Tag: GOP congress

GOP lawmakers fear Trump becoming too consumed by impeachment fight

The Hill logoSenate Republicans want President Trump to focus more on his agenda and not let himself become personally consumed by the House impeachment inquiry, which is likely to hit a dead end in the Senate.

Senate Republicans have urged the president on multiple occasions to keep his eye on top policy priorities and let his allies on Capitol Hill handle more of the day-to-day skirmishing over impeachment, according to GOP sources familiar with communications with the president.

One instance came late last month during a meeting between Trump and Republican senators at the White House, when Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) urged the president to follow the model of how President Clinton handled impeachment in 1998 and 1999.

View the complete November 4 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

GOP lawmaker face-plants on CNN when grilled over Trump asking for foreign help against political opponents

AlterNet logoAn interview with Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) turned contentious on Sunday morning when CNN host Victor Blackwell asked him if he approved of Donald Trump asking foreign leaders for dirt on political opponents.

With Reed saying he was happy that the impeachment inquiry was going to go public — despite voting against it last week — Blackwell asked him about a key part of the hearing: Trump’s Ukraine phone call.

Asked, if he thought it was okay for the president to “pressure a foreign leader to get information that would benefit him politically in exchange for military aid,” Reed ducked the question.

View the complete November 3 article by Tom Boggioni from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

GOP sinks lower and outs purported ‘whistleblower’

AlterNet logoRepublican lawmakers are publicly spreading the name of a CIA officer named in a RealClearInvestigations report as the whistleblower who reported President Donald Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

The unconfirmed report named a 33-year-old CIA analyst as the purported whistleblower, although mainstream media outlets have declined to disclose the name after his attorneys warned that they have received death threats targeting their client. Republican lawmakers have reportedly repeatedly attempted to get the whistleblower’s name on record at impeachment hearings in hopes that it will be released publicly. (Salon has made the decision not to publish this person’s name, although it will no doubt soon be in the public record.)

The report, which relied primarily on quotes from former Trump administration officials and a “dossier” compiled on this individual that has circulated around Capitol Hill, identifies the purported whistleblower as a “registered Democrat” who worked on the National Security Council under the Obama administration and was held over in the early days of the Trump administration before he was “accused of working against Trump,” according to the report.

View the complete November 2 article by Igor Derysh from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

GOP argues whistleblower’s name must be public

The Hill logoAs the evidence mounts of a quid pro quo in President Trump‘s dealings with Ukraine, the president’s allies in Congress are increasingly hopeful they’ll find exoneration in a singular figure: the government whistleblower they’re fighting to expose.

The clash over the whistleblower’s identity — and that person’s right to anonymity — has emerged as a frontline battle in the partisan war over the Trump impeachment inquiry.

Republicans on Capitol Hill contend that knowing the whistleblower’s identity is vital to the process, granting Trump the right to face his accuser — and learn of any political biases the figure might have. They are effectively waging a whisper campaign about the identity of the anonymous figure who filed the complaint triggering the inquiry launched just six weeks ago.

View the complete November 2 article by Scott Wong and Mike Lillis on The Hill website here.

The GOP defense of Trump is getting more corrupt. Here’s what’s next.

Washington Post logoPresident Trump, who possesses supreme confidence in his mesmerizing charisma and powers of persuasion, is considering a plan to recite the text of his corrupt call with the Ukrainian president on live national television.

“I will read the transcript of the call,” Trump told the Washington Examiner, suggesting he might do this as a “fireside chat.”

Trump did not say whether he will first blot out the corrupt parts with his trusty reality-altering Sharpie, though it’s a measure of our current depths that it’s easy to envision him reading selectively from the call summary and denouncing correctives as “fake news.”

View the complete November 1 commentary by Greg Sargent on The Washington Post website here.

Republicans Grind Impeachment Inquiry to Halt as Evidence Mounts Against Trump

New York Times logoHouse Republicans staged a protest in the secure suite on Capitol Hill where the impeachment inquiry is proceeding, seeking to shift the focus away from damaging revelations about the president.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans ground the impeachment inquiry to a halt for hours on Wednesday, staging a protest at the Capitol that sowed chaos and delayed a crucial deposition as they sought to deflect the spotlight from the revelations the investigation has unearthed about President Trump.

Chanting “Let us in! Let us in!” about two dozen Republican members of the House pushed past Capitol Police officers to enter the secure rooms of the House Intelligence Committee, where impeachment investigators have been conducting private interviews that have painted a damaging picture of the president’s behavior.

They refused to leave, and the standoff in the normally hushed corridors was marked by shouting matches between Republican and Democratic lawmakers and an appearance by the House sergeant-at-arms, the top law enforcement official in the chamber.

View the complete October 23 article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Nicholas Fandos on The New York Times website here.

Republicans quit trying to rein in Trump after ‘lynching’ tweet

Some GOP lawmakers defended the president, while others simply declined to criticize him.

Many congressional Republicans are done trying to defend President Donald Trump after he said he was the victim of a lynching on Tuesday — but that doesn’t mean they’re trying to rein him in, either.

Trump’s tweet comparing the impeachment process to a “lynching” set off a firestorm of Democratic criticism but largely a wrist slap from Republicans, who have grown frustrated but accustomed to the president’s inflammatory rhetoric.

After more than four years of trying to limit the president’s divisive style, asking him to stop tweeting or focus on the economy, the Republican Party has given up any pretense of trying to rein him in.

View the complete October 22 article by Melanie Zanona, Burgess Everett and Marianne Levine on the Politico website here.

Trump urges GOP to defend him more strongly on impeachment

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Monday urged Republicans to offer him a tougher defense on impeachment amid a few signs of GOP discontent with his administration.

At a Cabinet meeting, Trump praised Democratic unity while criticizing his own party for not sticking together.

“The two things they have: They’re vicious and they stick together,” he said of Democrats. “They don’t have Mitt Romney in their midst. They don’t have people like that.”

View the complete October 21 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

The Sociopathic Killer Who Mesmerized Conservative Guru Ayn Rand

There’s a direct link between a sociopathic killer in 1927 and the GOP’s willingness to embrace a sociopathic president like Trump. That link runs through the work of Ayn Rand.

When Donald Trump was running for the GOP nomination, he told USA Today’s Kirsten Powers that Ayn Rand’s raped-girl-decides-she-likes-it novel, The Fountainhead, was his favorite book.

“It relates to business, beauty, life and inner emotions,” he told Powers. “That book relates to … everything.”

View the complete October 19 article by Thom Hartmann from the Independent Media Institute on the National Memo website here.

Furious Republicans prepare to rebuke Trump on Syria

The Hill logoCongressional Republicans appear poised to hand President Trump a stinging rebuke of his Turkey and Syria policy when lawmakers return to Washington this week.

GOP lawmakers, furious over Trump’s decision to withdraw troops to make way for a Turkish offensive against Kurdish allies, are preparing legislation that would force the administration to impose sanctions on Turkey.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced Friday that Trump would sign an executive order giving the Treasury Department “very significant” new sanctions authorities against Turkey, but it’s unclear whether the move will be enough to placate Republicans on Capitol Hill.

View the complete October 13 article by Rebecca Kheel on The Hill website here.