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Four years ago at this time, I was lukewarm about Kevin McCarthy, the Republican (Minority) Leader in America’s House of Representatives.
He represents California’s 23rd District, so he knows a lot about the state’s politics.
He wasn’t too keen on Donald Trump in 2016, but, since then, he got on board the Trump Train and makes a lot of sense.
Below are some of his latest and greatest tweets.
The 2020 results for the House
Six days after the 2020 election, he tweeted:
He also had a go at Nancy Pelosi’s predictions about the election results. She was so wrong:
2020 election censorship
On Wednesday, December 9, YouTube posted a statement: ‘Supporting the 2020 U.S. Election’.
It reads in part (emphases mine):
Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect. Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections. For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors. We will begin enforcing this policy today, and will ramp up in the weeks to come. As always, news coverage and commentary on these issues can remain on our site if there’s sufficient education, documentary, scientific or artistic context.
While only a small portion of watch time is election-related content, YouTube continues to be an important source of election news. On average 88% of the videos in top 10 search results related to elections came from authoritative news sources (amongst the rest are things like newsy late-night shows, creator videos and commentary). And the most viewed channels and videos are from news channels like NBC and CBS.
NBC and CBS weren’t biased, were they?
Kevin McCarthy was quick to respond. He’s absolutely right. There was nothing like this in 2016:
Praise for Trump’s historic five peace deals in four months
On Thursday, December 10, the Trump administration made history once again, with yet another exceptional peace deal, where people said none could be done.
Yes, Donald Trump is the Peace President:
I couldn’t agree more:
China
A week ago, I wrote on Orphans of Liberty about the revelations that a female Chinese spy was active in California and the Midwest for several years (see the part on China). The principal politician involved was Rep. Eric Swalwell. The Chinese national, Fang ‘Christine’ Fang, met him when he was councillor for a San Francisco Bay area town, Dublin City. At the time, she was a student at California State University East Bay and affiliated with the Chinese Student Association.
Swalwell was first elected to US Congress in 2012. He was re-elected in 2014. Fang was his ‘bundler’ for campaign contributions. That was ideal for her and for China. She ended up placing a few political interns in his offices, including one in Washington, DC.
Fang overplayed her hand in the months to come. By 2015 — and this was during Obama’s second term — the FBI was on to her. They gave Swalwell a defence briefing about Fang and he put an end to his association with her.
Nonetheless, Swalwell has served on the House Intelligence Committee for several years. He is still serving on the House Intelligence Committee.
Furthermore, few people are more vocally anti-Trump than Eric Swalwell. He was one of the principal peddlers of the ‘Russian collusion’ narrative.
Kevin McCarthy nailed it with this tweet from Tuesday, December 8:
The following day, he explained to Laura Ingraham of Fox News that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi nominated him to that committee. Did Madam Speaker know about Swalwell’s connections? If so, she never should have nominated him:
On Monday, December 14, he also had a go at Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, about Swalwell. Schiff, also a Democrat, is another US legislator from California:
This is his message for the next session of Congress, when the Speaker of the House position is once again up for grabs:
Coronavirus lockdowns
For me, however, this is Kevin McCarthy’s best tweet:
Yes, they do, indeed.
In August, he tweeted:
Yet, the longer lockdowns and restrictions go on, the more people are likely to believe small business closures, particularly those in the hospitality sector, are a way of letting either big firms or the Chinese in to buy vacant property.
Yesterday, Howie Carr interviewed a restaurant owner from the North End in Boston who has a long-established restaurant that is opening and closing at the whims of city officials and the Massachusetts governor. The man was fighting back tears. This is not easy — at all. He said he does not know what is going on but he says that all the benefit is going to big corporations rather than to him and his brother as well as other small business owners.
When I found McCarthy’s ‘lockdowns destroy livelihoods’ tweet, I’d also spotted a prescient comment from someone who has been an ex-Democrat since 2008. The comment is excerpted below:
…Why are all the Dem leaders so blatantly cold & heartless & PUNITIVE towards destroying people’s lives…while continuing to party in their own lives
Why would Cuomo & DeBlasio let NY turn into a ghost town? and Newsome & Garcetti let the great state of California & the once grand city of Los Angeles die a slow death to the point of driving even Silicon Valley & Elon Musk to skedaddle out to greener & nicer pastures taking all their jobs & moola with them??? Why??
