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OPINION

‘This Is for the People to Decide’: Jaw-Dropping CNN Supercut Lays Bare the GOP’s Stunning Hypocrisy on SCOTUS

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As the battle over replacing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — who died Friday from complications of pancreatic cancer — takes shape in Washington, D.C., Republican senators who previously refused to hold a vote on former President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick are now having their words thrown in their faces.

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper on Saturday played a devastating supercut that features Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) explaining why they would not vote on Obama’s nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016.

“I want you to use my words against me,” Graham said in 2016 — laying out what Cooper described as an “eerily similar” situation as the one currently playing out in Congress. “If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say, ‘Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination,’ and you could use my words against me and you would be absolutely right.”

“We’re setting a precedent here today, Republicans are, that in the last year, at least of a lame duck eight-year term, I would say it’s going to be a four-year term, that you’re not going to fill a vacancy of the Supreme Court based on what we’re doing here today,” he added. “That’s going to be the new rule.”

In his own floor speech on the matter in 2016, McConnell likewise urged Congress to give the American people a say in the Supreme Court pick.

“The next justice could fundamentally alter the direction of the Supreme Court and have a profound impact on our country. So, of course, of course the American people should have a say in the court’s direction,” McConnell said.

Cruz — who was shortlisted by Trump as a potential SCOTUS pick earlier this month — also insisted in 2016 that Congress should not move to replace Scalia until after the election.

“I don’t think we should be moving forward on a nominee in the last year of this president’s term, Cruz said. “I would say that if it was a republican president.”

“President Obama is eager to appoint Justice Scalia’s replacement this year,” he continued. “But do you know in the last 80 years we have not once has the Senate confirmed a nomination made in an election year and now is no year to start. This is for the people to decide. I intend to make 2016 a referendum on the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Of course, all three men have now signaled they’re much more likely in 2020 to jam a conservative Supreme Court justice down voters’ throats on the eve of an election. After President Donald Trump on Saturday tweeted that the Senate has an “obligation” select a replacement for Ginsburg, Graham said he “fully” understands where the president is coming from.

In case that statement seems vague, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman added: ”I will support President [Trump] in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg.”

And McConnell has also insisted “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

And in perhaps the least surprising flip-flop of all, Cruz on Saturday wrote an opinion piece for Fox News that outlined 3 reasons why the Senate must confirm Ginsburg’s replacement before election day. In it, he touted Trump’s “list of extremely qualified, principled constitutionalists who could serve on the Supreme Court” — which, of course, included himself — and argued that going into an election with an 8 person bench could trigger a constitutional crisis in the event of a contested election.

Amazing how now of the senators were concerned with such a problem when Obama appointed his nominee.

Watch the video below to see the blatant hypocrisy for yourself:

 

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OPINION

Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

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Right-wing talk radio show host Hugh Hewitt is facing backlash after declaring former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who was ousted after her hiring cost NBC News a tumultuous five days, a “normal” person who has “never denied the election.”

Last summer, The Washington Post‘s Philip Bump reported McDaniel “is still elevating 2020 election skepticism,” and “won’t say the election was fair.”

“I don’t think he won it fair. I don’t. I’m not going to say that,” McDaniel had said to CNN.

“CNN teased an upcoming interview between host Chris Wallace and Ronna McDaniel,” Bump wrote. “In the clip, Wallace asks McDaniel when she stopped being an ‘election denier’ — that is, someone who espouses skepticism about the validity of the election results. And, surprise! McDaniel never stopped.”

Bump also explained the danger in election denialism: “McDaniel won’t say Biden was legitimately elected because the base doesn’t want to hear it — but the base doesn’t want to hear it in part because leaders such as McDaniel won’t simply admit without qualifications that Biden won.”

READ MORE: Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

“Establishing a system in which any loss can easily be framed as illegitimate means establishing a system in which no loss is accepted as valid,” Bump continued. “It means institutionalizing the idea that elections are inaccurate gauges of public opinion and, therefore, that the winners of those elections have no mandate to serve.”

On Wednesday Hewitt, a Washington Post columnist and former Reagan White House aide, said on Fox News that McDaniel “is a fine Republican. She is not an election denier. She has never denied the election.”

Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh responded to that clip.

Bullshit Hugh. With Trump, she pressured MI canvassers to not certify the results; with Trump, she pressured other state attorney’s to sue & invalidate results in MI, PA, & WI; she worked with Trump on the fake electors scheme; she lied about charges of voter fraud well after those charges had been debunked. No major party chair in American history has done more to dispute a legit election. Shame on you,” Walsh wrote.

Media Matters’ Eric Kleefeld, also responding to that clip: “Somebody who helped coordinate fake electors and passed a resolution calling Jan. 6 ‘legitimate political discourse’ is not normal, and we must at all steps refuse to treat them as such.”

READ MORE: Greene Says She Won’t Take Responsibility if Johnson Loses Speaker’s Gavel Before Election

Hewitt had also told Fox News, “I don’t know who is going to keep MSNBC informed of what normal people think, because Ronna McDaniel is about as normal as they come. She’s a Michigan mom, she’s been in the job seven years. She represents the Republican Party.”

McDaniel, it could be said, does not represent the Republican Party, not the MAGA America First Republican Party of today, neither literally nor figuratively. Donald Trump engineered her ouster and installed his handpicked replacements, including his daughter-in-law and Michael Whatley, a right-wing attorney who was part of the Bush recount team during the contested 2000 presidential election.

The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), blasted Hewitt, calling him “an utter disgrace,” while adding, “shame on those like the Washington Post who showcase him.”

Adam Cohen, vice chair of Lawyers for Good Government, pointedly responded to Hewitt: “Hate to tell you this, but normal people don’t try to foment a coup, or deny the truth about election results Like Ronna McDaniel did.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

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OPINION

‘Abomination’: Fox Hosts Issue Stunning Trump Legal Judgment Critiques

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Hosts on Fox News on Monday made several misleading claims about the American elections system, COVID, the rule of law, and Friday’s $450 million total civil judgment against Donald Trump and his executives.

“I think that these people clearly hate Trump more than they love America,” declared Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe on Monday. “You know, and by the time they finally get him if they ever do, what’s going to be left of the country? I mean, think about all the damage these threats to democracy people have done as they burn the country down to try to get him.”

“No one trusts elections anymore after they upended the system during a COVID virus almost as deadly as the flu as they append to the process that with mail-in balloting and trying to take Trump off the ballot. No one trusts the rule of law anymore. It doesn’t exist, as they’ve used it weaponized it against Donald Trump. The media’s debased itself lying about Donald Trump.”

READ MORE: ‘Putin’s Puppet’: Critics Blast Trump for Comparing Navalny Death to His Own Legal Crisis

It is untrue that “No one trusts elections anymore.” It is false that COVID is deadly than the flu. Mail-in balloting is a safe alternative to in-person voting.

Boothe’s remarks, while inaccurate, expose the effects the Trump campaign has had on confidence in U.S. elections.

“Few Republicans have high confidence that votes will be tallied accurately in next year’s presidential contest, suggesting years of sustained attacks against elections by former President Donald Trump and his allies have taken a toll, according to a new poll,” the Associated Press reported last summer. “The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds that only 22% of Republicans have high confidence that votes in the upcoming presidential election will be counted accurately compared to 71% of Democrats, underscoring a partisan divide fueled by a relentless campaign of lies related to the 2020 presidential election. Even as he runs for the White House a third time, Trump continues to promote the false claim that the election was stolen.”

As for COVID, as recently as today The Mercury News reported, “COVID deaths in California dropped dramatically in 2023 but still 17 times higher than flu deaths.”

Boothe wasn’t the only Fox News host who spread questionable claims on Monday’s show.

READ MORE: ‘Borders on Pathological’: Judge Decimates Trump in Fraud Ruling

Emily Compagno pointed to the recent threatened Truckers for Trump boycott of New York, without mentioning the truck driver who sparked it retracted his video.

“Chicago Ray deleted his original post and shared a new one on Monday in which he distanced himself from the boycott calls and stressed that he was not encouraging anyone to do anything,” Newsweek reports. NewsNation also reports “Chicago Ray backs down on calls for truck boycott.”

