Sure, the freaking House GOP is almost certainly going to shut down the government for no good reason, and possibly throw Kevin McCarthy out of his job as speaker even if he doesn’t agree to seek Democrats’ help to pass the temporary spending bill the Senate already passed. It’s horrible and it’s going to put people out of work; government employees will eventually get back pay, but that won’t pay the rent now, and those who work for contractors, like staff in the House cafeteria, won’t get anything except the hope of being re-hired after the shutdown. As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said on MSNBC last night, House Republicans will be “literally biting the hands that feed them.”
So like the passengers on the Titanic, let’s enjoy some music as the nation slips beneath the waves. (Maybe a sassy Italian cartoon octopus will show up to save us; ask Robyn, it’s her movie.) The music in this case is the sound of House Democrats, who clearly showed up more prepared than the party ostensibly in control of the hearing, and who took every opportunity to remind America that one party is wasting the country’s time with a sham impeachment “inquiry” while the other is trying to point out we’re still bearing down on a goddamned iceberg.
Evan already treated us to a lovely brief clip of Congress’s youngest member, the always impressive Maxwell Frost of Florida, quipping that Republican witness Jonathan Turley — who said there was no evidence worthy of impeachment — was only stopping by “on the way to his next Fox News hit,” eliciting this reaction from another GOP witness:
Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pennsylvania) came with the stats, listing the number of constituents who’ll be out of work in each district of various Republicans if the government shuts down while the Rs are busy trying to make up a case for impeachment. When Lee got to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district (6,306 paychecks to be lost), Greene interrupted to straight-up lie, “Democrats are the party of shutdowns. You guys love shutdowns,” but Lee didn’t slow down to ask her to name a time any Democrat demanded a government shutdown, because fuck MTG’s lies is why.
The ranking member of the Oversight Committee, Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), had his moments too, noting in his opening statement that if the Republicans “had a smoking gun or even a dripping water pistol, they would be presenting it today,” and later pointing out that “Online, everyone is making fun of this Seinfeld impeachment — an impeachment hearing about nothing.”
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Florida), treated the GOP clown show with all the seriousness it deserved, using visual aids to call attention to stupid stuff Republicans have said prior to the hearing, and helpfully charting out the number of impeachments and criminal indictments against both Donald Trump, at whose behest the clowns are dancing, and Joe Biden, who was busy saving democracy yesterday.
Finally, a special award for outstanding achievement in the accelerated hurling of shade goes to Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who delivered a rapid-fire monologue pointing out that most of the Republicans’ supposed corruption claims against Hunter Biden amount to baseless speculation:
“If they had continued to say ‘if’ and ‘Hunter,’ and we were playing a drinking game, I would be drunk by now,” she said, asking a Democratic witness how many times the Rs had said “if.” (More than 35. He counted).
Crockett went on, waving the infamous photo of that bathroom in Mar-a-Lago with the chandelier, the cheap shower curtain, and the boxes and boxes of classified documents.
“When we start talking about things that look like evidence, they want to act like they’re blind. They don’t know what this is. These are our national secrets ― looks like in the shitter to me!” (We doubt it’s the first time that’s been in the Congressional Record, but we’d bet it’s never been delivered such aplomb).
Then Crockett listed Trump’s indictments, tallying them by charge, and said the only thing Joe Biden has been guilty of is “loving his child unconditionally.” She closed, as several other Dems did, by calling attention to the impending shutdown:
“So until they find some evidence, we should get back to the people’s work which means keeping this government open so that people don’t go hungry in the streets of the United States, and I. Will. Yield.”
It was a bravura performance and we want all the encores Ms. Crockett may care to give. Might be nice, though, if it weren’t necessary at all.
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