It’s a weird world and has been for a long time. Learning that a journalist from a major outlet actually presses (forcefully) a Congress Critter slinging hypocrisy and b.s. was startling for me. And that it was CNN’s John Berman made it even more so. CNN? What the hell? It’s like the world of journalism suddenly dipped a toe into the pool of actual journalism. Color me surprised.
Still, a piece I just read from Huffington Post was a welcome read. Followed by sadness that such a thing is actual news. So what am I talking about?
John Berman didn’t let up as he confronted Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) over his apparent double standard for dealing with congressional subpoenas.
Berman and Murphy were discussing James Comer’s having issued subpoenas to President Biden’s son Hunter and his (Joe’s) brother James as well as a family associate, Rob Walker. Naturally, GOPers are up in arms about by god when the House issues a subpoena the subject WILL show up and testify no matter what. No matter who they are related to up to and including a President. (Unless as the title pic says said President happens to be Trump) Now, we all know how Trump people fought appearing before Congress be it the January 6 committee or when the then Democratically controlled House was conducting legitimate impeachment hearings into Trump.
By legitimate I mean procedures had been followed and a formal impeachment inquiry had been voted on and passed by floor vote of the entire House of Representatives. Then Speaker Kevin McCarthy decided to skip that step when he gave the go-ahead to Comer to conduct hearings. Hypocrisy of course is a required trait in Republicans now, and in the House GOPers love letting their hypocrisy freak-flag fly.
House Republicans overall, and some in the Senate too are obsessed with Hunter Biden. Hunter they are convinced is their way to “get” Biden. They’ve spent years and lots of money investigating Hunter, even manufacturing bogus evidence as a way to first keep Biden from running for President, and now to drive him from office. How Hunter Biden has managed to cope with this I don’t know. What I DO know is that not one f**king Republican would shed a tear if their Inspector Javert like pursuit of Hunter Biden drove him to commit suicide. They saw the impact the death of President Biden’s son Beau had on him and if getting Hunter to off himself led to Joe Biden stepping down due to grief then they will pop the champagne.
Anyway, as I said Republicans were quite willing to give Trump and his people a pass when it came to subpoenas. In fact they were OUTRAGED that in a couple of instances outright refusal to respond led to criminal referrals to the DOJ. Which brings us to Steve Bannon, and what happened in that interview yesterday. Murphy (naturally) tried to deflect and obfuscate and it seems for one shining moment he faced a journalist willing to call bullsh*t on him. And would NOT let him off the hook.
When Murphy said he’d “absolutely” hold Hunter and James Biden in contempt if they don’t appear Berman pounced:
“You say, ‘Yes absolutely.’ Why have you changed your position on holding people in contempt of Congress? You voted against holding Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress,” said Berman, reminding Murphy of the former chief strategist in the Trump White House.
In case anyone’s forgotten Bannon was convicted on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress for defying a J6 Committee subpoena. Murphy tried to back & fill, countering with things being different when you’re a President of the United States, somebody who’s not an elected official… “You have the president of the United States – was selling his influence. His son was selling–,” Berman said he didn’t understand and Murphy came back at him with:
“It’s a little bit higher or different of standards, John, when you have somebody who’s in elected office versus somebody who’s not in elected office. He’s the President of the United States. He was the Vice President of the United States,” Murphy continued.
Now for too long in most interviews things wouldn’t have gotten even that far but Berman pressed on asking Murphy for clarification on what he meant by someone “in elected office” when talking about holding people in contempt for not responding to a Congressional subpoena. So Murphy, assuming he could get Berman to back off said:
“Well, what – tell me what office Steve Bannon was in.”
And Berman countered with:
″Well tell me what office Hunter Biden was in.”
That folks is how things should be done. It’s sad it’s so rare to see an exchange like this between a journalist and some lying, hypocritical Republican. There was a time when this type of thing still wouldn’t happen as often as it should but it wasn’t uncommon the way things are now. Does this signal a change in how CNN will cover this issue. And others? Frankly, I doubt it. Still, this happened yesterday and the sun came up this morning and CNN is still there. So is Congress. I’m sure it’s too much to hope that other journalists will be inspired and conduct interviews where they call out hypocrisy the way Berman did. Much less that enough would do so that the profession would grow enough of a spine that this wouldn’t be unusual.
Still, one can hope. In the meantime I think Murphy will be avoiding CNN for a while!
Okay, “elected office”. How about Jim “Jacket-off” Jordan?
Time to RIP the mask off the fascist, child murdering, woman hating party at every public turn of the road!!! Tic tok…less than a year to stop these murderous hypocrites. VOTE!
By and large President Biden is a decent man. Not a perfect one but he is a better man than a lot of pols-low bar, I know. That said, if these hypocritical scumbag g.q.p.’rs were to drive Hunter Biden to commit suicide, and I hope to hell they don’t, I’ve a feeling that part of President Biden’s grief will be in the form of making sure every fucking one of these assholes has ALL their dirty laundry aired by DOJ and prominently aired in social media, in the press, and on t.v./radio/etc. President Biden might be a good and decent man but he’s no saint and were he to lose another son this time at the hands of these hypocrites, I suspect the fury on his part would be on the level of a hydrogen bomb.
At least I would hope so. He would have my support all the way to do this.
I saw this on Kos a couple of days ago, and I agree that Berman did a very credible job. I don’t watch CNN so I don’t know if this is out of the norm for him.
Implying that the cons are going after Hunter Biden to get him to commit suicide in order to devastate the President stretches credulity. Do you have any evidence that points to this?
They’re going after Hunter because they have nothing on the President. Their obvious goals are exacting revenge for trump and restoring him to the presidency.
Their tactics are ridiculous because they don’t want to or don’t know how to put in the work. Compare and contrast the product of the J6 Committee vs. that of the “Weaponization” Committees.