the junk that the GOP was trying to peddle today.
Going into the Proceedings, I was actually more interested in the demeanor of Taylor and Kent than the antics of the GOPPERs. Both did very well.
If we can consistently do this so that this is what the GOP Klowns can expect to see in future Hearing sessions, then Jordan and his Krew will find that acting like a Klown is not only ugly looking, but also counterproductive.
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McConnell suggested Wednesday that the Senate doesn’t plan to cut short an impeachment trial because “the rules of impeachment are very clear,”
If McConnell is saying now that the rules are so clear that he has no choice but to do this, then that is a surefire sign that he has an extremely controversial “rule” in mind that he plans to assert later as the basis for corrupting the process. He’s making this statement now in a transparent attempt to fabricate a (minutes-old) reputation as a principled rule-follower, and to lay the groundwork for whatever defense he’s planning to offer when everyone rightly jumps on him for doing something truly heinous at the crucial moment.
He has a well-documented history of doing precisely this. It’s pretty much exactly like how poker players carefully cultivate their “betting profile” at a table as one prong of misleading the other players.
One of the first times McConnell did this in broad daylight was when it came to abortion rights. He started out in local KY govt as an unusually effective steward of pro-choice initiatives, in part through mastery of local government workflows. But he abandoned his pro-choice allies later, when he set his sights on national office. He published a letter in some paper or journal in which he took up the anti-choice side, and then months later in the election, that letter became the sum total of his bona fides when he introduced himself for the first time to the Republican party/conservative voters outside KY.
It turns out he didn’t care about the issue either way. (Quelle surprise.) He gladly accepted the votes of pro-choice folks who hadn’t yet heard the news of his inexplicable about-face/betrayal on the abortion issue, plus the votes of the expanded audience that had no familiarity with his past which they would rightly find damning.
McConnell does the same thing with his voting record, and he has become a master of concocting sham votes that can be presented (under the right light) as real actions. He has perfected the art of practically mass-producing credible (but ineffectual) votes for any occasion, so that he and anyone he chooses to help can generate campaign materials that flatly contradict predicted attacks. As the guy who controls the GOP’s national Senate campaign funding, who thus knows exactly what real-world voting stunts are desired as fodder for the GOP/Fox misinformation campaign, he’s literally violating the Hatch Act in his official capacity as Senate Majority Leader by shaping the Senate agenda such that it delivers everything conservative campaigners need.
Mitch McConnell is the banker in the real-world game of Monopoly we play, and he has been secretly dealing money and assets and intangible but priceless goods to his allies under the table, all the while stonewalling almost all legitimate business, accusing his opponents of causing the problem by doing the very kind of cheating that he pioneered and continues to spearhead for the GOP. Moscow Mitch has been projecting, Trump-style, since before it occurred to Fat Donnie to question Obama’s birth.
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A secret ballot would suck for Putin’s Punk. Hope enough GOPs see that as their best exit strategy. Trump fatigue is setting in.
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There should be an equivalent of a plane trailing this as a slogan 24/7.
It would rattle Trump and crazy him a little more.
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… and the President and his crimes are much worse.
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Thanks for this - although very depressing. Do you know any more about the popular radio guy who Kentucky Democrats are hoping runs against McConnell? I forget his name.
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