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Impeachment-backing Republican says he was advised to say 2020 election was stolen even if he didn't believe it
August 17, 2022
In a new analysis published by The New York Times on Wednesday of the state of the Republican Party after the primary loss of top Trump critic Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI) told the paper that he was intensely pressured by his party to claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen — even if he didn't believe it.
“'Policy is not policy toward improving government," Meijer told the newspaper. "It’s policy as a signifier of whether you’re part of the in group or the out group."
The Michigan Republican went on to say that he was now squarely in the "out group" for refusing to back Trump's false claims about the 2020 election.
"I can’t tell you the number of times somebody said, ‘You don’t have to believe the election is stolen, the important thing isn’t believing it, it’s saying it,’” said Meijer. “That is what a Republican is supposed to do right now.”
Meijer, like Cheney, was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump for incitement of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He lost his primary earlier this year, as have nearly all of his colleagues who joined him.
"Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington State, another Republican vote for impeachment, was ousted by a Trump supporter," noted the report. "A Trump-backed candidate, Tim Michels, who has entertained trying to overturn the 2020 election, won the Republican nomination for governor of Wisconsin. And Mr. Trump’s preferred candidates swept the nominations in Arizona for Senate, governor, attorney general and secretary of state. All embraced his election denialism. Even in Connecticut, a state that once defined a more genteel and moderate brand of Republicanism, Mr. Trump’s choice for Senate upset the local party’s candidate."
No evidence has ever materialized for Trump and his allies' claim that the 2020 election was stolen, although some right-wing activists have tried to push debunked arguments in court and even a pseudo-documentary on the subject.
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Here's why top lawyers are turning down the 'opportunity of a lifetime' to represent a former president: reporter
August 17, 2022
Former President Donald Trump is facing serious legal jeopardy for retaining top secret national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort -- but he's having a very hard time finding top-notch legal minds to defend him.
During a CNN interview on Wednesday, Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf laid out the woefully inadequate experience that Trump's current legal team has in litigating complex national security cases.
"You've got a former OAN host, you've got a property insurance lawyer who joined the bar in 2014, and you've got someone who leads a three-person firm and used to be the general counsel for a parking garage company," he explained.
Arnsdorf then laid out the reasons why a former president was having so much trouble getting experienced lawyers.
IN OTHER NEWS: Jared Kushner's 'soulless' White House memoir torn to pieces in brutal New York Times review
"Ordinarily, representing the former president in a high-profile case like this would be the opportunity of a lifetime, that all sorts of famous lawyers would be clamoring for," he said. "But, you know, the issue here, and we have seen this before, like if you think back to the Mueller investigation, when Trump had a similar struggle to get really serious, seasoned, well respected lawyers on his team... he doesn't always take advice, he doesn't always pay the bills, and he's very controversial. A lot of firms and a lot of lawyers don't want the headaches that would go along with representing him."
Watch the video below or at this link.
Top lawyers are turning down the 'opportunity of a lifetime' to represent a former president www.youtube.com
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GOP 'tripled down' on Trump's 'toxicity' -- and 'it's making them all seem like lunatics': MSNBC's Heilemann
August 17, 2022
MSNBC's John Heilemann admonished Republicans for circling their wagons around Donald Trump before they even learn the full facts about what top-secret documents he squirreled away at Mar-A-Lago.
Republicans had been cruising toward a congressional majority, but the overturning of Roe v. Wade protections, the Uvalde school shooting and the Jan. 6 committee hearings have dealt the GOP a series of setbacks, and the "Morning Joe" political analyst was baffled by their continued defense of Trump's corruption and extremism.
"You decide that when Donald Trump is investigated by the FBI and the [Department of Justice] for potentially illegally taking top secret documents down to Mar-A-Lago," Heilemann said. "You rally around Trump, without knowing any of the merits of it. You have no idea whether there are nuclear secrets, you have no idea what the story is. You go blindly marching into a position where you're condemning the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the gestapo and saying we're in a totalitarian America -- Joe Biden is waging war, you could be next, right?"
"They have not just stuck with Trump," he continued. "They've tripled down on Donald Trump on a moment when Trump's toxicity is part of what's making it possible for Democrats to achieve what have otherwise been unthinkable, which is potentially having not just a decent but actually a good year in the midterms. It's amplifying the Trump factor, because it's making them all seem like lunatics to all of the swing voters who don't think the FBI is a totalitarian, the Stassi. I heard Newt Gingrich comparing it to the Stassi the other day."
"That kind of language, and the fact that Republicans in the media world and on Capitol Hill, have almost uniformly embraced it, is that really going to help the Republican Party and its electoral prospects just in the midterm elections?" Heilemann added. "I say, I can't, for the life of me, figure out how there would be a way that would be good for the Republican Party nationally."
Watch the video below or at this link.
08 17 2022 07 34 29 www.youtube.com
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