…and then it hit me……there is a strategy…the Dems want the businesses to fail; they want the small business people to fail…they want to kill their golden goose…WHY? Democrats have always been big supporters of Eminent Domain…I could not believe it when I found out years ago it is usually the Dems behind confisicating people’s land, homes, businesses…not really repubs…they believe in their right to do that…for the “greater good”
so my theory goes Dem leaders want to suffocate the small business & real estate & workers to the point of blight & where they give up, lose their businesses & property, have their business licenses & credentials taken away from them, etc
…and then Dems claim all the property & real estate, small businesses under eminent domain or some other concocted device…take what they want …demolish the rest & start selling the locations & properties to FOREIGN INVESTORS…namely CHINA, CHINA, CHINA…
Does anyone doubt that CHINA (given we are speaking about Dems, throw in Iran, etc) would love to own Los Angeles & New York City?
THIS is what I believe is the method to their madness…let things get as bad as they conceivably can without being too obvious…and then one by one Foreign money will appear & buy up the fire sales…& then recreate in their own image a “New America” with Dems in charge of who gets what & at what price.
That is very plausible, very plausible. And, if it is, it won’t just be true in the United States. What about the many European countries experiencing endless lockdowns and restrictions?
The Democrats — either at state or federal level — are not helping the normal American who has worked hard to make his or her living.
McCarthy retweeted this:
As he told Maria Bartiromo of Fox News, Nancy Pelosi used this despicable strategy to hurt President Trump. Instead, it hurt millions of Americans:
Civil rights
On civil rights, McCarthy knows the history of the Republican Party, which has championed them from the 19th century:
After the 2020 election, McCarthy pointed out the diversity among the Republican winners:
Oldies but goodies from 2018 up to 2020
In 2018, McCarthy proved that a goodly number of Democrat congressmen don’t care whether illegals vote in a US election:
Nearly three weeks later — and three weeks before the mid-term election that year — Newt Gingrich lauded McCarthy for his stance on immigration: ‘Here’s a leader with a plan to genuinely control our southern border. He needs our support’.
California politics is part of this, too:
When House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., introduced the Build the Wall, Enforce the Law Act he set the stage for a vital national debate on important questions …
When contrasted with the open borders bill of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. – which every Democratic Senate incumbent has co-sponsored – the choice between the two parties is clear.
Republicans will control the border. Democrats will throw the border wide open to anyone who wants to enter.
On October 23 that year, Fox News reported that two men threw a large rock through the window of McCarthy’s office in Bakersfield, California. The men then burglarised the equipment inside:
McCarthy posted four photographs documenting the alleged episode on Instagram — three showing the individuals he identified as possible suspects, and one providing a clear view of a massive slab of rock lying on the floor amid shattered glass.
“Does anyone know these two guys?” McCarthy wrote on the social media site, next to images of two people spotted near his office.
The Bakersfield Police Department did not comment on the alleged incident when reached by Fox News and said it would have more information on Tuesday.
McCarthy, like several other congressional Republicans, has faced threats and harassment in the past several weeks. In August, protesters in Sacramento chanting “No justice, no peace” disrupted McCarthy’s event at the Public Policy Institute of California.
Ironically, on Thursday, McCarthy retweeted President Trump’s “#JobsNotMobs” slogan, underscoring the deteriorating level of civility in politics ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections.
After the November 6 election that year, McCarthy was approved by a vote of 159-43 to become the new House Minority Leader.
McCarthy is someone who appeals to all Republicans. Trump, however, also wanted a more controversial figure to also represent his interests — Jim Jordan from Ohio, a wrestler during his university days:
Jim Jordan did not get his appointment as Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee until March 20, 2020. That said, Doug Collins (R-Georgia) did an excellent job defending the president during his impeachment hearings.
During Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) shutdown early in 2019, McCarthy wanted Congress in session:
During that time, he also made it clear that he supports small government:
At the end of January 2019, in an effort for tighter border legislation, McCarthy gave a speech about the many Americans who had been the victims of crime at the hands of illegals. It was so moving that he received a bipartisan standing ovation.
A few days later, he upheld the right to life in criticising Virginia’s Democrat governor Ralph Northam for his egregious racist behaviour and stance on abortion:
Sadly, Northam’s still there.
The matter persisted through the end of March that year, but Schiff is still the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
In April, he warned Americans of the Democrat plan to regulate the Internet. He countered that Republicans want to keep the Internet free and open.
Two months later, he pointed out that YouTube considers itself a publisher, not a platform. It should be noted that a publisher can choose what to publish, a platform — which YouTube claims to be — cannot.
Kevin McCarthy also managed to raise a lot of money for President Trump’s 2020 campaign, starting in 2019:
McCarthy had a strategy to win a House majority in 2020. Sadly, that didn’t work — and historically, it’s very difficult — BUT at least the Republicans did not lose any seats (see the first tweet in this post).
