Trump and the fascist GOP drink the Democratic weakness like an authoritarian elixir that gives them dictatorial strength.
Rep. Nadler talked really tough about there being a hard deadline to turn over the Mueller report:
Nadler declined to say whether he intended to subpoena the Justice Department for the report, but said that he considered April 2 a “hard deadline” and that “we mean it.”
Trump and Barr laughed at him and told him metaphorically to go suck eggs. What did Nadler do? He folded with his tail between his legs and Barr was so emboldened that last week he started talking about investigating the investigators.
Adam Schiff was sworn into office more than 3 months ago promising tough oversight. He hasn’t held a single public hearing with Trump’s treasonous crime syndicate to inform the people of what had happened and to prepare them for Mueller’s findings.
And now we have House Ways and Means committee chairman Richard Neal being played like a folding accordion by Mnuchin as he goes in front of another committee and publicly humiliates Neal.
Washington Post
House Democrats are giving the Trump administration a hard-deadline of April 23 to turn over President Trump’s tax returns, pushing back against Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s skepticism over their request for the presidents’ private records.
House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) on Saturday sent a two-page letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig rebuffing Mnuchin’s statement earlier this week that Treasury would miss House Democrats’ initial April 10 deadline for the returns.
You’ve got to be kidding! Apparently the Democrat strategy is to make the fascists laugh so hard at their fake deadlines that they’ll start dribbling out useless documents just to humiliate the Democrats.
These Democratic delaying tactics are not a bug, they are a feature. Pelosi wants all the investigations swept under the rug so Democrats can run on “other things” next year. Over 3 months and of all the committees supposedly doing oversight, they’ve interviewed ONE important witness, and haven’t issued a single subpoena.
I’ve been warning since January that there was a deliberate attempt to sweep the most dangerous internal threat to our democracy since the civil war under the rug. That holding your finger to the political wind (putting party over country) while ignoring a moral imperative to our constitution was dangerous.
It’s been 27 days and the Democrats can’t call a single person to a public hearing about Russia’s attack on our election system, Trump’s and possibly other Republicans complicity in that attack, and the Republican cover-up and stonewalling an investigation in Congress into the attack?
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We keep hearing that Oh, we have to wait for Mueller. Wait for Mueller?!
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Soon to be Attorney General Barr has said he might edit or not even release a report by Mueller
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Democrats don’t have to call Flynn, or Manafort, or Donny Jr. as the first witnesses, but how about a Papadopoulos, or Comey, or Hope Hicks, or Spicer, or Carter page, or the network people from the DNC that can describe the hack… Get somebody in front of the Public so people can understand what happened.
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Nobody is saying that impeachment hearings have to start tomorrow, in fact that’s not the way to do it. But standing house committees should have started public hearings informing and preparing the public as to what happened.
We are gambling our democracy on the belief that we can win more votes next year by showing weakness and sweeping an historic and existential internal attack on our democracy under the rug. I have faith that by holding public hearings that inform the public and fighting tooth and nail to get every witness to testify and every document out in the public, people will have FAR more respect for us than continuing the current deception.
Nobody is asking that our presidential candidates run on impeaching Trump, in fact they should continue to talk about the issues they are now talking about. When a reporter asks them about the house investigations, a simple and truthful response might be, “the house has a constitutional obligation to oversee the actions of the executive branch and I can’t say anything that might interfere in any investigation”. But NO questionable campaign strategy should be implemented at the expense of doing everything we can to fight a fascist attack on our democracy.
We just found out that Trump offered a pardon to someone if they would break the law for him. Anyone who thinks they’re going to get free and fair elections next year, or that thinks this cornered dictator is going to respect the results of those elections if he loses, had better come back to reality.
Fortunately, there is a NEW resistance rising. A resistance that is demanding action from our Democrats, not just tweets and empty threats. Yesterday Adam Schiff tweeted about Trump’s willingness to abuse the pardon power to get people to break the law. It wasn’t his tweet that I found interesting, but many of the comments demanding action.
You're preaching to the choir, Sir, but what can we do? You're the only ones who have the power to stop this. Please start playing hardball.
Then please, put off your break and subpoena people, the Mueller report, all of it and everyone. Enough is enough.
THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Why won’t you uphold your obligation to impeach a president who violates the constitution and the law?
I’m sorry, but this is such a lame response. Why are you talking about the GOP? You’re in the majority, you do something. The rule of law is withering away because YOU are DOING nothing.
You’re in the majority. Do something about it!
Please subpoena and impeach!
Impeachment should be on the table.
We knew the @GOP wasn’t going to curb Trump, that’s why we voted for Democrats to take the house.A lot of people are starting to lose patience with you guys though. A lot of talk on tv and not a lot of action against Trump in Congress.
It's the DEMS that are doing nothing but sending letters... DO SOMETHING!
These responses are VERY representative of the top 30 responses he got for his tweet.
I’m a Democrat, I’ve always been a Democrat, I’ve never voted for a Republican and never will because for more than 40 years I’ve viewed most of them as somewhere on a fascist spectrum. I will not only vote for who ever the Democratic nominee is up and down the ballot, I will work for them. But I will also speak up loudly when our Democrats risk our very democracy over some highly questionable campaign strategy.
The new resistance is rising, and you can be part of the fight to save our democracy by calling your Democratic representative and demanding that we have people who will fight against and not simply fold to the demands of Republican authoritarianism.
RESIST!