Adam’s Shiff’s closing statement on day 3 was fantastic, scary, and sent a message to Republicans and the country. But he missed and opportunity to pull the rug off the giant heap of dung in the middle of the room.
He could have changed one thing and signaled the political end of Trump and any Republican senator, except in the reddest of red states, who kept going along with the McConnell cover up.
Here’s Shiff’s speech with the “Rudy Giuliani”s substituted:
This is why he needs to be removed. Donald Trump chose Rush Limbaugh over his own intelligence agencies. He chose Rush Limbaugh over his own FBI director. He chose Rush Limbaugh over his own national security advisers. When all of them were telling him this Ukraine 2016 stuff is kooky crazy Russian propaganda, he chose not to believe them. He chose to believe Rush Limbaugh. That makes him dangerous. To us, to our country.
That was Donald Trump's choice. Now, why would Donald Trump believe a man like Rush Limbaugh over a man like Christopher Wray? Okay? Why would anyone in their right mind believe Rush Limbaugh over Christopher Wray? Because he wanted to, and because what Rush was offering him was something that that would help him personally. And what Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the truth. What Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the information he needed to protect his country and its elections.
This applies to everything out of this administration, from the ridiculous ‘wall’, separating families at the border, breaking the Iran nuclear deal, global warming denial, and so on. It all exists on years of unchallenged ubiquitous repetition.
And it has been essential for everything the Russians have done here. On various major political events since at least 2008 the talk radio gods seemed to be working more for Putin than the GOP establishment.
From “Operation Trump”, by Gabriel Sherman April 3, 2016, here’s a quote from Sam Nunberg :
Throughout 2014, the three (Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, and Sam Nunberg)fed Trump strategy memos and political intelligence.
“I listened to thousands of hours of talk radio, and he was getting reports from me,” Nunberg recalled.
What those reports said was that the GOP base was frothing over a handful of issues including immigration, Obamacare, and Common Core. While Jeb Bush talked about crossing the border as an “act of love,” Trump was thinking about how high to build his wall.“We either have borders or we don’t,” Trump told the faithful who flocked to the annual CPAC conference in 2014.
Sam Nunberg is a regular on MSNBC but they never ask him about it.
A major mistake, like blaming all this on Fox and social media and symptoms like Guiliani.
The likely reason for listening to all that talk radio would be to coordinate with Russian messaging, especially on the local level, since Limbaugh’s transcripts are available to keep GOP media and politicians in line.
A Russian troll explained that in 2014, the same year, they “got a list of topics to write about.” Could MSNBC just ask Nunberg the timing of when he was sending those reports to ‘Trump’? When were those trolls getting their lists of topics?
Talk radio is why all they needed from the Ukrainian president was the announcement of an investigation.
The response to the lies and gibberish from Trump Republicans……...
“Well, that’s what Limbaugh/the radio has been saying for years, but….”
Variations of this would be very useful from Democratic politicians going forward.
Talk radio offers the best opportunity to fix this disaster, by far. Progressive organizations, activists, and the Democratic Party can force the advertising industry to destroy the talk radio monopoly with ‘market forces’:
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