General Political Fúckery Thread - Subplot: Maga Mike Johnson Saved By Democrats?

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Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling/

March 12, 2024/3:59 p.m. ET

Mike Johnson Completely Blindsided by Resignation in His Own Party​

House Speaker Mike Johnson had no idea Representative Ken Buck is quitting, as the GOP is in complete shambles.​

House Speaker Mike Johnson looks down while speaking before a mic. U.S. flags are behind him.

ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

Representative Ken Buck took to social media to announce his near-immediate leave from Congress, resigning so fast that even his party leaders were caught off guard by the decision.

“Today, I am announcing that I will depart Congress at the end of next week,” Buck said in a statement on Tuesday. “I look forward to staying involved in our political process, as well as spending more time in Colorado with my family.”

The less-than-two-weeks notice took practically everybody by surprise, including (or maybe especially) House Speaker Mike Johnson.

“I was surprised by Ken’s announcement,” Johnson told a crush of reporters inside the Capitol building. “I look forward to talking to him about that.”

“I didn’t know,” he added.



The Freedom Caucus member originally announced his intention to retire in November—though he had not indicated he would leave before the end of his term.

The loss is a huge problem for House Republicans, who have tried and failed to galvanize their caucus to pass party objectives for months. Buck’s resignation will trim the Republican tally in the House even more, bringing it to just 218 members and leaving behind an impossibly thin one-seat majority, given other vacancies.

The prolific GOP critic, meanwhile, took the resignation as an opportunity to serve one more dunk on his conservative colleagues.

“It is the worst year of the nine years and three months that I’ve been in Congress,” Buck elaborated to CNN, describing the current iteration of the lower chamber as “dysfunctional” and the “worst year in 40, 50 years.”

“Instead of having decorum, instead of operating in a professional manner, this place has just devolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people.”
 

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“Can’t make it up”: Experts say transcript shows special counsel Robert Hur “lied” about Biden​

The full transcript undercuts Hur's claims that Biden could not remember his son's death and had "poor" memory​


By IGOR DERYSH

Managing Editor

PUBLISHED MARCH 12, 2024 1:26PM (EDT)​


Special Counsel Robert Hur testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 12, 2024.  (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images))


Special Counsel Robert Hur testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 12, 2024. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images))

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The full transcript of President Joe Biden’s five-hour interview with special counsel Robert Hur’s investigators “paints a more nuanced portrait” of Biden’s memory than the special counsel’s report, according to The Washington Post, which noted that “Biden doesn’t come across as being as absent-minded as Hur has made him out to be.”

The transcript “could raise questions about Hur’s depiction of the 81-year-old president as having ‘significant limitations’ on his memory,” according to The Associated Press.

Hur in his report declined to charge Biden, arguing that it would be difficult to convince a jury to convict with a memory that the special counsel described as “faulty” and “poor,” noting that Biden could not recall when his son Beau died or when he served as vice president.

But Biden said exactly when his son died in the interview.

“What month did Beau die? Oh God, May 30,” Biden said. When two others in the room chimed in with the year, Biden asked, “Was it 2015 when he died?”

Hur soon suggested taking a brief break, an officer Biden rejected before launching into a long explanation of Beau’s death.

“Let me just keep going to get it done,” Biden said.




Biden after the report’s release denied that he forgot when his son died.

“Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, was it any of their damn business?” Biden said at a press conference last month.

The full transcript shows that Biden repeatedly joked with prosecutors “in a setting that seemed more chummy than antagonistic,” the Post reported.

“The FBI know my house better than I do,” Biden quipped at one point. “I just hope you didn’t find any risqué pictures of my wife in a bathing suit,” the president later joked. “Which you probably did. She’s beautiful.”

Biden insisted he had little involvement in packing or moving boxes that included classified documents at the end of the Obama administration.

Asked what might have been stored in the boxes in his garage, Biden replied, “I have no goddamn idea. I didn’t even bother to go through them.”

“Somebody must’ve packed this up, just picked up all the stuff, and put it in a box, because I didn’t,” he later added.


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The transcript also appears to shine a light on Hur’s claim that Biden could not remember when he served as vice president.

“My problem was I never knew where any of the documents of boxes were specifically coming from or who packed them,” he said. “Just did I get them delivered to me. And so this is — I’m, at this stage, in 2009, am I still vice president?”

Biden sought to clarify his answer but one of Hur’s deputies pushed to move on.

During another point, Hur pointed to an image of a notebook related to Afghanistan.

“The date is 4-20-09,” Biden said. “Was I still vice president? I was, wasn’t I? Yeah.”

Hur in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday denied that he “disparage[d] the president unfairly” and claimed “the evidence and the president himself put his memory squarely at issue.”

National security attorney Bradley Moss predicted that “Democrats are going to eat Hur alive at this hearing.”

