Eyes is correct. Giuliani’s purpose at this point is to keep the Pence White House’s base appeased, and to confuse everyone else as much as possible.

The obvious intention of the Pence White House’s childish spokesman, and of Fox News and Right Wing media, has been to smear the daylights out of Joe Biden and his son in advance of the 2020 election. Even with the facts showing that the Bidens did nothing wrong, the impression will be the same as what happened with Clinton in 2016 – many uninformed observers will assume the worst, figure “they’re all corrupt” and the overall turnout will be dampened.

I would add that Giuliani is being especially brazen here because he knows that Pence’s childish spokesman is going to get away with his behavior yet again. By holding the GOP caucus together in both houses, the Right Wing has teed it up for Fox News and AM Radio to play the entire impeachment as just a “Democrat ruse”. (Forgetting of course that various Dems in the 1990s voted for impeachment out of their displeasure with Bill Clinton’s behavior, and that the current GOP has completely fallen into lockstep regardless of the facts…)

The key to 2020, as it’s always been, will be for the 2-3 million active Dem voters across the swing states who stayed home in 2016 to show up and vote this time. And that point must be hammered home every single time these smears and lies are thrown around.

The current state of Fox News is fairly consistent with what it’s always been from the moment it was launched. As Ellen notes, it’s always been intended to be Right Wing propaganda – there to slake the hatred and anger of the viewers, and to push GOP politicians and thus the centerline of political discussion ever farther to the Right.

If we look at the history of this endeavor, and include with it the work of AM Radio shouters like Limbaugh and his copycats, we can see that the major problems started back in the late 1980s and have only compounded themselves since then.

Throughout the 1990s, AM Radio and then Fox News by 1996 led a steady drumbeat of angry Right Wing coverage of any event. Major Right Wing spin was put on any event that occurred. If Bill Clinton said something, it was to be ridiculed and attacked. If Bob Dole said something, it was to be celebrated. When the GOP went after Clinton with the impeachment, Fox News was in an ecstatic state, noting the courage of the brave Republicans and the terrible immorality of the Clintons. Bill O’Reilly regularly weighed in on how terrible the Clintons were and how much Clinton deserved to be impeached, convicted and tossed out of the White House. O’Reilly would famously have a tiff with Geraldo Rivera when the latter man had the temerity to note how obviously partisan and pointless the Clinton impeachment had been. To O’Reilly and to pretty much every Fox News personality, Clinton’s actions were the worst thing that had ever happened in the history of the Republic – worse even than Watergate, which they discussed as being a regrettable but smaller event. (And that impeachment turned out incredibly well for the Republicans and Fox News – it put a smear onto the Gore campaign in 2000 and allowed W to play like he was going to “restore morality” to the Oval Office. And it played out just like they wanted.)

Let’s not forget that it was Fox News that called the disputed 2000 election for W before that was even the case. And by poisoning the water when the outcome was in doubt, Fox News set up the propaganda approach that Gore was a sore loser who couldn’t accept that W had won. (No matter that the only actual recount showed that Gore had won the state of Florida by 72 votes…)

For 8 long years of the W White House, Fox News played as the official house organ, even as W led the economy straight into the ditch, and allowed Cheney to lead the military into vicious actions that effectively created ISIS and caused much of the world to draw back in shock and anger. (To this day, W and Cheney cannot travel to various foreign countries as they are wanted for war crimes and there are actual warrants drawn up for them.)

When President Obama had the temerity to be elected to the highest office, Fox News went into overdrive to attack him and delegitimize him. Any and every thing he said and did would be attacked and countered – to a level we’d frankly never seen before. A meeting conducted during President Obama’s inauguration with Right Wing higher-ups like Gingrich and Rove established a strategy to systematically obstruct every single thing they could to stymie that “awful black man in the White House”. Suddenly, we were hearing on Fox News about potential impeachment of President Obama nearly every other week – based on Joe Sestak, or Solyndra or Fast & Furious or Lois Lerner or whatever other boogeyman Fox News wanted to wave. Vicious personal attacks against the Obamas were tolerated and only occasionally given a weak wrist smack.

And after 30 years of constant propagandizing and smearing and attacking, is it any wonder that we’ve reached the nadir we see today? Is it any wonder that Fox News and its fans are living in practically a different reality than everyone else in the world?

Fox News has spent its entire 23 year history trying to poison our discourse. In fairness, they’ve been a threat to democracy throughout their existence.