In late October 2019, McCarthy rightly criticised the secrecy that Adam Schiff engineered around the preparations for Trump’s impeachment. Republicans were not allowed to see some of the evidence.
McCarthy refused to give it legitimacy:
On December 6, 2019, McCarthy brought Pelosi’s forked tongue approach to the attention of all Americans:
In January 2020, McCarthy set an all-time annual fundraising record for the Republicans:
On February 5, 2020, McCarthy announced that Trump was ‘acquitted for life’:
He defended Attorney General Bill Barr (who is leaving his post this month) against 2,000 former DoJ — Department of Justice — employees who wanted him to resign.
In June, he saw the agenda that lies behind people who want to topple statues and destroy police stations, public housing as well as churches:
Later this past summer, he appeared in a moving campaign ad for President Trump:
In a change from four or more years ago, McCarthy stated that he did not want an endorsement from the Chamber of Commerce. That is because the Chamber of Commerce rejected Trump in 2020 and endorsed Democrats instead. Now please revisit the ex-Dem’s comment earlier in this post about what could happen to the property that businesses going bust from coronavirus leave behind. It is entirely possible that those properties could be sold to a foreign entity or to big real estate developers.
On Wednesday, November 4, the day after the election, he tweeted, ‘Americans rejected socialism and voted for freedom’, which was true at state and federal levels. Team Trump continues to contest the presidential results.
McCarthy wants the battle for truth to continue. On November 6, he told Laura Ingraham of Fox News, ‘Republicans will not be silenced’.
I have enjoyed what I have seen and heard from Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California over the past four years. I hope he continues like this, because, if he does, he would make an excellent Speaker of the House someday.
This week, President Donald Trump tweeted his frustration with the slow pace of the investigations going on at the DOJ and FBI.
Robert Mueller’s investigation is moving at an expected — incredibly, slow — pace. Before Christmas, a Trump spokesperson said it would be wrapped up early in 2018. So far, in ten months, all that Mueller has done is indict 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities. On February 17, 2018, CNN reported (emphases mine):
Special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for allegedly meddling in the 2016 presidential election, charging them with conspiracy to defraud the United States, the Department of Justice announced Friday.
In addition, three defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five defendants with aggravated identity theft …
The sweeping indictment describes in detail an unprecedented campaign by Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, affirming the longstanding conclusions of the US intelligence community. It is at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated questioning of those conclusions, which has continued throughout his first year in office. CNN reported this week that Trump is still not convinced that Russia meddled in the election.
Trump emphasized the lack of allegations of any impact on the presidential election …
Beginning as early as 2014, the Russian organization Internet Research Agency began operations to interfere with the US political system, including the 2016 elections, according to the indictment.
The defendants allegedly posed as US persons, created false US personas and operated social media pages and groups designed to attract US audiences, the indictment reads. Two of the Russians also allegedly traveled to the United States in 2014 to gather intelligence for their operations …
The indictment mentions a February 2016 memo to Internet Research Agency staff telling them to post political content on US social media sites and “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them).” The reference to Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who challenged Clinton for the Democratic nomination, shows that the Russian government decided early on to oppose Clinton.
Twelve of the 13 defendants charged worked for the Internet Research Agency.
[Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein said Friday that the indictment does not contain any allegations that any Americans knowingly participated in the activity.
Then, the Democrats issued their FISA memo in response to the February 2 FISA memo from Representative Devin Nunes (R-California), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Representative Adam Schiff (D-California), who also serves on the HPSCI, issued the memo. On Saturday, February 24, Fox News reported:
President Trump on Saturday dismissed a Democratic rebuttal to the GOP memo outlining government surveillance abuses in the 2016 campaign as a “total political and legal bust,” claiming that it only confirms the ”terrible things” that were done by the nation’s intelligence agencies.
The rebuttal, written by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, concluded that officials at the FBI and Justice Department “did not abuse the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, omit material information, or subvert this vital tool to spy on the Trump campaign” …
The rebuttal added that the DOJ only made “narrow use” of information from [Christopher] Steele’s sources and that in later FISA renewals the DOJ provided “additional information obtained through multiple independent sources” that backed up Steele’s reporting. It challenged the Republican assertion that the FBI authorized payment to Steele, saying that it neglected that the payment was canceled.
The new memo also asserted that the dossier had been corroborated by multiple sources. However, in June 2017 testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, former FBI Director James Comey said the opposite — that three months after the warrant on [Carter] Page had been granted he still considered the dossier “unverified” and “salacious” when he briefed incoming President Trump in January 2017 at Trump Tower …
And upon the new memo’s release, Republicans on the intel committee responded with rebuttals to the rebuttal, providing more evidence that this battle has legs. For instance, while the Democrats say that the court was given information about the political motivations of Steele, Republicans say that such a statement is “buried in a footnote” that obscures rather than clarifies his motives.
