The Democrats Didn't "Collapse" or Need Witnesses

It’s a light news day today as we go over the fallout from Republicans closing their eyes and plugging their ears like a child as they voted not to convict Donald Trump during the impeachment trial, despite the evidence being clear as day. We also cover one of the first “scandals” of the Biden presidency, which they handled in about a day, once again showing that it’s not that hard to be an adult. Finally, we go over the end of the WHO team’s time in China investigating the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

 

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Sources 

Transcript:

Impeachment

 

We’ll start with impeachment, because although it might seem like this didn’t impact us everyday Americans, it actually might open the door to headaches for all of us.

 

57-43 to impeach Trump. That’s good, and the most bipartisan in history, but you need 67 senators to vote to convict. Honestly, I was really surprised that Democrats got 7 Republicans to join in considering that only Mitt Romney voted for it last time. These seven Republicans were: Mitt Romney, Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), Richard Burr (North Carolina), Ben Sasse (Nebraska), and Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania).

 

These aren’t exactly profiles in courage: Burr and Toomey retiring; Sasse, Collins, and Cassidy just got re-elected since 2018, so they’re betting that this blows over by the time they have to run again. Murkowski and Romney are the only ones I give real props to. Murkowski faces re-election next year, but she lost a primary one of the previous times she ran, and then she won as a write-in candidate (which is basically unheard of). Romney has been consistent for almost the entire time since 2016 when he gave that speech calling Trump a fraud and a phony. He had to tone it down when he was running in the primary for that Utah seat, but otherwise, he’s been the one who’s had a real conscience.

 

The only thing I can say is: thank god Susan Collins didn’t say that Trump learned his lesson from impeachment this time.

 

The big hoopla from the weekend was the fact that Democrats won the vote to call witnesses during the trial, but instead, they decided to just read a statement from one of the Republican House members who voted for impeachment. She said that Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader in the House, told her about a call he had with Trump on the date of the insurrection. Apparently, he told Trump to “call off the riot”, but Trump said no and told him, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

 

Everybody on Twitter started talking about the Democrats and Chuck Schumer blowing it. Some of the analysts on TV started with the classic “Dems in disarrary. The Democrats are weak and bad at politics. You may not like him, but Mitch McConnell is a wily, smart politician” lines of BS. If you’ll notice, this was mainly coming from Never Trump Republicans, as well as the far, far left (people who want AOC to run in the primary for Senate in New York against Chuck Schumer). It’s just so lazy.

 

They were always going to say the Democrats blew this and Republicans were strong for sticking together. The truth is that Democrats would have gotten a conviction from any other jury in America if this was a normal criminal case. They proved the case beyond a reasonable doubt without witnesses. They were never going to convince enough Republicans to convict; why would they start listening to evidence if witnesses came forward? The video footage exists.

 

The media tried to pull this same narrative with the Biden campaign a couple of times, but he just straight up ignored it and he won, so that’s clearly what you have to do.

 

The other thing about witnesses is that you don’t just call them right away, you have to debate about who you’re gonna call (Ghostbusters), then you have to depose them. This would have taken weeks, but people need help now. Regular people don’t necessarily care what happens to a guy who’s not even in charge anymore if they can’t make their house or rent payments, or they’re still searching for work. The Senate needs to work on that stimulus bill, which they wouldn’t have done if this was still going on.

 

Now, going forward, there is bipartisan support for a group similar to the 9/11 Commission to be set up to investigate this more thoroughly. Senators Chris Coons, a Democrat, and Bill Cassidy have both talked about how this needs to be done, and Lindsey Graham is also joining their side for some reason (maybe just to screw up the evidence).

 

From the outside, the two leaders of the actual 9/11 Commission sent a letter to Joe Biden to say that this was necessary to set up. So, hopefully that comes to fruition, or that there are some criminal cases brought against Trump and others.

 

White House

Let’s go over one of the first “big” scandals of Biden’s time as president. By the end, I think you’ll see that if this happened during Trump’s presidency, we would have just called it “Thursday”. Nevertheless, let’s at least make you aware so that you know if the people you elected are being ethical and holding themselves to the standards they promised.

