Hat, cattle, etc.
The GOP’s “throw it against the wall and see what” shtick just is not working anymore. Not even with the oft-complicit The New York Times. The RW distraction machine is sputtering.
Rep. Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee released an interim report on the Hunter Biden faux financial scandal on Wednesday. The report and the press conference announcing the release landed with a loud plop.
After four months of investigation, House Republicans who promised to use their new majority to unearth evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden acknowledged on Wednesday that they had yet to uncover incriminating material about him, despite their frequent insinuations that he and his family have been involved in criminal conduct and corruption.
No evidence is no impediment to the ongoing smear campaign. But not even Fox & Friends is buying what House Republicans are selling.
Heather Cox Richardson calls the report “a bizarre effort.” Of course. It’s who MAGA Republicans are:
A press conference the House Oversight Committee also held this morning got more attention than Jordan’s report, but it, too, was a fizzle. The committee announced the conference on Monday, May 8, when committee chair Representative James Comer (R-KY) promised supporters to unleash “judgment day” on the Biden White House. Republican members of the committee have made much of what they call “the Biden family’s influence peddling enterprise,” but today’s conference revealed nothing new: Biden’s son and brother and their associates worked with private companies that received about $10 million in investment from China and Romania. There is no evidence that those payments were illegal.
The “Biden family” is the term the right-wing Republicans are using to make it sound as if the president was part of the business dealings of his son Hunter and brother James, but they have turned up no evidence that President Joe Biden was part of their businesses or received any money in relation to them. Further, without evidence that the payments were illegal—and the Republicans have not charged that they were—they are relying on innuendo to smear the president.
Marcy Wheeler dismantled the report on Twitter:
Jordan’s an idiot. But then, you knew that.
“Anyway, I get it,” tweets Wheeler. “Jim Jordan has to do something to distract from the fact that Trump was found liable for sexual assault.”
The politics of innuendo has a long tradition among Republicans. Decades of unsubstantiated reports of widespread voter fraud. The 2000 whispering campaign that Sen. John McCain “had fathered an illegitimate black child.” The Obama birth certificate bullshit that in time brought Donald Trump to the White House. All smoke bombs and no fire.
If they had any shame, these characters would not be able to sleep at night knowing they ran for public office not to serve their country or constituents, but to spend their time (and taxpayer dollars) staging tabloid smears that would get them on TV. If they had any shame.