To answer Eyes, it’s not ethical in that this is not how these matters were intended to be handled, but it’s not outright illegal. In the same way that McConnell’s vicious refusal to hold hearings for Merrick Garland wasn’t outright illegal. It’s just another sign that he’s being typically brazen like today’s Republicans, and he’s making sure you know that he will dump this matter as fast as he can.

The only factor that appears to be slowing him down a little is his uncertainty about the exact number of GOP senators upon which he can depend for a blanket vote. If he knew he could count on every vote, his first course of action would be an immediate voice vote to dismiss the charges and end the matter before even hearing the case. That is the approach I’ve been expecting him to take, as it would present the fastest way out, provide the least exposure to any damaging discussions, and it would be the most brutal way to give a big middle finger to the House and to the rest of the country.

Barring that approach, he’ll take the course discussed here with Hannity – allowing each side to quickly present their case and THEN doing the fast voice vote and once again giving that middle finger to the rest of the country.

I’m not seeing any other plan from the GOP, regardless of their Brer Rabbit shouts of wanting a long trial with lots of witnesses. In reality, the Right Wing is terrified of that idea.

My expectation is that this entire matter will either be over within a day or two of getting to the Senate, or within one hour of getting to the Senate. And then the GOP and the Dems will campaign on the situation for the rest of 2020. And the key to the election will not be the impeachment but will instead be what the key to all elections has always been: Turnout.

Yet another piece of video that Tucker Carlson will be unable to avoid in the years to come. These guys honestly don’t get it.

It’s been fascinating to watch angry Right Wingers losing their composure over this report. Hannity has repeatedly gone on incoherent rants, as has Limbaugh. Cranks like Glenn Beck are frantically repeating their earlier conspiracy theories as though they hadn’t just been debunked yet again. Disgraced ex-pundits like O’Reilly are simply fuming that Horowitz didn’t give them their red meat moment.

It appears that the basic Fox News approach to this situation has been to take a public stance of “we were proven right” even though the report categorically does the opposite. Hannity is certainly trying that approach, and trying to pretend that the nonsense he’s been spouting for years with John Solomon and Sara Carter is somehow now proven.

The other part of the approach has been for the angry Right Wingers to simply attack Horowitz and dismiss him because he was part of the Obama White House. Just last week, they were celebrating him and saying that his report would spell certain doom for anyone not on the Far Right. Now they’re saying that it’s really the DURHAM report that will have all the goods. Except that all Durham has is an extended version of the Horowitz report. And he has a criminal referral for the one low level attorney who messed around with his second or third warrant application. There frankly isn’t much else to find.

The Horowitz report is useful as a post-mortem of how the FBI followed its procedures, or in some cases, failed to follow those procedures to the letter. Given that this was a process that went on over two years and saw multiple indictments criminal convictions, it’s natural that there were a few issues along the way. But that doesn’t have anything to do with Hannity’s frantic attempts to wave his hands and distract everyone. We’ll have to see what the Durham report says – I wouldn’t expect to see a massive roundup of the Right Wing’s favorite enemies – more like a few smacks on the wrist and a bit of tut-tutting.

By the way, has Hannity’s clock finally struck yet? He spent the last three years ominously intoning “Tick tock, Tick tock”. Did anything ever come from that clock other than a tiny cuckoo bird?

Fox News was hoping that the IG report would give them a bunch of bombshells and red meat, so they could essentially push Comey into a corner. Instead, the actual report shows what the Washington Post predicted – that the FBI probe was completely merited and that there are criticisms of some of the ways that some employees behaved during the probe. (In other words, what nearly any review of a multi-year investigation will show.)

Fox News is now frantically doubling down to say that the big bombshells will be in the Durham report. We’ll see.

Either way, this is NOT the big counter story that the Pence White House had desperately hoped to see. And the public is instead continuing to watch the inevitable march toward Trump’s impeachment.

I find it curious that angry Right Wingers keep trying the Brer Rabbit approach both to the impeachment and to next year’s election. They keep saying nonsensical things like “I really hope you impeach him!” and “I really hope you run Joe Biden!” as though either of those notions would somehow be bad things for anyone.

My thinking is that the Right Wing is likely to get exactly their wish. They want an impeachment and are looking forward to it? Great! We’ll go ahead with the impeachment since they’re all for it, and then they can explain themselves while we are in trial. They want Joe Biden to be the nominee? May well happen, and they may not enjoy the eventual result of that notion.

