Matt Gaetz Has Embarrassing Impeachment Freak Out

0
1144

The impeachment hearings continue with a surprising amount of passion among the legal expert witnesses. That made them so much more interesting. Two of the Republicans sitting on the House Judiciary panel, though, diove right for the only woman on the panel. They both used a rapid-fire questioning technique, trying to draw blood through this abusive form of attack. Of course, they may not have encountered many strong women such as this woman.

In addition to Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) went after Professor Pamela Karlan. She was an interesting choice. Even today, women in positions of authority often must defend themselves against misogyny and be a top expert in their field. Did Gaetz see her as the weakest point in the line of witnesses?

Gaetz wanted her to admit to her political donations to Democratic candidates and to prove his point, had gathered public information about those donations. Yet, when she responded in the affirmative, he overran her before she could finish. After that, he attacked her comparison of corruption and nepotism.

Then for some reason, he wanted to know why she gave more in the previous years than in the past year. She responded that she had seen the need to contribute more to charities, because she saw an increasing need for poor people.

After that, Gaetz implied that she had a podcast:

‘Do you remember saying the following, ‘liberals tend to cluster more. Conservatives, very conservative people, tend to spread out more. Perhaps because they don’t even want to be around themselves.’ Did you say that?’

Kaplan responded:

‘Yes, I did.’

Then, the representative tried to insert an inflammatory statement with a false correlation:

‘Do you understand how that reflects contempt on people who are conservative?’

The expert responded:

‘No. What I was talking about there was the natural tendency, if you put the quote in context, the natural tendency of a compactness requirement to favor a party whose voters are more spread out. And I do not have contempt for conservatives and I do not –

Gaetz rudely interrupted her, claiming his time for himself rather than her response:

‘When you say how liberals want to be around each other in cluster and conservatives have to spread out, you may not see this from like the ivory towers of your law school but it makes actual people in this country –’

She tried to clarify:

‘When the president calls –’

Then, the Florida representative cut her off:

‘You don’t get to interrupt me on this time! And when you suggest that you invoke the president’s son’s name here and try to make a joke at referencing Barron Trump that does not lend credibility to your argument, it makes you look mean and attacking someone’s family.’

After that, the Republicans tried to create another talking point from one of her earlier examples, which was a play on the president’s youngest son’s names. They wanted to be able to claim that she was trying to bullyTrump’s son.

In actuality, what Kaplan said was:

‘The president can name his son Barron, but he can’t make him a baron.’

She later apologized. Her point was that this president has been had been equating himself with a king. She also noted at a later point that he also made use of the royal “we” and “us” A president with no restraints but the broad powers of his office would be no less than a king.

During the next impeachment question, she used her time to rectify Gaetz’s wrong-headed statement.

This was the video of their interaction below:

‘WATCH: Exchange between Representative Matt Gaetz and Stanford law professor Pamela S. Karlan during today’s Impeachment Hearing.’

Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.

The Mueller Report Adventures: In Bite-Sizes on this Facebook page. These quick, two-minute reads interpret the report in normal English for busy people. Mueller Bite-Sizes uncovers what is essentially a compelling spy mystery. Interestingly enough, Mueller Bite-Sizes can be read in any order.