Say What? is the segment of Liberty Nation Radio where we unveil some of the most wacky, astonishing, and damnable things uttered by politicians and the chattering class.
Tim Donner: So after a two-year investigation that polarized the nation and paralyzed the Trump presidency, the Trump-Russia collusion has been fully and finally debunked. Or has it? One of Trump’s leading tormentors, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), who’s on both the judicial and intelligence committees, was sure there was collusion before the Mueller report came out and he, along with many of his leftist colleagues, still aren’t ready to move on after an investigation that incorporated 2,800 subpoenas, 500 interviews, and some $30 million, give or take. Listen to what Swalwell said on CNN before and then after the report.
Eric Swalwell (before Mueller report): I’ve seen plenty of evidence of collusion. We have very good circumstantial evidence that the Trump team, the family, the businesses, were eager to work and were working with the Russians while the Russians were helping them. And I think in the court of law, that’s enough.
Swalwell (after Mueller report): Just because you are criminally a non-colluder doesn’t mean that we don’t want to know what evidence Bob Mueller found about efforts you and your team and your family and your business took to work with the Russians.
Tim: As Democrats decide just how far to push with more and more investigations of Trump following this watershed moment, the leftist elite media are now being held to account for the endless attention and alarmism they indulged in. And when Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani went on CNN with Chris Cuomo, he laid bare first the politically active investigators appointed by Mueller and then the media’s collusion delusion.
Rudy Giuliani: He’s got a staff of at least eight people who are rabid partisan Democrats. Never should have done that staff. One of them was counsel to the Clinton Foundation. Suppose I was investigating Hillary Clinton with the counsel to the Trump Foundation? He had a lead investigator who is all over the net saying he hated Trump. He should. That’s disgraceful. You guys … on this network have tortured this man for two years with collusion and nobody’s apologized. Before we talk about obstruction … apologize for the overreaction of collusion.
Chris Cuomo: Not a chance, of course. Not a chance.
Giuliani: Of course, you’re not, ’cause you’re not being fair.
Cuomo: No, please, you know better than that, or you wouldn’t be here.
Giuliani: No, I don’t know better. I am outraged by the behavior of these networks. Collusion, collusion, collusion, collusion, collusion, collusion.
Tim: The respected liberal investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept, said on the Democracy Now podcast that the media’s performance in the collusion delusion has been disgraceful.
Glenn Greenwald: This is the saddest media spectacle I’ve ever seen since I began practicing journalism in 2005. And what makes it even sadder is to watch all the people who vested their journalistic credibility into what proved to be a complete and total fraud and scam continue to try and cling to some vestige of credibility by continuing to spin conspiracy theories that are even more reckless and more unhinged than the ones to which we’ve been subjected for three years. The great journalist and writer Matt Taibbi wrote in an article over the weekend, and I agree with him completely, that as humiliating as the media debacle was leading up to the Iraq war, what they did over the last three years on the Trump-Russia story makes all of that look like a pimple. It’s ratcheted up tensions between the two most dangerous nuclear-armed powers in the world, Russia and the United States. And the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists says this has brought us to two minutes before midnight on their doomsday clock. So it’s also been extremely dangerous in ways that we don’t yet know.
Tim: But if you thought the Mueller report is the end of the left’s single-minded attempts to overthrow the results of the 2016 election by whatever means available, think again. At least six different committees, maybe as many as nine, are planning to investigate President Trump. But when Trump went on Fox News for his first interview after the investigation was over, he made it clear that he is now planning to publicly release documents like the FISA warrants, based on the discredited Trump-Russia dossier, that formed the basis for the investigations of Trump, both before and after the election.
President Trump: I have plans to declassify and release. I have plans to absolutely release, but I have some very talented people working for me, lawyers. And they really didn’t want me to do it early on. One of the reasons that my lawyers didn’t want me to do it is they said, if I do it, they’ll call it a form of obstruction. So they’ll say, oh, you released these documents. So we would make all of this information transparent. In politics, you always hear transparency. We’d make it transparent, and then they’d call it obstruction, knowing the people we’re dealing with. So, frankly, I thought it would be better if we held it to the end. No, but at the right time we will be absolutely releasing.
Tim: So if Democrats think they can continue to advance scurrilous charges against Trump, the president will fight back with the fresh ammunition of his innocence on the charges of collusion and the obvious culpability of the Obama Justice Department ginning up this whole thing.
Meanwhile, a breathtaking development in Chicago, where the state’s attorney decided to drop the 16 felony charges against TV actor Jussie Smollett after Smollett personally orchestrated a fake hate crime against him by phantom Trump supporters. And the state’s attorney’s office did this while admitting Smollett did everything he was charged with, leading him to claim vindication and leading the head of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police, Kevin Graham, to cry foul.
Jussie Smollett: This has been an incredibly difficult time. Honestly, one of the worst of my entire life. But I am a man of faith, and I’m a man that has knowledge of my history, and I would not bring my family, our lives, or the movement through a fire like this. I just wouldn’t. Make no mistake. I will always continue to fight for the justice, equality, and betterment of marginalized people everywhere.
Kevin Graham: It’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace to the police officers that worked so hard. These detectives knocked their socks off. They worked their case, and all they got for their hard work was to be told, no, we’re going to let him go.
Tim: As Joe Biden considers another run for president in the crowded Democratic field, the former vice president established perhaps a new low for pandering and political correctness in renouncing his own heritage as he apologized for his behavior in the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearing 30 years ago, particularly regarding the black woman who made entirely uncorroborated charges of sexual abuse against Thomas, Anita Hill.
Joe Biden
Joe Biden: She was abused through the hearing. She was taken advantage of. Her reputation was attacked. I wish I could have done something. I opposed the Clarence Thomas nomination. I voted against him, but I also realized there was a real and perceived problem the committee faced. They’re a bunch of white guys. Now I mean it sincerely, a bunch of white guys. To this day, I regret I couldn’t come up with a way to get her the kind of hearing she deserved. Nearly 30 years later, and I publicly apologize to Anita because she didn’t get the hearing she deserved. We all have an obligation to do nothing less than change the culture in this country. A white man’s culture. It’s got to change.
Tim: That may be the most craven, insincere, slobbering, pandering political statement I personally have ever heard. And there’s a lot of competition.
We close with one of the most amusing stunts we’ve ever witnessed in the U.S. Senate. It came during the debate over the Green New Deal, which was rejected 57 to nothing, with 43 Democrats voting present, including senators running for president who publicly supported the Green New Deal. But the show was put on by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who used visual aids to, as he said, treat the Green New Deal with the seriousness it deserved, advocating for … space lizards and giant seahorses.
Mike Lee: These hairy bipedal species of space lizards offer their own unique benefits. Not only are they carbon neutral, but according to a report a long time ago and issued far, far away, they may even be fully recyclable … I draw your attention, Mr. President, to the 20-foot impressive seahorse he’s riding. Under the Green New Deal this is probably Hawaii’s best bet. Now I’m the first to admit that a massive fleet of giant, highly trained seahorses would be cool. It would be really, really awesome ….
Tim: Hey, if we get rid of airplanes as the Green New Deal would do, what other options would we have than space lizards and giant seahorses? That was the culmination of what was the week from hell for Democrats.
