The Russia scandal is not going away. This Wednesday — the morning after President Donald Trump’s annual State of the Union address — House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) formally announced his committee’s new Russia investigation — and the president responded by whining to a Fox reporter at the White House.
The network’s John Roberts asked the president for his take on the new House investigation, and after he sarcastically quipped that he’d “never heard” of Schiff, the president complained:
‘Under what basis would he do that? He’s just a political hack who’s trying to build a name for himself… No other politician has to go through that… It’s called presidential harassment.’
Watch below.
Trump has trotted out the concept of “presidential harassment” before — on Twitter, to be precise, the same platform on which he’s previously nicknamed the House Intel Chair “Adam Schitt” and offered a neverending host of other angry invectives.
He apparently refuses to see the irony and hypocrisy.
During his State of the Union address this week, Trump associated Democratic efforts to investigate his team’s corruption with literal war.
He whined:
‘If there is going to be peace and legislation there can not be war and investigation. We must be united at home to defeat our adversaries abroad.’
He again completely skipped over the glaring irony in his antagonism of Congress and the justice system. If he was so concerned about unity, then maybe he shouldn’t have run a campaign where officials — and even his own son — felt free to cooperate with the Kremlin in their efforts to tilt the 2016 elections in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s favor. Maybe once that collaboration came to light, he should have sought to have the full truth known instead of asserting “No collusion!” over and over and over again and hoping it all goes away.
If he was so concerned about unity, then maybe outside of the Russia scandal he shouldn’t be pushing the claim that the United States must have a wall blocking off the entirety of Mexico because people coming through there pose some kind of serious — in reality nonexistent — threat.
The examples could go on. Democrats are simply responding to the provocations of the president.
Schiff’s new House Intel investigation goes beyond the question of whether or not the Trump team directly colluded with Russia in their efforts to influence the election to include whether the Trump team is or has been improperly connected to foreign interests of other backgrounds in any context, ranging from politics to business. Its scope also includes the question of whether the president has been vulnerable to foreign manipulation as a result of those ties and even whether foreign interests are responsible for obstruction of justice in the ongoing scandal.
House Intel Chair Adam Schiff announces a broad investigation with five elements that goes “beyond Russia” to examine Trump finances and possible foreign influence pic.twitter.com/yUtW7JTCVv
— Jeremy Herb (@jeremyherb) February 6, 2019
Democrats had previously made clear that this development was coming, bemoaning the abrupt closure of the Russia investigation under the previous Republican House majority. They’ve floated dramatic options for the way forward, including slapping Donald Trump Jr. and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner with subpoenas.
Trump Jr. has been credibly accused of lying to Congress and could be among the next to face charges in the Russia scandal.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
