The Republican Hearing Backfired

Featuring Robert Hur, partisan hack

Photo Credit: Getty, Win McNamee

Robert Hur, the Trump-appointed special counsel who Attorney Merrick Garland chose to investigate President Biden’s handling of classified documents (because according to D.C. conventional wisdom, only Republicans can be trusted investigate Democrats — or Republicans) testified before the House Judiciary Committee.

The ostensible point of his testimony was to determine why the incredibly partisan Hur, who resigned from the Department of Justice only yesterday, chose not to charge President Biden, whom he characterized as “an elderly man with a poor memory.”

Republicans erroneously thought today was going to be a great day for them. Instead it was a disaster.

Not only did Democrats succeed in undermining Hur’s credibility, but they also put Donald’s cognitive decline and wrongdoing in the hot seat. Here are the main reasons today backfired for Republicans, while wasting everybody else’s time:

Robert Hur denied President Biden is senile.

Republican Scott Fitzgerald, yet another Republican in the House of Representatives who suffers from the Dunning-Kruger effect, likely thought he sounded like Perry Mason when he tried to get Robert Hur to say on the record that President Biden was “senile.”

Instead, he embarrassed himself.

At one point, Fitzgerald read the definition of “senile” from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and asked Hur if he concluded in his final report that Joe Biden was senile.

“That conclusion did not appear in my report,” Hur admitted.

No kidding.

Eric Swalwell plays a supercut of Donald’s incoherence on live television.

At one point of in his questioning of Hur, Swalwell asked him to pledge not to seek a role in Donald’s cabinet, if by some tragic misfortune, he should win in 2024.

Hur refused to answer. Quelle surprise!

Swalwell also used his time to remind the country which candidate has an issue with mental acuity and cognitive decline, when he played a supercut of Donald’s gaffes and misstatements. Even Fox aired it.

Jerry Nadler makes Robert Hur admit Donald’s alleged action is a crime

While Republicans waited for their chance to make the hearing about President Biden’s non-existent memory issues (which have never been corroborated by anyone close to President Biden), Rep. Nadler chose instead to highlight Jack Smith’s case against Donald:

"They were concerned that Trump had lied about possession of those documents and that he might conceal or destroy them," Nadler stated. “Special Counsel Jack Smith found that Trump obstructed his investigation by suggesting his attorney falsely represent to the FBI and grand jury that Trump did not have the documents called for by the grand jury’s subpoena.

"You agree that causing someone to lie to the FBI is a classic example of obstruction of justice?" Nadler asked Hur.

"It is an example of obstruction,” Hur agreed.

Jamie Raskin calls Republicans “amateur memory specialists”

"Our colleagues have switched over from being impeachment investigators for constitutional high crimes and misdemeanors, which is how this whole thing started, to being amateur memory specialists," Raskin said.

Raskin leaned in on President Biden’s strong State of the Union speech:

"…giving us their drive-by diagnoses of the president of the United States, whose soaring oratory, powerful historical analysis, and devastating extemporaneous repartee with even the most skilled ninja hecklers of the Freedom Caucus were on full display at the State of the Union address last week for the whole country to see."

Raskin then used the remainder of his time to highlight the vast scope of Donald’s wrongdoings:

"The desperate quest to invent an issue is a distraction from the 91 federal and state federal charges that Donald Trump faces now, his staggering civil court losses in New York, now totaling more than a half a billion dollars, and his full-blown embrace and romance with authoritarian dictators and communist tyrants all over the world, from Viktor Orban in Hungary to Vladimir Putin in Russia, the former head of the KGB, to the communist dictator of North Korea."

Donald’s incoherence took taking center stage, undercutting Republican attacks on Biden

When Donald was asked on CNBC Monday whether he changed his position on how to handle Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, he gave an answer that could only be described as gibberish.

“There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement. I know that they’re going to end up weakening social security because the country is weak.”

Donald then became even less coherent:

And let’s take a look at outside of the stock market, are, we’re going through hell. People are going through hell. If they have and I believe the number is 50%. They say 32 and 33%. I believe we have a cumulative inflation of over 50%… that means people are, you know, they have to make more than 50% more over a fairly short period of time to stay up. They’ve gotten routed.

Donald’s remarks were universally panned for making zero sense.

“Trump spent 4 years in office and he still has no idea what he’s talking about, and he still can’t hold a single thought for more than 10 seconds,” said international affairs expert Tom Nichols.

“The worms are eating his brain,” said political writer Dick Polman. “Trump on CNBC today, verbatim, discussing the inflation rate: ‘I believe that number is 50 percent’ It’s 3.2 percent.” [Emphasis mine]