Rep. Adam Schiff outraged Republicans on Friday when he quoted a fake CBS News story about threats from the White House to GOP Senators to toe the line on impeachment witnesses.
In opening statements, House managers examined the debunked conspiracy theories invoked by Pres. Trump.
A @POTUS confidant tells CBS News that GOP senators were warned: “vote against the president & your head will be on a pike.”
Here's @nancycordes https://t.co/LV1Y6QveIh pic.twitter.com/tLB9EpoWr8
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) January 23, 2020
“CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidant said that key senators were warned, ‘Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike,'” Schiff said. After several Senators could be heard saying “That’s not true,” Schiff added, “I don’t know if that’s true.”
Republican Senators were livid.
“I thought he was doing fine with [talking about] moral courage until he got to the ‘head on a pike.’ That’s where he lost me,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who has said she might be open to calling witnesses in the trial, told reporters. “He’s a good orator. … It was just unnecessary.”
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, considered another key Republican vote, agreed with Murkowski.
“Not only have I never heard the ‘head on the pike’ line but also I know of no Republican senator who has been threatened in any way by anyone in the administration,” she told reporters.
Many senators went even further.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., who has also said he would be open to witnesses, told reporters it’s “completely, totally false.”
“None of us have been told that,” he said. “That’s insulting and demeaning to everyone to say that we somehow live in fear and that the president has threatened all of us.″
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, called the story “baloney.” She said she was listening to Schiff, “until he got to the part where he just completely made a bunch of bullcrap up.”
That pretty much sums up the entire impeachment case.
Too far for even some Democrats?
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who hasn’t indicated how he plans to vote said, “That could have been left out, that’s for sure.”
Typically, some Democrats whined about GOP “distraction.”
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told MSNBC, “The Republicans are so afraid to confront the actual facts here … they’re always looking for a diversion.”
Sen. Chris Coons, D-De., agreed. “If that’s your reason? That he mis-cited some press article? Come on,” he said, according to Politico.
Schiff didn’t “mis-cite” anything. He spoke a direct quote from the broadcast of a major news outlet. It had to be true, didn’t it?
After all, it sounds like something Trump would do, right? Gotta be true.
Liberals have been agitating for social media not to share “misinformation” on their platforms. But fake news is apparently okay — as long as it makes their political opponents look bad.
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