I’ve been traveling in Europe for the past 2.5 weeks so I didn’t watch the Mueller testimony or get any talking head hot takes besides “this probably helped the GOP.”
Does anybody want to give a two-sentence summary of his testimony and/or if/how things have changed in the past few weeks?
Are we still in a holding pattern waiting for Nancy Pelosi to decide she should do her job?
105 Democrats have come out in favor of impeachment proceedings starting. 106 (includes one former GOP) are on the record. 20 have added in the last roughly 11 days (15 in the days before or right after the testimony).
Mueller’s testimony was damning. GOP were a bunch of idiot whack job conspiracy theorists who often unintentionally bolstered the case for impeachment on several occasions.
Major news organizations felt Mueller was boring, and now want nothing to do with it, but things are escalating in Congress. Trump is going ballistic on Twitter 4 days in a row after Sean Hannity told him ‘It’s Over!’.
Congress is now in recess for 6 weeks and will be hearing from their constituents.
I don’t think it helped the GOP. The usual Republicans like Jordan looked like asshats to anyone who isn’t a Fox News goosestepper.
Mueller said Trump could be indicted after his presidency for lying/obstruction. Spelled out how Trump obstructed (McGahn). And a few other things.
Trump has basically throw a temper tantrum on Twitter ever since and gotten blowback for some of it.
I don’t think it has helped Democrats substantially so far except to get the ball rolling.
One of the interesting developments that Nadler seems to be going rogue and pushing for impeachment in defiance of Pelosi. It’s not clear to me how much of this is real and how much is theatrics.
It’s not rogue though. Nadler and Judiciary committee doesn’t answer to Pelosi.
If you don’t think Nancy has extraordinary power over House Dems, I don’t know what to tell you.
Lol, if you think house dems are her lackeys and underlings
She’s trying to have her cake and eat it too. She called it ‘leverage’ to moving forward that so many are criticizing her. It’s theatrics in that I believe Nadler’s been allowed to do this by her but she won’t officially ‘approve’ it. He has gone ‘rogue’, but she surely is allowing him to do so and with her full knowledge of what he’s doing.
I doubt any of that is the case. I think Nadler is most likely doing what he feels is his civic duty. I wasn’t completely aware of him before hearings he has been in, but him a few other Democrats do seem like they’re not the corporatist drone centrist fucks the chapocels would have you think.
You should go back and see how Nadler acted over the months in the lead up to the hearings and after the release of the Barr report. He was very not where he was last week at the beginning of that and was absolutely bowing down to Pelosi (his voting Nay of the Al Green resolution tabling was a big deal, in my opinion). Him and Pelosi have only really been fighting about this strongly for maybe 6 weeks. He’s ready to move, and there’s substantial evidence gleaned last week that he’s read the unredacted report.
And just to give an idea of how bad media coverage has been and to show how the WAAF crowd is emboldened is that they believe Barr has defied every subpoena from Congress. He did not defy the Intelligence Committee’s subpoena and supplied them the unredacted report because he had no wiggle room to not do it. Of course if it weren’t for Val Demings saying the Intelligence Committee had the report last week and that she believed several committee heads had read it, no one would have ever known that. Because the media never reported it.
Sure, Ikes.
Your low effortness is more like ikes than anyone else.
I don’t even know what you’re salty about. The idea that the Speaker of the House has a ton of power over House reps in his/her party seems like a pretty bland take. Sorry I’m not putting more effort into what is essentially a basic description of Pelosi’s job.
I’m not salty about anything. You’re the one who thinks politics is some sort of battle. You also seem to think Speaker of the House reigns over people. When it’s more like Nadler and others will generally go along with what the party and leaders want most of the time. The current situation is pretty extraordinary and forces people like Nadler out of that zone.
I just finished watching the Intelligence testimony, and 7 of the 9 GOP members did nothing but peddle conspiracy theories. One said, ‘it’s clear you’re not going to answer any of the questions I have, so I’ll defer to the ranking member’, and the other (Will Hurd) asked some relatively substantial questions, while not being able to keep it in his pants that he wanted to ask more of the conspiracy theory questions (he would have seemed normal if he hadn’t said that). He told him he wouldn’t ask them, because he knew he wouldn’t answer them.
It’s absolutely horrifying that these people are seeing all of the most sensitive intelligence documents, and decide to focus on QAnon type conspiracy theories and Fox News bullshit. It made the GOP work in the Judiciary Committee look like PhD discourse in comparison…and it was not.
By the way, the guy who did not ask any questions at all because all he had were conspiracy theory questions is the guy who is the nominee to be the DNI. Horrifying.
Uh, yes? I’m not even sure what we’re arguing about here: Nadler normally goes along with what the party leaders (Pelosi) want and this current situation is noteworthy because he’s rebuffing her and pushing for impeachment. Seems like we agree on this.
As opposed to what?
I’m referring to the discussion of politics on a forum filled with leftists and center left oriented people.
I saw an interview Lawrence O’Donnell did with Adam Schiff last night (head of the Intelligence Committee). Schiff has for sure read the unredacted Mueller report, and has for months now been very lukewarm on impeachment. His comments back then were ‘we’re not there yet’, ‘doesn’t matter because the Senate’s not going to do anything’, etc.
His tone was quite a bit different last night, and he alluded to over half the Caucus being in support of an official impeachment inquiry. He was like, ‘if we need to vote formally, whatever, but we’re already in it’.
His ‘quote’ was the Trump admin is going for ‘justice delayed is justice denied’, so they’re not going to wait for the courts if things are going too slowly. Based on how things are going he said Obstruction of Congress is an Article of Impeachment. My take from the interview was basically, ‘it’s happening sweetheart’, and everything will probably be in high gear by the end of October. They’re expecting a few court decisions by then.
Schiff was particularly upset about the DOJ weighing in on the Mazars case. He said that case has no interest for the DOJ and no interest for the American people. He called the DOJ Trump’s personal law firm.
The main takeaway was they’re not going to let him delay a year and a half in the courts to avoid this. It very much sounded like they’re definitely planning to bring Articles of Impeachment probably by sometime in December at the latest (coupled with Nadler’s comments). It appears they’re just deciding what to vote on, and they want the underlying evidence to create the Articles of Impeachment. He made the point that the Mueller report was just a summary. He said without that the ‘Grand Jury’ couldn’t do its job. And he also said something to the effect of ‘we can get the Grand Jury material now, but we’re waiting for the courts’.
The final fun note was something he said that he might not have meant to. He made a reference to the referred cases related to Barr saying he could kill anything he wanted. He made it very clear at least certain members of Congress know exactly what those cases are, and that they’re monitoring them for intervention. He said if there is interference, he’s just hoping whistle blowers will come forward. It was a good interview. Smacc can probably link it.
Seems that’s the only video up from MSNBC on YT @nunnehi 
Full video here… Start at 32 min for the Nadler stuff…