Donald Trump speaks from The White House Oval Office (CNN/screen grab)
On Friday, President Donald Trump lashed out on Twitter about Democrats and Russia.
"Thank you @senatemajldr Mitch McConnell for understanding the Democrats game of not playing it straight on the ridiculous Witch Hunt Hoax in the Senate. 'Cryin' Chuck will never stop. Did Senator @MarkWarner ever report speaking to a Russian!?" he tweeted.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on Wednesday refused to say that the 2020 election was "not stolen" by President Joe Biden.
At a House Rules Committee hearing, Chairman James McGovern (D-MA) noted that Jordan had first refused to say "the election was not stolen" when he appeared before the committee earlier this year.
"Can you say those five words today?" McGovern asked Jordan.
"I'll give you the same answer," Jordan replied. "I never said it was. I said we should investigate it. I said on January 6th when the electoral votes were counted that Joe Biden is the president of the United States."
McGovern tried to speak but Jordan talked over him.
"The real question is why don't you guys want to investigate what happened?" Jordan ranted.
"You're still unwilling to say those five simple words," McGovern noted. "I think that's incredibly important. You know, pushing debunked conspiracy theories and adding fuel to the fire."
"I'm not pushing any conspiracy theories!" Jordan objected. "Your obsession with five words seems pretty ridiculous to me."
"I'm not trying to whitewash anything," the Ohio Republican later insisted. "Republicans have been consistent. We have condemned violence every stinking time it happened. We condemned it on January 6th. And 600 people are being prosecuted and held accountable for what they did wrong as well they should be."
Jordan went on to accuse Democrats of not condemning the violence that occurred in the aftermath of George Floyd's death in 2020.
"I am so sick of the double standard!" he exclaimed.
"I condemn violence where it may occur," McGovern pointed out. "You can yell and scream as much as you want."
"No, I'm not yelling and screaming," Jordan interrupted. "I'm reflecting where the American people are. They've had it with the double standard. You're allowed to object; we're not!"
"You can object," McGovern replied. "The issue is what transpired that day."
"We had nothing to do with that!" Jordan gasped.
"We'll see," McGovern replied. "But after all this time, still, you cannot say those five words that the election was not stolen."
Watch the video below from the House Rules Committee.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has been privately discussing an exit plan from the Democratic Party, according to a new report.
The West Virginia senator has told associates he might leave the party if President Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers don't agree to cut the social infrastructure bill from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion, sources told Mother Jones.
"Manchin has said that if this were to happen, he would declare himself an 'American Independent,'" reports the site's David Corn, "and he has devised a detailed exit strategy for his departure."
The senator would first send a letter to Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) removing himself from party leadership, then wait about a week to see whether that has any influence over negotiations -- and then change his voter registration from Democratic to independent.
It's not clear whether he would caucus with Democrats or side with Republicans -- which would tilt the balance of the Senate -- but the infrastructure bill would be doomed without his vote, and he's told Democratic colleagues to accept his $1.75 trillion cap or risk losing the legislation altogether.
Manchin told associates he almost went ahead with the exit plan this week and mentioned that possibility to the president, but had been encouraged by conversations with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and others to keep working on a deal.
A slate full of conspiracy cranks and right-wing extremists is threatening to undermine the Republican Party's chances next year in Arizona, which has been tilting toward the left in recent elections.
The state's GOP-led Senate authorized a lengthy and widely criticized "audit" of Donald Trump's election loss, and former TV anchor Kari Lake and state Rep. Mark Finchem have made the former president's "fraud" conspiracies a centerpiece of their campaigns for statewide office -- and Arizona Republicans worry that will doom them in the midterms, reported Politico.
"The goalposts keep moving," said Bill Gates, a Republican Maricopa County supervisor. "It used to be that we got into genuine debates about whether you're more of a conservative or a moderate. We used to debate over ideology, and now it is how far you can go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, and if you're unwilling to do it, it doesn't matter if you're pro-life, if you've never voted for a tax increase. It doesn't matter. It's all about going deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, unfortunately."
The state's congressional delegation Rep. Paul Gosar and Rep. Andy Biggs, both of whom were implicated in the "Stop the Steal" rally by organizer Ali Alexander, and Ron Watkins, the purported head of the QAnon conspiracy movement, hopes to join them in Congress.
"I don't think anyone considers [Watkins] a serious candidate," said longtime GOP consultant and former state legislator Stan Barnes, who nonetheless finds the QAnon celebrity's campaign a bad omen. "The center is not holding in the political spectrum. You need to understand that among Republican primary voters, the concept that President Trump was done wrong in the Arizona election scores very high. It is a very popular opinion, majority opinion, among Republican voters who will turn out in the Republican primary."
But that's not the case outside of deeply conservative circles, and certainly not among independent voters.
"I think people are getting tired of hearing it," said Delos Bond, the GOP chair in Apache County, which Joe Biden won by 30 points. "I really think we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot if we just expound on 2020."
