Stooge Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is going to do the only thing Republicans can do without having any policy ideas: harm the integrity of our government’s institutions. To this end, the newly unclothed emperor of the wafer-thin Republican majority in the House has been seeking revenge upon Democrats by taking committee assignments away from Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell. McCarthy’s next goal is to stop Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar from serving on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
One strike against Rep. Omar in the Republican Party’s eyes is that she isn’t white or a man or a Christian. I guess that is three strikes against her. However, according to McCarthy, the reason he believes Omar should not be on the Foreign Affairs Committee is because of comments she made a few years ago that some people felt were tinged with antisemitism. Did she say that the Jews had created space lasers that started forest fires in order to control the world? No, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said that. Did she use a phrase like “Jew them down?” No, that was also a Republican Party official. In order to accomplish this, McCarthy needs almost all of the votes of his party, as the Democratic Party will absolutely not support this transparent bit of partisan abuse of power.
So far, two Republicans, Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Victoria Spartz of Indiana, have indicated they will not support McCarthy’s action by saying you can’t call Speaker Pelosi’s removal of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar a bad thing, then turn around and do the exact same thing. This leaves McCarthy with a slim margin for error, as he can only afford to lose four votes total. Guess who one of the people who gets to vote on whether or not Rep. Ilhan Omar’s alleged antisemitic statements from yesteryear warrant losing her committee seat? You guessed it: the world’s most famous “Jew-ish” guy, George Santos.
RELATED STORY: McCarthy turns into snarling jackass over questions about Santos. More of that, please!
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Santos has lied about everything from his mother being Jewish to his mother being killed in the World Trade Center bombings on Sept. 11, 2001. Most of his lies have been pretty egregious, but his lie about being Jewish—a claim he made along with another lie that his grandparents were both Jewish and murdered during the Holocaust—is probably the most often repeated because of the bizarreness of his attempted work-around. “I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos told the New York Post when his claims of Jewish ancestry were debunked. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”
That guy gets to vote on whether or not … that guys gets a vote in our House of Representatives. On Wednesday, Santos told Business Insider that he wasn’t sure how he would vote on the Omar question, and when pressed about whether or not he had decided, added "Not yet. No. But we'll get back to you, we'll get back to you."
Earlier today, McCarthy was a snarling impotent mess when confronted by a reporter who had the gall to point out the irony in giving George Santos, the pathological liar from New York’s Nassau County, a committee position while saying he was taking away Rep. Adam Schiff’s committee assignments because of (not) lying about how much of a dirtbag criminal Donald Trump is.
Rep. Ilhan Omar has tried to maintain the poise and matter-of-fact honesty that got her elected, telling reporters that she will not let up on criticizing the new speaker because he is a joke of a person. "Kevin McCarthy's purely partisan move to strip us from our committee is not only a political stunt, but also a blow to the integrity of our democratic institution and threat to our national security,” she said. Omar added that if McCarthy is willing and able to bring this kind of vote to the floor then she welcomes it, because it is an important thing for the public to see.
"I do believe that when and if this vote comes, it will be a moment of clarity. And I hope that many of these Republicans will have conscience and will not prove to their constituents and the American people just how much of partisan hacks they are, how much hypocrisy that they have and show themselves to be a disgrace."
Markos and Kerry are joined by University of St. Andrews Professor of Strategic Studies, Phillips P. O’Brien. O’Brien, an expert in military history, explains how we got to where we are right now, what is unique about the world’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the parallels between the conservative movement’s isolationism in World War II and now.
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