Editor’s note: Each Sunday, the chattering class fills American airwaves with the thoughts and opinions of Washington’s most powerful Swamp-dwellers. Often these interviews make headlines and inform the public about what to expect in the coming week. If you want to stay informed but don’t have the time to devote to all the political punditry, there is hope. Liberty Nation author Kelli Ballard sifts through the shows for you and presents the high and lowlights in this weekly column.
The Judiciary Committee will soon be holding hearings to discuss the different articles of impeachment and whether the Democrats should move forward. This week, the left-wing media was consumed with the process as well as any involvement the president may have had with the Kremlin. It doesn’t look good for President Trump, but it doesn’t look bad either.
There were also questions about the shooting at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, FL, and all seemed to be in agreement that better vetting procedures need to be put into place. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) talked about the insult and hurt to Americans from bringing in foreign people and training them, only to have them turn that training on us.
Even with federal authorities saying they now consider the recent assault in Florida a terrorist attack, the focus on television was, as usual, the impeachment.
This Week With George Stephanopoulos – ABC
Try as it might, the left just can’t seem to conduct an impartial interview. On This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Rep. Gaetz were interviewed. They were both asked questions, but not equivalent ones. Lofgren, who was involved with the impeachment processes for both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, was given the first shot at speaking. President Trump’s charges, she explained, were more serious than Bill Clinton’s.
“In the case of President Trump,” she said, “not only has he abused his power to improperly put his thumb on the scale for election, he used a foreign power to do it. And that really hits all the buttons that the Founding Fathers were concerned about.”
During the 1998 Clinton impeachment hearings, Lofgren warned Republicans about the dangers of “undoing” a free election. She said, “future presidents will face election, then litigation, then impeachment.” Sounds very familiar, right? She then added that when comparing Clinton and Trump “first you need a high crime and misdemeanor. Lying about sex is not an abuse of presidential power.”
Rep. Gaetz was first asked about the shooting at the base in Florida, and after saying that more attention needed to be put on Syria, he was finally asked about the impeachment process. He said:
“But what is so dizzying, George, is the evolving standard for impeachment from Democrats. Through most of 2019, Nancy Pelosi said she opposed impeachment, not because the Muller facts weren’t strong enough in her view, but because it wasn’t bipartisan. She set the standard for bipartisanship for impeachment. The only thing that’s changed now is we’re moving into an election year and she’s willing to pursue a partisan impeachment, and you look back to 1998, Jerry Nadler, our chairman, was saying that it was ripping votes asunder to pursue a partisan impeachment and no impeachment would be legitimate if it was primarily supported by one party and opposed by another.”
And speaking of Pelosi, when someone asked if she hated the president, she got extremely upset. “As a Catholic I resent your using the word ‘hate’ in a sentence that addresses me,” she said. “I don’t hate anyone.” She claimed she always prays for the president.
Meet the Press – NBC
Russia, Russia, Russia. Meet the Press was all about Russia and how Dems and Republicans view the country as either an ally or a threat. What significance does that have in the impeachment process? In February 2015, 26% of the Democrats favored Russia while only 19% of Republicans did; however, those feelings changed in 2019 with 20% of the GOP being in favor of the Kremlin compared to 17% of Dems.
Is Russia a threat to the United States? In 2015, 45% of Democrats thought so compared to 52% of the Republicans. But in 2019, things have changed. Now, Dems at 64% perceive Russia as a threat to the U.S., while only 42% of the GOP is concerned.
One of the biggest discrepancies is how the two sides of the aisle feel about how much the president is doing to protect the election from Russian influence. Only 15% of Dems are confident in our commander in chief while 81% of Republicans feel Donald Trump is taking the necessary measures to protect the integrity of our presidential elections from Russian interference.
Face the Nation – CBS
This week, Face the Nation decided to interview “shifty-eye” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Like any smooth-tongued politician, he was quick to run circles around any direct questions and deflect them elsewhere. He did say that, “There is overwhelming evidence that the president sought to coerce Ukraine into interfere in our election, essentially sought to cheat in our next election by getting a foreign government to weigh in.”
He claimed that there is “overwhelming” evidence to back up this supposed fact and then qualified that with:
“But I will say we should focus on those issues that are the greatest threat to the country, and the president is engaged in a course of conduct that threatens the integrity of the next election, threatens our national security by withholding military assistance to an ally at war to our detriment.”
It seems that everyone has been quoting what they think the Founding Fathers had in mind when they set the ground rules. Pelosi said she was moving forward with the impeachment process because that is what the Founding Fathers would have wanted. But would they have?
Schiff stated:
“This is precisely the kind of conduct the Founders were most concerned about when they provided the remedy of impeachment, that is that a president of the United States would abuse his power to seek foreign intervention in our affairs and do so in a way that threatens the ordinary mechanism of removing a president, and that is an election.”
But is that really the case? The Dems are continuing to say the president is guilty and that there is “overwhelming” evidence, but so far, the American people have seen none of this proof. The one damning piece of new evidence is Rudy Giuliani’s sudden visit to the Ukraine, supposedly representing the president. The attorney has said that he would be happy to testify in the impeachment hearings, and perhaps this will clear up the reason for his visit to Ukraine at such a critical time.
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Read more from Kelli Ballard.
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