Video Shows Schiff Wildly Twisting the Truth About Impeachment 'Support'
Even by Adam Schiff’s standards, it was a masterpiece of mendacity.
The House Intelligence Committee chairman has made a reputation for himself in the Trump years by making statements with little regard for their truth — for instance, he’s never backed away from his claim that there was evidence “in plain sight” that President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, even though special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year, $35 million investigation found nothing of the kind.
But in a “State of the Union” interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, the California Democrat nearly outdid himself misrepresenting public support for impeachment as well as the Democratic Party’s motivation for its incessant attacks on Trump.
In Schiff’s truth-twisting version of American politics, public support for action against the president has “grown fairly dramatically,” and Democrats are driven not by partisan politics but by their noble commitment to the Constitution.
New polling data shows the first half of that statement isn’t true. Any honest recollection of the events of the past three years shows the second half is a lie.
As Giancarlo Sopo pointed out at TheBlaze, Schiff might have had a point on purely technical grounds — since the impeachment effort didn’t start in earnest until House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement of an “impeachment inquiry” in late September.
The House vote on formal rules for the inquiry (with no Republicans supporting it and two Democrats opposing it) didn’t take place until Halloween.
Those developments were matched by polls that appeared to show Americans amenable to the idea of removing Trump from office. But as the story has developed, Vanity Fair writer Ken Stern noted in a piece Thursday, things changed.
Stern’s article is headlined, “‘It Is Hard to Read This as Anything but a Warning’: New Polling Suggests Democrats’ Impeachment Push Could Alienate Key Voters.”
The key paragraph is here:
“Alas, for the Democrats, the promising numbers of late October and early November rapidly dissipated, and polling numbers have reverted to a level more consistent with long-term opinions on President Trump. In the latest Politico/Morning Consult poll, released on November 19, Independents opposed impeachment and removal from office 46% to 39%, a number close to the rolling averages of the last few weeks. It is notable that the poll was fielded after the first public impeachment hearings. Even the compelling testimony of witnesses like Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, failed to move the needle on public opinion. That doesn’t mean further hearings won’t energize greater opposition to Trump, but it’s a little hard to imagine more effective testimony than that offered by Yovanovitch and some of her Foreign Service colleagues.”
And as TheBlaze noted, a poll last week shows support for the president has increased while support for impeachment has decreased.
That poll, by Emerson Polling, didn’t help Schiff’s case at all.
It found Trump’s approval rating at 48 percent, a rise of 5 percent since October. Support for impeachment has dropped to 43 percent, with 45 percent opposed. And, perhaps most critically, independent voters oppose impeachment by 49 percent to 34 percent, basically a reversal of the numbers from October.
In other words, Schiff twisted the truth — support for impeachment grew basically from when it was a non-issue. Since it has become an issue, support is dropping.
Social media users weren’t surprised at the California congressman’s stance, though.
It’s been years since this guy told the truth.
— Buddy Belk (@LessGovMoreFun) November 24, 2019
The truth has never been Schiff’s strong suit.
— L. Dealy (@mairnealachdha) November 24, 2019
So as long as they kept their Star Chamber sealed and only leaked their own lies for the media to echo, all was just fine. Once we could see for ourselves how weak and grasping their fifth-hand testimony was…
— Georg Felis (@georgfelis) November 25, 2019
As to the second part of Schiff’s statement — that Democrats are operating purely in what they consider the interests of the Constitution — it doesn’t pass the laugh test.
Since Trump’s win became clear in the early hours of Nov. 9, 2016, Democrats have been attacking his presidency without regard to the Constitution.
It’s not based on any reverence for the Constitution — the modern Democratic Party usually shows nothing but contempt for it (just look at how it treats the First Amendment, the Second Amendment and the Electoral College).
But it has everything to do with getting back the power that the president and his supporters deprived them of.
Adam Schiff has proven himself to have a remarkable capacity for duplicity in the Trump years, but his distortions can’t change reality — and sane Americans know it.
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