‘Schiff had such power in his speech that he almost forced them to look at him and listen…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After failing to persuade Senate Republicans to support any of their proposed rules changes during Tuesday’s marathon impeachment session, Democrats sought on Thursday to sway GOP hearts and minds by deploying invective and ad hominem attacks on their Senate colleagues and President Donald Trump.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer falsely claimed in a press conference that lead House impeachment manager, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., had offered hours worth of riveting testimony on Wednesday, contrary to reports that senators of both side of the political divide found the hours Schiff spent rehashing of the House’s partisan allegations to be stale and—in some instances—unbearable.
“Schiff had such power in his speech that he almost forced them to look at him and listen,” Schumer falsely claimed—ignoring the fact that senators were literally forced to listen, due to the longstanding rules of decorum governing impeachment.
Despite those protocols, many tried to make an early escape for the cloakroom when Schiff indicated that he had 10 minutes remaining in his speech.
But Schumer—who gave a forceful condemnation of partisan impeachments in well-publicized letter during the 1999 Bill Clinton trial—whined that Democrats had been shut down in their efforts to introduce new evidence at the start of the trial.
“If my Republican colleagues are interested in new evidence,” he said, “… there is a very simple answer: Vote with Democrats.”
GOP senators were “afraid of the truth,” Schumer claimed.
“They’re so eager to change conversation … that they’re inventing shiny objects,” he said.
Joining him at the press conference were three other leftist senators, including Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii.
Like many other Democrats, Hirono was on record endorsing Trump’s impeachment well before the July 25 phone call in which partisan House members accused the president of abusing his power to “shake down” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Ironically, Hirono, herself, unwittingly acknowledged in a CNN interview Wednesday that House managers had done an inadequate job in the discovery phase of the trial.
Rather than address the finer points of the case against Trump, she dove into a string of vicious platitudes, accusing Trump’s defense attorneys of telling lies.
During arguments on Tuesday by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, she said, “I wrote on my notebook ‘What a whopper,’” suggesting that her contribution to the written record was enough to substantiate her claim.
“We all know that the president doesn’t give a rip about the human dimension and the consequences of what he does because he only cares about himself,” she further asserted.
Members of the Senate’s GOP majority have established, following the precedent of the Clinton impeachment, that they will consider introducing new evidence and witnesses after both sides have presented their initial arguments.
Schumer noted that in order to pass his amendments, he needed only four centrist GOP senators to support them. Some, like Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, already have indicated that they will likely vote in favor of new ‘evidence.’
But rather than using rational discussion or engaging in a charm offensive to woo members of the majority, Schumer and other Democrats have simply been offensive, attempting to score cheap political points by preaching to their own radical base.
Many of Schumer’s talking points, indeed, echoed the attacks waged by fellow New York congressman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, another of the House impeachment managers, who drew a rebuke late Tuesday from Chief Justice John Roberts for calling GOP senators “treacherous” and accusing them of a “shameful cover-up.”