The same week that House Democrats introduced a motion to expel Rep. George Santos (R-NY) following his indictment on 13 counts of fraud, money laundering, and false statements, the far-right wing of the party also rolled out their own motion to expel Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a common bogeyman for Trump supporters — an effort given imprimatur by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in a speech on Wednesday.
That's not a coincidence, suggested Schiff, now a candidate for U.S. Senate, on MSNBC — Republicans likely planned the whole thing as a distraction.
"[McCarthy] is the Speaker of the House and is supposed to be above some of this petty political mudslinging," said anchor Alex Wagner. "Did his comments surprise you?"
"Nothing he does surprises me," said Schiff. "It's the same guy that gave surveillance video to Tucker Carlson. He will do whatever Trump wants him to do and I am sure Trump glories in McCarthy and House Republicans going after me. It's about satisfying his boss in Mar-a-Lago and the crowd loves Donald Trump. So it doesn't surprise me. McCarthy has also made it clear he wants to do everything he can to stop me from being elected to the Senate, where he knows I would be more effective at pushing back against these efforts to tear down the rule of law. I think this is what is part of what is at work here."
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"I'm not going to ask if you think it's a coincidence, but this is the day this is a move to expel George Santos the serial fabulist from Congress," said Wagner. "That failed. But do you think this is a naked play to basically seek an eye for an eye, if you will? If George Santos is gonna kicked out, so is Adam Schiff?"
"I think that a lot of what is going on is a lot of what we've seen in the past, which is when Democrats do something for the right reason, they use the precedent to do something for the wrong reason in an attempt to draw a false equivalence about it," said Schiff. "But the confluence of efforts to expel this serial fabricator, George Santos, this person who has just been indicted, who's admitted guilt to a foreign crime, to distract attention from that, and in the wake of added disappointment of the Durham report, let's go after Adam Schiff. Let's, you know, please the MAGA crowd and send a message to anyone else that stands up to Donald Trump and the extreme MAGA world, we will go after you the way we're going after Adam Schiff."
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