(Dobbs) Whole Milk and Impeachment. Ukraine Can Wait.
“Republicans are very obviously beginning from the conclusion and working backward.”
If you had any illusions that the Republicans in Washington have the nation’s best interests at heart rather than their own, their priorities yesterday should put those illusions to rest.
Today they go home for Christmas vacation, which made yesterday the last full day of the year to do the nation’s business. That would include at least debating, let alone voting on funding for Ukraine and Israel and for enhanced security at our southern border. Kind of important, don’t you think?!? If you believe that the flood of immigrants across the border is enough of a threat that border security should be our number one priority, then the answer is yes. If you believe that a subjugated Ukraine, which could stoke Vladimir Putin’s thirst for more, is a national security threat, then the answer also is yes.
So with so much at stake, what were Senate Republicans doing? They were filibustering the debate on emergency funding. And how did the Republican House spend its time? Besides discussing and passing a clearly uncritical bill to overturn a ten-year ban on whole milk in schools (one GOP congresswoman argued, “If whole milk is a good option to fuel Santa’s extraordinary Christmas Eve journey, then why isn’t it an option for American schoolchildren in their lunchrooms?”), it voted to formally open an inquiry into impeaching President Biden.
Remember that at best, the Republicans have flimsy grounds for this because for several months already they’ve had three different committees digging for evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors. They’ve come up with precious little. And it’s not just Democrats who’ve said that. There are Republicans who’ve said the same thing.
This week, Republican representative Don Bacon of Nebraska was asked by reporters if, from what he’s seen, Biden had done anything impeachable. He answered, “Probably not.” South Dakota Republican Dusty Johnson also admitted, “There’s not evidence to impeach.” On the Senate side, Nebraska Republican Charles Grassley was asked on CNN about impeachable evidence and said, “The facts haven’t taken me to that point where I can say the president is guilty of anything.”
Even on the Fox program “Fox & Friends,” which at least once was Donald Trump’s favorite TV show, host Steve Doocy told his audience, Republicans “have not shown where Joe Biden did anything illegally.”
But for the Republicans, why let facts— or the absence of facts— get in the way? Not only have some of their accusations against the president been refuted under oath by the very witnesses they confidently called to testify, their claims have even been debunked by the very data they’ve produced. For example, the House Oversight Committee publicized documentation about three payments of about $1,400 each from one of Hunter Biden’s companies to his father. As it turns out, he was paying his dad back for helping him buy a car.
Of course there also are the ongoing inquiries in the House into Hunter Biden himself, all obviously with an eye on implicating his father in his son’s misdeeds. As Democratic Massachusetts congressman Jim McGovern said earlier this week, "Trump says jump, the MAGA extremists say 'how high’?”
Yesterday— again, on the final full day of business for the House, with Ukraine and Israel and the southern border still unfunded and unresolved— Hunter Biden was instructed to appear under subpoena before the Oversight Committee, one of the three committees looking at impeachment. He already had offered to obey the subpoena but only if he could appear in an open session, in other words, in the light of day. The committee said no. He even showed up outside the Capitol and through reporters sent a message to the committee: “I am here.”
No explanation though from the committee’s chairman, Kentucky’s James Comer, of why he doesn’t want the public to actually hear what Biden has to say. It is worth noting that in the inquiry the Republicans voted for yesterday, there is no requirement for public hearings. Makes you wonder, what do they fear?
But it gets even more interesting. Ohio’s Jim Jordan, the chairman of another of the three impeachment committees, Judiciary, said of Hunter Biden, “We think he should come in and so if he doesn’t, we’re going to move forward with contempt proceedings.” This is rich, because during the hearings last year of the January 6th Committee, four House Republicans defied subpoenas to appear, including not just then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy but Jim Jordan himself.
Former January 6th Committee member Republican Adam Kinzinger said last night on CNN, “The hypocrisy is mind-numbing.”
There is a plausible explanation for this shameful circus. Donald Trump has told campaign crowds, “I am your retribution.” These guys are doing it for him. As revenge for the two impeachments against him, they are doing his dirty work. The difference is, the Democrats had the goods on Trump. In his impeachment for “abuse of power” for withholding military aid to Ukraine, we all heard the audio of his phone call extorting Ukraine’s president. In his impeachment for “incitement of insurrection,” we all saw the video from January 6th.
But trying to impeach Joe Biden? All they’ve got is a fishing expedition, with nothing on the line. As Washington Post columnist Philip Bump wrote, “Republicans are very obviously beginning from the conclusion and working backward.”
The day before yesterday, House speaker Mike Johnson wrote an op-ed in USA Today about the impeachment inquiry in which he said, “The House has a full plate of pressing issues, and we do not take this inquiry lightly. Our southern border is wide open, American families are struggling to make ends meet and a perception of American weakness has thrust the world into a state of chaos.” What he didn’t even mention was, when the Christmas recess ends, there will be just eight days to act to avoid a government shutdown.
But he isn’t doing much of anything about any of it. Short of a last minute epiphany, he’s just going home for Christmas.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Spot on Greg. I am likely overstating (or this is just a wish fulfillment ) but other than the MAGA faithful Americans are weary of the do nothing meaningful House Republicans and will fire enough in Nov to make Hakeem Jeffries Speaker.