Democrats are reeling after a horrendous day for their party on Capitol Hill with former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony unraveling their case against President Donald Trump, all while Republicans seek to capitalize on the serious missteps by a group of committee leaders and Democrat leadership in the House.
The bad day for the Democrats was shown in no better way than that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was a whopping 48 minutes late to a planned 5:00 p.m. press conference after Mueller’s testimony, where she was flanked by the chairmen of the two committees before which Mueller testified and a third who has helped the investigation.
During the press conference, a babbling Pelosi struggled to explain for more than 20 minutes what the public learned from Mueller’s oftentimes incoherent testimony–all while she, House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), and House oversight committee chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), attempted to explain away the path forward for Democrat leadership, which is again rebuffing calls for a formal impeachment inquiry of the president after Mueller’s dud of a hearing on Wednesday.
One high-ranking senior Democrat congressional aide referred Breitbart News to leftist filmmaker Michael Moore’s tweets bashing Mueller–where he noted that he has been critical of Mueller from the beginning:
Trump certainly liked Moore’s analysis of it:
Pelosi in her press conference even admitted in her opening statement that Americans learned nothing new from Mueller’s testimony–only what was in the report already.
“Sorry for the delay, it’s been a pretty interesting day,” Pelosi said as she took the microphone 48 minutes late. “A historic one in fact, a day in which the former Special Counsel affirmed in public what the Mueller report put forth. It was a crossing of a threshold in terms of the public awareness of what happened and how it conforms to the law–or not.”
Then Pelosi turned to a crudely-made poster she had put up on an easel in the press conference room that she claimed demonstrated the necessity of the hearings on Wednesday.
“The president likes to have his poster that said that the Mueller report took this many days, cost this much money, this, that and the other thing–well we have a corresponding, competitive–contradictory–chart,” Pelosi said, before she turned to the easel and read from the poster into the cameras. “Mueller investigation, by the numbers. $40 million recovered for the U.S. government. Remember he said how much it would cost? Less than that.”
Pelosi did not explain more about that statistic or how the investigation recovered taxpayer dollars, never mind $40 million of them. But she continued reading from the poster before launching into another meandering attempt to explain what has happened on this front so far and what is going on.
Pelosi continued reading from her poster:
Thirty-seven people and entities charged with crimes. Twenty-five ongoing criminal cases referred. Seven convicted including five top Trump campaign officials. Then he [Trump] had [on his poster] no collusion, this or that. Ten instances of obstruction–yes. No exoneration. That’s some of what we heard today. I just want to go to another point–at the same time as we’re on this path of the Mueller investigation to recognize that the Mueller investigation was prohibited from looking into the president’s finances, and that is what our committees of jurisdiction have been doing. As we legislate for the good of the American people, we’re also investigating so that we have the grist for the mill to litigate in court. Those cases we’ve won in lower courts, they of course appealed–we feel strongly about our position, about the position of Article I, the legislative branch, having a right to have oversight over every other branch of governme, but that is important because we can get the information to show the American people what the obstruction of justice was further all about. I’m very, very proud of our committees, the Judiciary Committee and its great chairman Jerry Nadler, and the Intelligence Committee–great chairman Adam Schiff. We’re going to hear from them now, and we’re also joined by Elijah Cummings, the chair of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, a committee that is winning its courts in case as well.
After the chairmen made comments, the presser opened up for questions from the media–and naturally the first question was about impeachment. Rather than take it off the table once and for all, ending impeachment talk forever, Pelosi again left the door open pending litigation against the administration in court.
“My position has always been whatever decision we make in that regard would have to be done with our strongest possible hand,” Pelosi said. “And we still have some outstanding matters in the courts. It’s about the Congress, the Constitution, and the courts. And we are fighting the president in the courts.”
A followup question pressed Pelosi on members who already support an impeachment inquiry, saying they believed that after Mueller’s testimony, Democrat leadership would take action on impeachment. “I don’t know why they thought that,” Pelosi said. “They came to me and I said I don’t know why. But again the lawsuits–we have a number of lawsuits.”
Pelosi grabbed Nadler’s wrist and pulled him to the microphone in her place stepping aside: “Do you want to speak to that Jerry?”