Quoting a comment, Compagno read: ” ‘If all of us patriots stand up we will make a difference. We have to push back against the ones trying to purposely destroy our country.’ And I can’t help but underline that is how everyone is perceiving this abomination of a ruling that had no victims.”

“Everyone” does not perceive the civil business fraud ruling against Trump as an “abomination,” nor as adjudicated to “purposely destroy our country.” Some legal experts have supported and praised the judgment. One called it “a powerful predictor of what’s to come in his criminal trials.”

Last year Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems for a reported $787.5 million, called “one of the largest ever in a defamation case.”

“The case held the potential to make public a stream of damaging information about how the network told its audience a story of fraud and interference in the 2020 presidential election that many of its own executives and on-screen personalities did not believe,” The New York Times reported last April. The paper noted the lawsuit was “over the network’s promotion of misinformation about the 2020 election.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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OPINION

House Republicans Flee DC for Early Vacation Amid National Security ‘Crisis’

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Facing multiple national security threats and another two possible federal government shutdowns of their own creation, House Republicans, who still control the majority, announced on Wednesday they are leaving Washington, D.C. early for their winter vacation.

On Tuesday Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters, “national security begins with border security.” House Republicans have been calling the border a “crisis,” but have killed bipartisan legislation to fix it.

The House won’t be back in session until February 28, barely days before a partial government shutdown that is slated for March 1, with the rest of the government shutdown slated for one week later – unless the House and Senate pass legislation keeping the government funded.

The House was scheduled to be in session through the end of the week, but Republican Majority Whip Tom Emmer announced Wednesday the final vote will be Thursday at 2:30 PM, as Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reported.

Just two weeks ago Emmer called the situation at the border “the worst crisis we’ve ever seen.”

Meanwhile, just hours ago, Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner stunned the nation by sounding the alarm about what he called “a serious national security threat.” Later reports state it appears to involve Russia, possibly Russian capabilities to use nuclear weapons in space to shoot down satellites.

READ MORE: ‘Own It’: Kellyanne Conway Urges Republicans to Run on Their Anti-Abortion Positions

Earlier Wednesday, a reporter asked House Speaker Mike Johnson about the bipartisan Senate border bill he and Donald Trump killed.

“You yourself were part of killing the Senate compromise bill,” the reporter said. “You called it ‘dead on arrival.’”

“So my question to you is, while you say there need to be solutions, what are House Republicans doing to get to a solution on the border, and on Ukraine. Or are you going to actually do nothing? What is your proposal, what are you doing?”

Johnson  insisted, “We’re addressing each of those issues,” before adding, “We are not going to be forced into action by the Senate.”

The House has yet to address what for months it has called the “crisis” at the southern border, Ukraine’s desperate need for military funding, funding for Israel, funding for Taiwan, and humanitarian aid for Gaza. By killing the Senate border bill ICE is now being forced to plan to release thousands of immigrants into the U.S. due to a $700 million budget deficit that bill would have solved.

Meanwhile, critics are expressing frustration with the House GOP.

READ MORE: ‘Treason’: Top Constitutional Expert Warns on Trump’s Attack on NATO

“The government shuts down on March 1st and Speaker Johnson is cancelling session for Friday. That gives us tomorrow and three days at the end of the month in DC to keep the government open,” lamented U.S. Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-FL).

“Are you kidding me!?” wrote Democratic activist Aaron Parnas. “House Republicans are leaving D.C. for two weeks after scaring the country over a national security threat, refusing to pass aid to Ukraine, and while a shooting is impacting Kansas City.”

Wednesday’s shooting at the Super Bowl parade left one person dead and up to 15 others injured.

The official House calendar shows Congress is scheduled to be in session just 114 days this year. Amid last year’s three weeks of not having a Speaker, and thus not performing its legislative responsibilities, no effort was made to “make up” any of those days in 2024. Last year the House was scheduled for 127 days.

Even those schedules are light. For example, according to the research website ThoughtCo, the House in 2018 was scheduled to be in session for 174 days, and in 2017, 192 days.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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