Tag: Nancy Pelosi

Democrats Try to Undermine a Trump Acquittal

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As the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump comes to a close, Democrat resistors are having a hard time coming to grips with an impending acquittal.

Perturbed members of the opposition party have now chosen to engage in a smear campaign that characterizes the Senate proceedings as illegitimate.

Using a worn-out playbook from past attacks, some of the more spiteful Dems are trying to massage the minds of a would-be unsuspecting public that the acquittal of President Trump somehow lacks legitimacy because of a supposed deficiency of witnesses or documents.

In an appearance on Bill Maher’s HBO show on January 17, 2020, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the following: “You are impeached forever,” punctuating her comment with the line, “No matter what the Senate does, it [impeachment] can never be erased.”

On January 30, 2020, the day before the Senate voted against subpoenaing additional witnesses or documents, Pelosi said to a reporter, “You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. You don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation and all of that.”

The very next morning, which was also prior to the pivotal Senate vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “The president’s acquittal will be meaningless, because it will be the result of a sham trial. If there are no witnesses, no documents in this trial, there will be a permanent asterisk next to the acquittal of President Trump written in permanent ink.”

Other Democrats joined in with the spin, as did most of their willing media accomplices.

Many will recall when the Democrats flooded the media with a similar set of talking points at the conclusion of the confirmation process for then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Some of the more spiteful Dems contended that the process would be unfair and tainted if there was not a delay for an FBI investigation.

After the president and the GOP relented to a week-long FBI investigation, certain Democrat office-holders ran to the microphones to assert that the investigation was insufficient and the confirmation process flawed.

Once again, it really would not have mattered how the GOP senators had proceeded with the impeachment trial. If the trial did not match the outcome that the removal-oriented Democrats wanted, they would have followed up with a coordinated negative message anyway.

The Constitution grants the Senate the sole power to try all impeachments. The Speaker of the House has no real role in an impeachment trial. However, as Pelosi did when she conditioned the delivery of the Articles of Impeachment, the House speaker is attempting to exercise influence and exert control over the Senate impeachment function.

In stark contrast to the way in which the House hearings unfolded, the Senate conducted the impeachment trial process in a fair and dignified manner. While carrying out its constitutional duty, the Senate received and considered a record produced by the House of Representatives. Seventeen of the 18 witnesses from whom the House obtained testimony had their transcripts released. Noticeably absent was the transcript of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who gave testimony that is widely believed would have been helpful to the president’s case.

During the Senate trial, members of the Senate, acting as a jury, listened to more than 190 portions of testimony from 13 of the House witnesses, and additionally had access to almost 29,000 documents.

It was the House Democrats who made the decision to disallow any witnesses that would support the president’s case. It was also the House Democrats who chose not to subpoena other witnesses, because they apparently did not wish to take the time to allow the judicial branch to do its job; that is, the job of dealing with the important constitutional issue of executive privilege.

Some of the more spiteful Dems seem to enjoy projecting the image of wrapping themselves in the Constitution, while they slice it to ribbons with deceitful words and duplicitous conduct.

Democrats Implement ‘The Big Reverse’

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“The Big Lie” is a form of propaganda that has been used over time by manipulative figures in and out of government, politics, and institutions. It has generally been adopted and applied with the specific intent to surreptitiously alter the beliefs of large groups of people.

Adolf Hitler utilized “The Big Lie” phrase in his 1925 book “Mein Kampf,” describing a lie that was so enormous in size those hearing it would be compelled to believe it.

As members of the human race, the positive side of our nature does not allow for us to accept the notion that any of our fellow human beings would ever lie to us in such a massively brazen way. Our line of reasoning, as well as our unconscious processing, leads us to believe that the lie we are hearing just may be the truth.

Hitler put it in the following way: “It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.”

And so it is that if the lie is big enough, people will oftentimes come to the conclusion that it is true, particularly if it is repeated over and over again.

Chiseled on an unholy invisible stone tablet, the insidious principle persists to this day. It was embodied in a quote from Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, which read as follows: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Our customary psychological defenses endow us with the ability to filter out falsehood from truth so that we are able to deal with the commonplace types of lies that we encounter in everyday life.

However, “The Big Lie” is so extraordinary that it is able to pass through psychological defenses that exist within us. Our minds are temporarily short-circuited and ultimately manipulated to a sufficient degree that allows the lie to emerge as “truth.”

Various members of the Democratic Party have either wittingly or unwittingly come upon a variant of “The Big Lie,” which they have used in their “resistance” efforts against President Donald Trump, his administration, his personal relationships, and his family.

I have given this variant of “The Big Lie” the label of “The Big Reverse.”

Lying, of course, is part and parcel of “The Big Reverse.” However, “The Big Reverse” involves an additional component with an individual or group displaying a sudden and dramatic turnaround of language and conduct. This creates in the recipient population what media psychology refers to as “cognitive dissonance.”

Cognitive dissonance is an intellectual and psychological discomfort caused by the intake of information that involves a conflict between what has been said or done in the past and what is presently being said or done.

As human beings, we will instinctively seek to alter one of the opposing beliefs or behaviors to restore the sense of balance that needs to be maintained for individual stability and functionality.

How does all of the above information relate to where our country finds itself in a political, psychological, and societal sense?

Some recent examples may be instructive.

“Impeachment is a very serious matter. If it happens it has to be a bipartisan initiative,” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stated in the spring of 2018. “Unless you have bipartisan consensus, impeachment is a divisive issue in the country.”

In an interview with The Washington Post in the early spring of 2019, Pelosi remarked, “I’m not for impeachment. Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country.”

Then the turnaround occurred.