This really reminds me of a situation with the LA Lakers back in 2002, where the Portland Trail Blazers spent that entire season bragging that they could easily beat the Lakers in the postseason because they had Ruben Patterson aka the “Kobe Stopper”. They repeated to anyone who would listen that they really hoped that they’d get the Lakers first in the post season. And then they were slotted against the Lakers first in the post season. And the Lakers easily swept them out in 3 games. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for…

Typical that Rosen went fleeing back to his Right Wing employer for opportunities to spin it. The video is fairly clear about what happened . He shouted a “gotcha” question and then tried to shout over Pelosi’s response, and then he was appropriately chastised. If Rosen had any integrity, he would have publicly apologized to the Speaker and to his viewers.

I should note that I’m hoping I’m wrong about McConnell pulling his maneuver. I would rather see a full-term trial in the Senate and see if Roberts would compel Mulvaney and the others to testify under oath. I’d love to see the Parnas tapes played in full before the Senate and the nation. I’d love to see the Pence White House try to gaslight the whole thing in real time during an election year.

The whole reason that Pence’s childish assistant and his sycophants are loudly asking for a Senate trial is because they DON’T want one. They’re hoping they can bully the Dems out of even thinking about it. In the same way that they’re loudly saying they want to run against Joe Biden – when in fact they’re terrified of Biden’s numbers and they would much rather run against someone with less experience. This is why I cite the Brer Rabbit approach – they’re trying the game of “Please cook me or eat me but DON’T throw me in the Briar Patch!” They’re hoping the Dems will fall for it. My hope is that everyone is paying attention and not falling for any of this nonsense. From what I can see, they aren’t.

Again, this won’t lead to anything other than a dead end in the Senate – barring anything explosive suddenly being revealed. But it will serve to challenge the viciousness of the Pence White House and remind the nation about what the stakes are in the 2020 election. (We’ll get a second big reminder in March and April when Middle Class employees in Blue States get slammed with another huge tax bill) The real test will come next November, when we’ll find out if the active Dem voters in the swing states have learned their lesson or not.

I find it interesting that Turley advocated the other way when it came to the Bill Clinton impeachment. He testified in front of Congress a little more than 20 years ago, and reiterated his position in 2014, saying that a president could be impeached and removed for their behavior even if they didn’t break the law. Now he’s trying to play a game about making this about something completely different.

I also find it interesting that several of the Republicans were unable to maintain their composure – particularly Matt Gaetz, who humiliated himself with an extremely strange emotional outburst where he began to rant in a singsong voice and shout at the panel for some reason.

I noted that the Dems were trying to simply deal with the legality of the discussion, and to confirm that this course of action is in fact the correct one by the Constitution. The Republicans on the other hand were repeatedly trying to interject confusion and snarky comments, even to the point of interrupting Nadler’s closing statement with even more nonsense.

The question now is how quickly McConnell will move to dismiss the whole thing in the Senate. It’s more likely that he will avoid the big trial situation by simply calling a voice vote and ending the matter as fast as he can. If he lets it get to a trial on the floor, he potentially loses control of its momentum and Grassley won’t be able to gavel the witnesses into silence before they’ve made a mess of things for him.

Based on his pattern, my anticipation is that McConnell will call a voice vote on the floor of the Senate as soon as the impeachment charges are over. He will then ask for a vocal affirmation of yea or nay for dismissing all the charges. He’ll get a majority yea from all of the GOP Senators perhaps save Romney. And then he’ll declare the matter over, high five his buddies on the floor and go to the microphone chuckling about how it’s time for the House to get to work for the American people.

It’s probably not surprising to see O’Reilly sink to this level. Since his disgrace and humiliation, he’s been reduced to blogging about his dog and pretending he still has a big show from what looks like his home. To get attention, he has begged Glenn Beck and Newsmax to let him come on their webshows every week, where he tries to keep up his act as a “Big Man” of the news. He’s also been reduced to begging Hannity to let him come on that show.

I will say that it’s interesting to see him try to ignore his own history regarding the impeachment of Bill Clinton while he frantically sucks up to the Pence White House’s childish spokesman.

Since the GOP seems so eager to have the impeachment trial, it sounds like everyone is agreed. Let’s go ahead and do it. The GOP and Fox News just forfeited their right to ever complain about it again, because they’re asking for it to be done.

Bill O’Reilly is desperate to regain the perch he had at Fox News. He would love to be able to have a “triumphant return”, do another couple of seasons of his show and then assume the “elder statesman” position he’s been coveting for the past 5 years. So his pose of “Oh I don’t want to deal with Fox anymore” is a front. Put it this way – do you believe O’Reilly would rather be spending his days vlogging and having to beg for airtime from Glenn Beck, Newsmax and especially from Hannity? Back in the day, O’Reilly and Hannity were known to despise each other, as each thought they were the main guy at Fox News. It has to irk O’Reilly that he now must beg Hannity to include him on his radio show (and occasionally on his Fox News show), and I’m sure it irked him that Hannity made that comment.