“The American people now clearly understand that the FBI used political dirt paid for by the Democratic Party to spy on an American citizen from the Republican Party,” Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif. said in a statement …
The White House called the rebuttal a “politically driven document” that fails to answer the concerns raised by the Republican memo.
… Democrats have claimed that the original Republican memo was an effort to attack FBI Director Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in 2016. Trump had previously said that the memo “totally vindicates” him in the investigation.
Talk about a parallel universe. This is going to run and run.
Now on to Trump’s tweets.
The first two are retweets from his interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro on Saturday, February 24:
The next has to do with a clip from Fox News’s Catherine Herridge:
Trump included a quote from her and his comment:
Trump then watched other Fox News shows and pulled quotes:
Much of this is AG Jeff Sessions’s fault. Outside of MS-13 arrests and drug busts, Sessions’s recusal from any investigation into the campaign’s alleged — false — Russian collusion brought in Robert Mueller and his team which has taken Sessions out of his position of authority. Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein is, in effect, running the DOJ.
Even worse, an article from October 2017 points to the very real possibility that — even without Mueller’s investigation — Jeff Sessions was not going to investigate Hillary Clinton’s or the Obama administration’s wrongdoings.
Last September and again on October 28, former congressman (R – Utah) Jason Chaffetz spoke with Judge Jeanine about a conversation he had with Jeff Sessions. The Gateway Pundit reported on the shocking content from both interviews (bold emphases in the original, those in purple mine):
When asked whether Jeff Sessions should be out, Chaffetz correctly responded, “Well I don’t know what the case is to keep him!”
A month ago Chaffetz was on with Judge Janine and he then dropped his first bombshell on Sessions:
Chaffetz: I can tell you that while I was in Congress and the Chairman of the Oversight Committee, I did go over and visit with Attorney General Sessions and it was one of the most frustrating discussions I had because whether it was the IRS, Fast and Furious, the email scandal that we went through, I did not see the Attorney General willing to just let Lady Justice administer justice and then follow through. I understood maybe the last six months of the Obama Administration…
Judge Janine: Wait a minute I don’t have that much time. You spoke with Sessions on IRS, Fast and Furious. Did he give you a reason? Did he say he was presenting anything to a grand jury? Yes or no?
Chaffetz: No, he basically let me know he wasn’t going to pursue anything on the major cases.
Judge Janine: So IRS, on the major cases? Are we talking about Hillary Clinton, because I haven’t even gotten to her yet.
Chaffetz: Yes, the email scandal of Hillary Clinton. We had Bryan Pagliano. I issued a subpoena for him to appear before the Committee and he said “No”. He didn’t even show up. We issued another subpoena. The US Marshals served it. And you know in my world, if you’re in court, I guarantee you that a subpoena is not an optional activity. We wanted the Attorney General to prosecute him and he said “No”.
Pagliano maintained Hillary’s private server when she was Secretary of State and, before that, managed the IT for her failed 2008 campaign.
The Gateway Pundit article concludes:
Sessions’ actions as AG are the opposite of what a decent AG would do if he was seeking justice. Sessions is compromised and as a result he is no better than Obama’s corrupt and criminal AG’s Holder and Lynch. Sessions is now the biggest snake in the swamp. Nothing gets done and nobody gets investigated, prosecuted or punished for criminal deeds because of Sessions.
Sessions is the SWAMP! He must go!
Supposedly, the DOJ’s inspector general (IG) Michael Horowitz is scheduled to issue a report this month about his own investigation into the department and the FBI. It is now thought that it could appear in April.
Regarding the IG’s report, on Wednesday, February 28, the Washington Examiner covered the tweet from Trump supporter Jerry Falwell Jr, president of Liberty University (emphasis mine):
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. suggested Wednesday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions might be a “coward,” after President Trump attacked Sessions for not moving convincingly enough to investigate abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act under former President Barack Obama …
Falwell tweeted after Trump asked why Sessions has … the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General to examine FISA abuse, instead of the department’s own lawyers. Trump said the IG route will “take forever,” and said the IG has no power to act if it finds wrongdoing. Sessions later tweeted that he was using the “appropriate process.”
(Sigh.)
All being well, the public outcry from Trump’s supporters will be such that Sessions will get the message that he should stand down. The only problem is that there is no one Trump can easily move laterally into that spot. That is the only way a replacement could work, since the Senate told Trump last year they would not approve another AG.
Churchmouse Campanologist 