It was the fall of 2019. Without a single Republican vote, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives voted to approve an impeachment inquiry. Two hearings were then conducted, where partisan rules were imposed, restrictions were placed solely upon Republican committee members, witnesses that Republicans wished to call were denied, and evidence, fairness, and due process were ignored.

The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives brought the articles of impeachment up for a vote. Not a single solitary Republican voted in favor. In the most partisan way imaginable, the articles passed.

In another turnaround example, Democrats stoked the flames of fear and anxiety for months about the urgency that existed to remove the president from office. They even used the culturally familiar phrase “clear and present danger.”

Democrat committee chairs Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler had pushed through the proceedings without having waited for the judicial branch to decide on the legality of the president’s assertion of executive privilege.

After the articles passed the House, Pelosi suddenly put on the brakes. Shirking her constitutional duty, she held back the articles from the Senate for almost a month.

During the impeachment process, the Democrats went to great lengths to portray themselves as being “prayerful” and the process itself as being a “solemn” and “somber” one.

Then the impeachment signing ceremony happened.

Pelosi and her Democrat colleagues celebrated with abandon. Pens with Pelosi’s name stamped on them were actually handed out as souvenirs.

This caused a bit of short-lived cognitive dissonance on the part of otherwise Democrat-adoring personalities on cable news shows.

CNN’s Dana Bash commented, “We are used to seeing signing ceremonies handing out pens at moments of celebration, when a president is signing legislation.” She added, “It was unusual to see that kind of ceremony and handing out the pens and smiling for a picture in this kind of situation where the House speaker has bent over backward to say publicly and privately that this is somber, this is not a time for celebration.” And Bash’s colleague Nia-Malika Henderson called the odd festivities “a little jarring and certainly off message…”

Note of caution in the upcoming days: Expect to see more use of “The Big Reverse” in the Senate impeachment trial.

Chuck Schumer and Democrat Allies Use Jimmy Kimmel as a Political Pawn

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After late-night host Jimmy Kimmel used the opportunity of his show to launch a series of attacks on the latest Senate version of the GOP’s health care legislation, many folks were wondering how it was that Kimmel had become such an authority on health care in general, and on the Graham-Cassidy bill in particular.

It turns out that the co-writer of Kimmel’s health care remarks was none other than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

According to The Daily Beast, for months Kimmel and Schumer had been coordinating behind the scenes to put a wrench in the Republican undertaking of repealing the failing health care system known as Obamacare. Schumer had apparently given Kimmel “technical guidance and info about the bill, as well as stats from various think tanks and experts.”

Kimmel’s spokesman Lewis Kay confirmed to CNN that the late-night host had consulted with Schumer and other groups opposed to the bill. As Graham-Cassidy began to look as though it may have a chance at passage, the partisan New York senator was evidently the one who encouraged Kimmel to use his show as a platform to critique the legislation.

Kimmel’s son had already had to battle congenital heart disease in his infant life. The Democrats apparently saw the opportunity to exploit Kimmel’s family difficulties, using the hardship as a means to attack the Republican proposed legislation by feeding lies to the late-night host. Particularly underhanded was the reframing of the efforts by the GOP to repeal and replace Obamacare as a plan that would fail to protect people with pre-existing conditions such as the one Kimmel’s son experienced.

In an on-air monologue, Kimmel demeaned the legislation for failing to meet the so-called “Jimmy Kimmel test,” a term that Cassidy had used inadvisably as a measure of acceptable health care legislation.

Kimmel seemed more than willing to engage in some Hollywood style virtue signaling while simultaneously relishing the opportunity to disrespect President Trump. He even targeted by name Fox News co-host Brian Kilmeade for calling out the banality of Kimmel’s analysis. Kilmeade had referred to Kimmel as a member of the Hollywood elite, a designation of the late-night host with which few could disagree.

Lost in the media coverage has been the truth that people with pre-existing conditions would not be denied coverage under the GOP’s proposed legislation. However, it appears as though Kimmel was fed purposely misleading information from Schumer and dutifully repeated the lines for his audience.

The influence of Kimmel on the press and social media seems to have accomplished the goal of tainting the image of Graham-Cassidy, which consequently created an opening for the Republican Party non-loyalist, Senator John McCain, to once again attempt to kill the bill.

The late-night host dedicated a series of monologues to emotion-packed health care sermonizing.

Rather than engaging in serious debate, Kimmel put out falsehoods and half-truths, which went wholly unchallenged by the mainstream media.

Democrats took advantage of Kimmel’s health care segments, using them as fodder for advertising and social media posts in an effort to leverage the late-night host’s influence with a sizable segment of the public.

Kimmel became the star of the Democrat political grandstanding sideshow. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) launched a digital advertising campaign that was framed around the “Jimmy Kimmel test” meme. The ads targeted Republican candidates in crucial midterm election states.

As part of a six-figure digital campaign in 12 states, ads appeared in searches by those trying to get information on “health care,” “repeal,” “the Jimmy Kimmel test,” and other topics, redirecting individuals who clicked on the terms to the DSCC’s already existing health care page.

The targeted states were those that were perceived to have the closest upcoming Senate races in 2018: Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Democrats also took advantage of the Kimmel coverage by posting comments on social media. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi tweeted a video of one of the Kimmel monologues along with a thank you note.

“Stories like yours are why we will defeat #Trumpcare,” Pelosi wrote.

Other high-profile Democrats who took to Twitter in an effort to make the most of the Kimmel criticism of GOP health care legislation included Schumer, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsome.

The truth of the matter is that while out boisterously attacking the pending GOP legislation, Kimmel deceptively kept quiet about the fact that one of the highest profile partisan Democrats was supplying him with his politically poisonous script.

It is more than unfortunate that a television personality on a major broadcast network would allow himself to be used as a pawn on a political chessboard.