O’Reilly didn’t just commit sexual harassment. He was a repeat offender who refused to change his ways, even after Fox News had paid out over 10 million dollars to settle multiple complaints. Granted, this culture started at the top with Roger Ailes, but O’Reilly took full advantage of the opportunity to harass to his heart’s content. O’Reilly wasn’t alone in this (The disgraced Eric Bolling comes to mind), but he appears to have been the most consistent in his terrible treatment of women at the workplace. And all of this was topped off by O’Reilly paying out 32 million dollars to legal analyst Lis Wiehl to settle an egregious harassment situation in 2017. So O’Reilly was no victim here. He was a serial perpetrator who was able to fly under the aegis of Roger Ailes (as Bolling tried to copycat) for 2 decades, but eventually was taken to task. It’s true that his situation with Andrea Mackris got media attention in the early 2000s, but that was actually triggered by O’Reilly himself when he tried to bully her into submission. If anything, O’Reilly learned in the early 2000s that he could get away with his predations if he was willing to pony up a little money sometimes. It wasn’t until 2017 that he was finally pushed out. I have a feeling that Fox News would very much like to rehire O’Reilly but prefers not to deal with the fallout of having more of their former personalities come out in public to denounce them. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them wait a few more years and then try to bring O’Reilly back as that “elder statesman” – but I also expect Gretchen Carlson to immediately call them out the second they try it.

In all seriousness, there have been families and friends that have been ripped apart thanks to the vicious behavior of angry Right Wingers over the past couple of decades. When things got really nasty at the end of 2016 with all the gloating and attempted bullying, it was understandable that most sane people had to step away from the deplorables playing those games.

I would strongly recommend that Right Wingers not conduct their family dinners with loud dictates of how Pence’s childish spokesman is YOUR PRESIDENT and WE WON, YOU LOST SNOWFLAKE or any of that nonsense. Because that’s what set everyone’s teeth on edge. One can only turn the other cheek so long before one needs to just push away from the table and say goodbye.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at Lahren’s gall. I’d love to see how she responded to President Obama regularly being jeered and shouted at by angry Right Wing pundits, even during press events. I’d love to see what she said about Joe Wilson screaming “YOU LIE!” during a State of the Union Address.

As for Melania Trump, she’s courted outrage on multliple occasions, but the one that really stands out is when she visited the US/Mexico border at the moment when the Pence White House’s outrages against immigrants and asylum seekers were squarely on the front pages of every newspaper in the country. At that moment of people trying to understand how the Pence White House could be so inhuman, Melania Trump distinguished herself by making a point of wearing a designer jacket emblazoned with the statement “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” S

Hannity appears to be panicking along with Nunes over the very real possibility of material about him getting into the public eye. One has to wonder what Parnas recorded to get both of these guys this frantic.

I also noted Hannity’s attempt to cheerlead the doomed Sandmann nuisance suits, which have been allowed to continue to discovery to confirm that the media coverage was protected under 1st Amendment conditions and that following that, they’ll be tossed back out of court again.

As I noted in the other thread, I tire of all this chest pounding by despicable men like Nunes and Hannity. If they really have some giant smoking gun, then bring it out and let everyone see it. Otherwise, there is no indication that they have anything other than their own hot air.

Hemmer was clearly angry that he couldn’t get Blake to back down – and when he barked “Save it for later!” he clearly intended that to be a slapdown. Sadly for Hemmer, it went the other way.

I’ll add that Blake also called Hemmer on the fact that he cherry picked a President Obama quote without noting the rest of what was covered in the Politico article. (the full discussion where that quote is found is about having an intimate connection to Iowa voters, and he says even HE doesn’t have that anymore). There’s another line in that article where President Obama notes that in the day of Abraham Lincoln, he could have been a Republican. And then he notes that things have changed, and will continue to change. It would have been just as inaccurate of Hemmer to have cherry picked that line too, and I’m frankly surprised he didn’t try it.

Nunes was mostly incoherent in this appearance, and in Hannity’s fawning prop-up for him later. From what I can tell of his behavior here, he appears to be panicking that his dark work is being exposed by Daily Beast and CNN. As a result, many of his statements were completely the reverse of reality.

