At a new hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, which is chaired in this Congress by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who is known as a Trump ally, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) suggested that Trump backers on the Republican side were “in a cult.”
He made a series of claims about how Republicans have behaved or where they’ve aligned themselves while in league with Donald Trump, who remains on track to become the GOP’s presidential nominee next month despite his recent conviction by a New York jury on all counts in a felony case alleging the criminal falsification of business records.
“If you believe in states’ rights — except when a jury in that state convicts your nominee for president, you might be in a cult,” Swalwell said during proceedings. “If you claim you ‘back the Blue’ but want to defund the police when the police go to your nominee’s house to retrieve national security secrets, you might be in a cult.”
Swalwell also listed countries where Trump apparently now faces restrictions on travel after his recent conviction. Amid complaints from the other side of the rhetorical aisle, Jordan eventually tried to shut Swalwell down as the California Democrat continued working through the list, but Swalwell — who is generally outspoken — made it to the end before the Californian wrapped it up. Footage of the whole thing was shared and viewed extensively on X, formerly known as Twitter.
At the hearing, Attorney General Merrick Garland was the witness, bringing forward an incessant target of right-wing attacks. Besides other complaints, Trump and allies of his consistently allege that his four criminal cases, which include two from a special prosecutor at the Justice Department, are politically motivated. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) recently claimed that Garland was angling to assassinate Trump around the time of the infamous raid on Trump’s Florida property Mar-a-Lago. Her claims stemmed from what was widely decried as a misrepresentation of a routine and limiting allowance for deadly force in the course of the search.