WATCH FULL DEMOCRAT PRESS CONFERENCE AFTER MUELLER TESTIMONY:
While they put on a brave face publicly, privately Democrats were griping about what happened.
“It was a very bad day for us,” one House Democrat aide told Breitbart News.
“Horrendous,” another said, adding: “We did not win this round. We are losing badly.”
Two other Democrats, in conversations with Breitbart News, described the hearings as a “dud,” and noted that Wednesday was “not a good day for Democrats.”
The damage control press conference came after the media and pundit class pilloried Democrats all day long for the Mueller hearing.
NBC’s Chuck Todd called it a “disaster” for Democrats:
His colleague Andrea Mitchell called the hearings “an epilogue” on the Mueller report:
ABC News’s Terry Moran said the ball was not advanced, and “impeachment’s over”:
MSNBC’s Ari Melber panned the Democrats and Mueller as well:
Even CNN’s Jake Tapper ripped Muelle:
So did many other leftists, pundits, media personalities, and Democrats:
Republicans captured the echo chamber loud and clear, blasting it out even further in press release after press release from the GOP, highlighting what the left and media were saying themselves.
It was so bad for Democrats that one senior GOP aide on one of the two committees before which Mueller testified on Wednesday told Breitbart News that on the way out of the room afterwards, a GOP member was overheard nodding toward the Democrat staff saying, “Those guys look like they are going to fucking cry.”
Trump himself was out in the immediate aftermath of the hearings crucifying Democrats and Mueller for the poor performance.
Trump told reporters:
I think Robert Mueller did a horrible job both today and with respect to the investigation. But in fairness to Robert Mueller, he had nothing to work with. You can be a builder, but if they don’t give you the right materials you’re not going to build a good building. Robert Mueller had no material–he had nothing to work with–so obviously he did very poorly today. I don’t think there’s anybody, even among the fakers, I don’t think there’s anybody that would say he did well. I looked at your people [the networks], they’re saying it was devastating.”
Trump added that it was also a “devastating day” for the Democrats:
They are devastated. The Democrats lost so big today, their party is in shambles right now. They’ve got the squad leading their party. They are a mess. Where even you take a look at […] and so many of the people that were the most outspoken, and they say this was a devastating day for the Democrats, and you know it, John, and everybody else knows it. This was a devastating day for the Democrats.”
He took a victory lap on his own Twitter account as well:
While Democrats suffer, Republicans are on the attack on Capitol Hill. After Pelosi’s press conference concluded, GOP leaders in the House quickly took to the same podium to bracket the Democrats–and rip their colleagues across the aisle for failing to do anything to help American workers and families since taking the majority.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said from the podium:
Today was a historical day–I listened to the Speaker–it was a historical day because it was the day we closed the book on this investigation. It is time that America turns the page. It is time for America to move forward. Democrats have to stop wasting time and trying to have a do-over of the 2016 presidential election. For more than two years, Democrats have obsessed about the Mueller investigation, going as far as falsely accusing that they had evidence of collusion. We found out that wasn’t true. What we heard today only helps to enforce the fact that there is no collusion, and there is no obstruction. It is well past the time to put this country first. The Democrats are more focused on bringing down the president than they are on building up America. We’ve gone roughly 200 days in this new Democrat socialist majority. Name me one thing they have solved.
McCarthy, flanked by the ranking members of the House Judiciary, Intelligence, and Oversight Committees–Reps. Doug Collins (R-GA), Devin Nunes (R-CA), and Jim Jordan (R-OH), respectively–made the case that Democrats have failed to govern or solve Americans’ problems as they get lost in these investigations. He specifically pointed to the crisis on the border, and the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement to replace NAFTA–among other legislative failures by Democrats including health care.
“Today is the end of that chapter–it is the day to put politics aside and put people first,” McCarthy said. “Put this country first.”
Trump was so pleased with the GOP lawmakers’ press conference appearance he even tweeted out videos of each of their comments:
The House will, at Pelosi’s direction, move forward in just two day, heading out of town for the August recess. Members will head home for the rest of the summer, not to return until September. One highly-connected Democrat source told Breitbart News that Pelosi has “been just running out the clock” to get to August recess without having to do anything. “Losing to Trump is impressive,” this Democrat added of Pelosi’s and her fellow Democrat leadership failing so badly on the Mueller hearing.
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