Somehow, he’d like Fox News viewers to believe that his job on the committee is to look for “Democrat corruption”. That is NOT his job, and it is defamatory for him to say that it is. Next, he’d once again like to play the narrative that the GOP members’ behavior in constantly repeating conspiracy theory talking points somehow “destroyed” the actual work the committee has been doing regarding Pence’s childish spokesman and the president of Ukraine. As opposed to what everyone plainly saw in the hearings – that the GOP members embarrassed themselves and repeatedly had no answer when they were corrected by the witnesses. I did note that Nunes gloated about having used the GOP time in the hearings to play up those conspiracy theories and that he’s hoping to do more of that if he gets another chance. He noted that he’s had more public time to spread the smears, thanks to the Dems scheduling the hearings. Which of course goes right to the point we’ve already made – that the Right Wing has essentially used the hearing process to accomplish what they failed in their attempt to pressure the Ukrainians – they’ve been able to mainstream the Biden smears and confuse millions of Americans who haven’t read up on these materials.

I do find it interesting that angry Right Wingers seem to think that it’s a good idea to file these nuisance suits with giant price tags, when they were the ones accusing Americans of being too litigious. (As Ellen notes in this article) And yes, Nunes has a history of throwing these legal tantrums – including that cow suit. We saw the same thing with the despicable Sandmann lawsuits in Kentucky (which are barely being allowed to proceed to a limited discovery before they eventually peter out due to lack of real basis). And has anyone heard about how Eric Bolling is doing with that 50 million dollar lawsuit against Yashir Ali for having the temerity to report about Bolling’s own nasty behavior with the sexual harassment that got him fired from Fox News?

I also find it interesting that Nunes appears to be conflating civil and criminal litigation. In one breath, he says he’s going to file nuisance civil lawsuits against CNN and Daily Beast, which would likely be tossed out since CNN reached out to him for comment before publishing and he responded by sneering at them. In another breath, he seems to be saying he wants to file criminal charges against CNN – but he doesn’t say what those charges would be or why anyone should believe him about this. Essentially, this just sounds like him huffing and puffing and holding his breath to no effect.

If Nunes really has some major incriminating material here, he should stop making these bizarre threats and simply show what he has. Same thing with Giuliani and his supposed secret Biden file that he’s keeping in his safe for some reason. This kind of thing frankly gets tiring – it’s the same routine every time – these guys get caught behaving badly and their response is to threaten the people who had the temerity to expose it.
I’ll also note that while Nunes is talking about media players somehow breaking laws by talking to someone who’s been indicted or prosecuted, he’s leaving out the parts where Fox News has happily done multiple interviews with George Papadopoulos, and was only too happy to talk to Roger Stone until the judge in the latter case warned him to stop that.

At the same time, let’s keep in mind that Lev Parnas’ attorney has not only offered to have his client testify in front of Congress as to what he knows – he’s also turned over VIDEO AND AUDIO RECORDINGS of Giuliani and Trump discussing these activities. That’s the kind of thing that could have a significant impact – along the lines of the White House tapes during the Watergate investigation.

The more likely result coming from what we’re seeing here is that Nunes will be brought before the Ethics Committee in the House and required to explain himself. Most likely, he won’t be thrown out or forced to resign – but this situation could very well end his status as a committee chair or ranking member and could even lead to the GOP finding someone else to run for his spot next year. Given how serious this is for Nunes, it’s not a surprise to see him panicking in this way.

When this miserable epoch of our history is finished, we’re going to wonder about how we could let things get this ridiculous. Let’s think about this for a second. Rick Perry, who embarrassed himself as a would-be “serious” presidential candidate when he couldn’t even remember all the names of the cabinet departments he wanted to eliminate and nervously tittered out an “Ooops!”. (Education, Commerce, Energy plus the EPA as a bonus.) Rick Perry, who then tried to rebrand himself as deeply intellectual by wearing glasses in public. Rick Perry, who was indicted for a blatant abuse of power and only escaped conviction by spending 2 million dollars on attorneys to obfuscate and confuse the case. Rick Perry, who was then put in charge of one of the very cabinet departments he’d sworn to eliminate and then tried to use the position to enrich himself and his buddies. That Rick Perry?

I don’t know which is more bizarre. That he wants us to take his supposed deep spirituality about his grafting seriously? That Fox News hosts appear to be lapping up that supposed deep spirituality? Or that many Fox News viewers are willing to buy it too? This is the sort of thing that makes Americans embarrassed for the state of their country.

I would be very happy to see the Dems take several such Senate seats, starting with Kansas and continuing with Kentucky and South Carolina.