“There’s no courage. They (Republicans) just hope the storm will go away,” Jennifer Bendery of the Huffington Post reported a House Democrat telling her of their Republican colleagues.
Asked a House D if he knows any Rs, even privately, ready to stand up to Trump: "There's no courage. They just hope the storm will go away."
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) May 16, 2017
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There is no courage to stand up to Trump. We’re seeing that in action, as Republicans – including supposed maverick John McCain – issue statements that basically say sure we might be concerned but Trump is allowed to do leak classified information about ISIS plots. So, go away.
During the campaign, Republicans made the argument about Hillary Clinton’s emails that she should be in prison and or shot for maybe having mishandled classified information and thus made possible the leaking of classified information — by accident. Now Trump does it on purpose, and Republicans are looking the other way.
Those who mishandled classified info have had their sec clearances revoked, lost their jobs, faced fines, & even been sent to prison
— Reince Priebus (@Reince) July 7, 2016
Trump surrogates said Clinton should be shot for not even revealing classified information but simply mishandling a few emails.
Republican New Hampshire state Rep. Al Baldasaro:
“Baldasaro said his comments were in accordance with U.S. law establishing the death penalty for treason. He suggested that Clinton’s use of a private email server could be considered treasonous.”
Republicans didn’t condemn this statement, and Trump didn’t distance himself from Baldasaro at the time due to the comments.
Use a private server, be shot for treason. Give classified secrets about an ISIS plot to an adversary, it’s okay. This is the pretzel of Republican logic.
Republicans are reported to be just hoping to jam through their tax cuts, Obamacare replacement, and whatever other destruction they can wield toward the social safety net in order imprint their ideology on law before Trump implodes.
While that might be doable if Trump were just attacking people in this country, he has now put people who were willing to spy on ISIS at risk, and that is an already fraught and dangerous job.
Trump is giving the classified secrets of an ally to an adversary that does not share the same goals.
Trump gave these secrets to the same entity that attacked the U.S. via cyber warfare in the 2016 election, on his behalf. Trump did this while denying there is any there there.
Trump did this in a meeting with Russian officials, to which the U.S. press was not allowed.
Republicans think they can keep turning a blind eye to Trump’s attacks on his own country, their country, but as I wrote days ago, an argument can be made that they are all violating their oath of office in so doing. I wrote that about the Comey firing, another instance of Trump behaving as if he is above the law.
Days later, we face yet another crisis of Trump’s own doing, and believe it or not, this one is even more serious than his firing of the man who is investigating him for possible collusion with Russia.
We are a nation being attacked from within, by a man sitting in the Oval Office of our White House. Whether he is doing this on purpose to aid the Russians or he is this incompetent is not relevant anymore. We are in imminent danger.
Republicans must act.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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