Trump’s Republican Coup Supporters are Attacking Adam Schiff for Accurately Quoting Jim Jordan

Things have really sunken to unbelievable depths when right-wing dimwits have to blatantly fabricate pseudo-scandals in order to diminish political foes that they don’t have the intellect to engage honestly. It’s bad enough that Donald Trump and his Republican confederates are relentlessly peddling lies about the January 6th insurrection, but now they are also pulling utter garbage allegations from their asinine imaginations.

Donald Trump, Adam Schiff

The ultra-rightist Federalist website published a ludicrous alleged “exposé” of what they considered a shocking misrepresentation of a text sent to Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows. They introduced this abomination saying that…

“During a hearing Monday night on the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Adam Schiff claimed to have proof that a member of Congress texted former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to instruct former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

“Not only did Schiff misrepresent the substance of the text message and its source, he even doctored original text messages, which were obtained and reviewed by The Federalist in their entirety.”

The charge of “doctoring” is laughably over the top. What the Federalist is so outraged by is that the quote Adam Schiff read was slightly condensed for relevance and clarity. Here is both the quote as Schiff presented it, followed by the unedited text:

Schiff’s quote: “On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.”

The unedited text: “On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence”

Note that the only difference is that Schiff’s version didn’t include the part about Alexander Hamilton, and it placed a period at the end. None of that changed the context or meaning of the quote. Nevertheless, the Federalist went berserk with charges that Schiff “doctored” the quote with some nefarious intent. Quotes are often edited to be concise and to focus on the subject at hand. For instance, no one expects a quote from the Declaration of Independence to repeat the entire document when the discussion only concerns the part that says “all men are created equal.”

The original intent of the text was to pass along a legal opinion that would justify throwing out electoral votes for Joe Biden simply because Republicans didn’t want Biden to win. That message was conveyed in both versions of the quoted text. In Schiff’s remarks he affirmed that saying that…

“You can see why this is so critical to ask Mr. Meadows about. About a lawmaker suggesting that the former vice president simply throw out votes that he unilaterally deems unconstitutional in order to overturn a presidential election and subvert the will of the American people.”

Indeed, the purpose of the text was to advocate for overturning a valid election and installing Trump as an unelected, authoritarian dictator. While Schiff identified the author of the text as simply a “lawmaker,” the Federalist outed the author, revealing that it was Rep. Jim Jordan.

This triggered further outrage by the Federalist. They complained that Schiff attributed the text to a member of Congress, but that Jordan actually forwarded a text he received from the lawyer who wrote the anti-democratic legal opinion. In the view of the Federalist it was improper to attribute the text to the congressman. To the contrary, it was, in fact, an entirely proper attribution because Jordan was the person who sent it Meadows.

What’s important about this is that Jordan, a member of Congress, was advancing a dangerous and undemocratic legal theory, and passing it on to the president’s chief of staff. They were a part of the coup attempt that was being plotted by Trump and his traitorous accomplices.

However, since they couldn’t find anything wrong with the presentation of the evidence by Schiff, they built up a bizarre fantasy of some imaginary breach of ethics – and misplaced periods – and offered that as a distraction from the actual crimes committed by Trump and others in his cabal. Clearly they have given up trying to be rational, or even coherent.

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How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

GASLIGHTING: Marjorie Taylor Greene and Fox News Shamelessly Lie About Trump Insurrection Texts

The disclosure of text messages from Fox News hosts begging Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to get Trump to renounce the January 6th insurrection is continuing to swirl around the news cycle. That’s partly because it is such a disturbing example of media sycophants intertwined with political operatives. And partly because it took Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham more than 24 hours to craft their wholly dishonest replies.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, QAnon

Now Republican QAnon representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is adding her hideous blather to the mix. She visited with Tucker Carlson Tuesday night to deliver a thoroughly predictable whitewashing of the Trump insurrection text scandal:

“You were talking about these tweets, or these text messages that Liz Cheney just loves reading out loud about Fox News employees and about members of Congress texting Mark Meadows and saying that we want the riot to stop. President Trump should ask these people to stop. That’s a good thing. Typically you want a president of the United States to tell rioters to stop, which he did. But this is what’s happening throughout this whole process.”

It’s unclear how Greene ascertained Liz Cheney’s pleasure in reading the repellent text messages that revealed the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the Fox News propaganda purveyors. Cheney certainly wasn’t smiling or showing any other outward emotion other than, perhaps, disgust. But Greene was virtually tingling with ecstasy as she exclaimed that it was “a good thing” that Trump had to be pleaded with to call off his violent supporters who were storming Congress.

Greene was correct in saying that “you want a president of the United States to tell rioters to stop.” But you most assuredly do not want a president who has to be begged – by media hacks, political confederates, and even family members – to order his shock troops to stand down. Particularly when he fails to do so even after frantic and frightened allies implore him. And with respect to that, Greene was lying about Trump quelling his cult disciples. The insurrection went on for three terrifying hours before Trump issued a statement wherein he told the rioters that he loved them.

In the same program, Carlson had his own take on his Fox News colleagues:

“These are principled people. What they say in public is not that far from what they say over text message. If you get a text from Brian Kilmeade it sounds pretty much identical to Brian Kilmeade on Fox and Friends. These are not phonies. We can personally confirm that. Whether you like them or not, they’re real.”

Well then, if Carlson can “personally confirm” that his fellow Foxies aren’t phonies, that’s good enough for – practically nobody. After all, Fox News successfully defended Carlson against a defamation lawsuit arguing that no reasonable person would believe anything he says. And no one has lied more about insurrection that Carlson, who produced a crocumentary wherein he charged that the whole sordid affair was a “false flag” operation orchestrated by the “Deep State.”

More to the point, Carlson is generously spreading the manure around. The reason the Trump/Meadows texts are such big news is that they expose the Fox News hosts for contradicting themselves. They acknowledged that there was a violent assault on Congress on January 6th, but later claimed the rioters were all patriots, but if they weren’t, there was no violence, but if there was it was all Antifa’s fault.

The central feature of their gaslighting is that they are trying to claim that their critics have a problem with texts seeking to get Trump to take action. That’s not true. Those texts were the one thing that the GOP and Fox Newsers got right. The problem is that they ended up dismissing their own concerns about the violence and flagrantly lied about it ever since. Which is exactly what they are doing now as well.

NOTE: Twitter suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.