It didn’t take long for Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) to react with a backhanded compliment to House Democratic leaders after Monday’s announcement of a full vote on the impeachment process.
During a Monday afternoon Fox News appearance, Brooks sarcastically said that he would like to “thank” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) for the resolution on the impeachment process that will be considered by the Rules Committee on Wednesday.
“I want to thank Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff,” Brooks said, “if they are going to quit doing all these proceedings behind closed doors with the public cannot ascertain what’s going on as they try to trash the votes of over 60 million Americans in the 2016 election.
Brooks went on to claim that he has yet to see the resolution.
“From what I understand, we probably won’t see it until later this week,” Brooks said. “But if substantively it opens the doors so that the American people can see the travesty that is taking fold, then that’s a good thing for the American people.”
Watch Brooks’ remarks below:
Rep. Mo Brooks reacts to House's announcement to vote on impeachment procedure pic.twitter.com/NBbLyk55nl
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) October 28, 2019
Brooks’ remarks echoed that of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who called the impending full House vote a “backtracking.”
It’s been 34 days since Nancy Pelosi unilaterally declared her impeachment inquiry.
Today’s backtracking is an admission that this process has been botched from the start.
We will not legitimize the Schiff/Pelosi sham impeachment.
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) October 28, 2019
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) also shared a sentiment along the same lines as both McCarthy and Brooks:
House Democrats now suddenly saying they'll vote on an impeachment resolution to “ensure transparency” is rich—considering they've spent weeks conducting interviews in secret, leaking their own talking points while locking down any and all information that benefits the President
— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) October 28, 2019
And retiring Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) added to the chorus on Monday by saying that “it’s been a bad process and a far less than transparent process,” according to CNN.
“And this is a very very serious matter — when you’re talking about impeaching the President of the United States, you better do it right,” Walden said. “And so far, I don’t think they have.”
Cliff’s Notes:
Bad bad House Dems for not being transparent at all even though it was necessary for the investigation stage of the inquiry and that public hearings had been promised from the get-go.
Perfectly fine for Republican WH and administration to argue that the GOPer POTUS is literally immune from any sort of oversight by Congress, congressional investigation and subpoenas or even criminal investigation for witnessed crimes in broad daylight, and that the immunity extends as far as the GOPer POTUS needs it to extend at whim in order to prevent any transparency whatsoever and turn the administration/Executive Branch into a black box star chamber “Schrodinger’s justice” situation.
Talking parrots parrot talking point.
They obviously had their replies pre-scripted, as at some point the Democrats were going to call for a vote of some kind during the process. The Republicans will continue trying to make the process into something illegitimate, up until the point that the testimony overwhelms their narrative…they really don’t want to have the public testimony of Bill Taylor and others happen in an environment where people are watching to learn the details of what happened.
They also really shouldn’t want to ask the questions they are planning, dragging in other BS conspiracy stuff with no relation to Trump’s actions in Ukraine. People will see right through that, and it will make them lose even worse in 2020. The very best strategy for them is to take it seriously, work on getting honest testimony, and then either convict Trump or figure out a reasonable fiction to let him off. We’ll get the BS conspiracy though, it’s pretty obvious that too many Republicans in Congress actually believe the garbage or fear not hyping it and then losing their election.
Mo Brooks, Kevin McCarthy, and Greg Walden are all dim bulbs. Which is the dimmest bulb? Survey Says???
In doing so, they will be pushing conspiracy theories to gaslight their own constituents.
Thats foul. I hope enough of their constituents see it for what this is - and turn on their representative in the voting booth.