 

It all started last week when Vanity Fair published a story saying that a reporter from Politico was working on an article about Deputy Press Secretary TJ Ducklo’s romantic relationship with a reporter from Axios. Ducklo then threatened Palmeri over her piece, saying that he would "destroy her" if she published it. Ducklo also allegedly made misogynistic comments to Palmeri and talked about her own personal life. At one point, he even accused her of being "jealous" about his relationship with McCammond, so good to know that we stooped to elementary school levels when we were threatening a reporter.

 

Originally, Jen Psaki and Chief of Staff Ron Klain suspended Ducklo one week without pay, but some news outlets pointed out that Biden had told his staff on their first day that he would fire them “on the spot” if they “treated another colleague with disrespect”, so I’m sure they urged him to resign to avoid looking like hypocrites from the start.

 

Truthfully, it’s a good rule, and it’ll help Biden distinguish himself from Trump even more. When you’re trying to get the White House back to a point of being respectable, you have to overcompensate and be extreme in the other direction just to get the culture on track again. That’s true for any time you come in and try to change how things are run compared to the last person who led the organization.

 

I was asking myself the entire time “what is so important about this story getting out? Why would he go to those lengths to threaten her?” Well, basically, it comes down to conflicts of interest.

 

Axios told Politico that McCammond had "disclosed her relationship" with Ducklo in November and was "taken off the Biden beat." However, Palmeri pointed out that McCammond's still covers Vice President Kamala Harris and that she had commented “glowingly” (according to Palmeri) about Biden after he was inaugurated. So, obviously, some people are afraid that there would be some bias in her reporting since her partner works close to the people she’s covering.

 

Honestly, it was just good to get this guy out of there. That stops questions from the media, it would have just hung around, especially if he ever had to take over for Jen Psaki sometime. He was really just more of a liability and a distraction at this point.  

 

WHO

 

The team from the WHO discovered signs that the original COVID outbreak was much wider in Wuhan in December 2019 than anyone previously thought, and now they’re trying to get access to hundreds of thousands of blood samples from the city for more testing. Unsurprisingly, China hasn’t let them examine those samples so far.

 

The team was made up of 17 scientists from the WHO and 17 from China.

 

The lead investigator for the WHO mission, Peter Ben Embarek, told CNN the mission had found several signs of the more wide-ranging 2019 spread, including establishing for the first time there were over a dozen strains of the virus in Wuhan already in December. The team also had a chance to speak to the first patient Chinese officials said had been infected, an office worker in his 40s, with no travel history of note, reported infected on December 8.

 

The disease could have hit an estimated 1,000-plus people in Wuhan already by December. Embarek said, "We haven't done any modeling of that since. But we know ...in big ballpark figures... out of the infected population, about 15% end up severe cases, and the vast majority are mild cases."

 

The team was allowed to access broadened types of genetic material that came from early coronavirus cases in December. This allowed them to look at partial genetic samples, rather than just complete ones. As a result, they were able to gather 13 different genetic sequences of the SARS-COV-2 virus from December 2019.

 

Another interesting thing: “Some of them are from the markets... Some of them are not linked to the markets.”

 

The team was given analysis from Chinese scientists of 92 suspected Covid-19 cases from October and November 2019. These were patients who had COVID-like symptoms and were severely ill. The interesting part about these 92, according to Embarek, is that they did not emerge in clusters like you would normally see disease outbreaks. Instead, they were spaced out in small numbers across both months, and across the whole province of Hubei, where Wuhan is located.

 

The original patient, patient zero, doesn’t seem connected to the markets either. "He has no link to the markets," said Ben Embarek. "We also spoke to him. He has a very -- in a way -- dull and normal life, no hiking in the mountains type of things. He was an office worker in a private company."

 

They hope to get more access to blood samples from that time, but China is being very stingy. I wonder if we’ll ever know the actual truth.----more----