“I *think* Biden might be owed an apology,” tweeted Vox reporter Zach Beauchamp.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney flagged a portion of the transcript in which Hur, in the first sentence of Biden’s interview, gets the time of day wrong.

“Can’t make it up,” he wrote.




“Hur's claim that Biden couldn't remember the day his son died was an outrageous lie,” argued Tommy Vietor, a former Obama staffer and commentator. “It's also cruel & irrelevant. Anyone who has experienced loss like that can remember images, smells, bit of conversations. The pain is burned into you. Dates blend together bc they're irrelevant.”

Attorney Andrew Laufer tweeted, “Hur lied. That’s really the only appropriate response.”

White House spokesman Ian Sams told CNN on Tuesday that Hur’s opening statement to the committee was also “misleading.”

“I think it lays bare pretty clearly that the result of this 15 month investigation that was led by a Trump appointee prosecutor who was named special counsel, found that there was no case here,” he said. “I think that some of those that language that you just laid out is a little bit misleading. In fact, later in the report, 200 pages in, not on page two, but 200 pages in, he says very clearly that the evidence does not fully support the idea that he willfully retained classified documents.”


 

BigMoneyGrip

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Straight from Flatbush

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling/

March 12, 2024/3:59 p.m. ET

Mike Johnson Completely Blindsided by Resignation in His Own Party​

House Speaker Mike Johnson had no idea Representative Ken Buck is quitting, as the GOP is in complete shambles.​

House Speaker Mike Johnson looks down while speaking before a mic. U.S. flags are behind him.

ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

Representative Ken Buck took to social media to announce his near-immediate leave from Congress, resigning so fast that even his party leaders were caught off guard by the decision.

“Today, I am announcing that I will depart Congress at the end of next week,” Buck said in a statement on Tuesday. “I look forward to staying involved in our political process, as well as spending more time in Colorado with my family.”

The less-than-two-weeks notice took practically everybody by surprise, including (or maybe especially) House Speaker Mike Johnson.

“I was surprised by Ken’s announcement,” Johnson told a crush of reporters inside the Capitol building. “I look forward to talking to him about that.”

“I didn’t know,” he added.



The Freedom Caucus member originally announced his intention to retire in November—though he had not indicated he would leave before the end of his term.

The loss is a huge problem for House Republicans, who have tried and failed to galvanize their caucus to pass party objectives for months. Buck’s resignation will trim the Republican tally in the House even more, bringing it to just 218 members and leaving behind an impossibly thin one-seat majority, given other vacancies.

The prolific GOP critic, meanwhile, took the resignation as an opportunity to serve one more dunk on his conservative colleagues.

“It is the worst year of the nine years and three months that I’ve been in Congress,” Buck elaborated to CNN, describing the current iteration of the lower chamber as “dysfunctional” and the “worst year in 40, 50 years.”

“Instead of having decorum, instead of operating in a professional manner, this place has just devolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people.”

Mike sound shook his rain will be short like leprechauns :mjlol:
 

88m3

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Straight ticket AND Biden for POTUS :blessed:

Nice. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to voting for Biden again most of all

He really accomplished more than I imagined possible and has done a lot to advance progressive and so many common sense issues that our country faces that have languished since Obama terms. The Democrats as a party have also come a long way. They may not be the Stalinists that the HL all stars champion but it really blows my mind looking back at the party of even a decade ago.
 
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Pressure

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Nice. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to voting for Biden again most of all

He really accomplished more than I imagined possible and has done a lot to advance progressive and so many common sense issues that our country faces that have languished since Obama terms. The Democrats as a party have also come a long way. They may not be the Stalinists that the HL all stars champion but it really blows my mind looking back at the party of even a decade ago.
Absolutely. I certainly won't be complaining about the behavior of Trump judges and special counsels only to allow him the chance to do it again.

I won't be complaining about genocide abroad and vote for genocide at home.

But that's just me. A liberal. The worse thing in the west. :whew:
 

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Ken Buck Teases More Republican Resignations Are Coming​

Published Mar 13, 2024 at 3:20 AM EDT
Updated Mar 13, 2024 at 6:45 AM EDT

00:36
Ken Buck Teases More Republican Resignations Are Coming


By James Bickerton
US News Reporter
FOLLOW


Colorado House Republican Ken Buck has hinted the GOP could suffer more resignations after announcing he will step down at the end of the week, further shrinking his party's already wafer thin majority in the chamber.

When asked by Axios whether he was coming under pressure from colleagues over his decision to resign, Buck replied: "I think it's the next three people that leave that they're going to be worried about."



The Context​


Buck's move will reduce the number of House Republicans to 218, against 213 Democrats, at a time when Speaker Mike Johnson is already struggling to impose his authority over the chamber.

Once widely seen as a conservative hardliner, Buck has more recently attracted attention for opposing his colleagues' efforts to impeach President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

What We Know​


In a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday, Buck said: "It has been an honor to serve the people of Colorado's 4th District in Congress for the past nine years. I want to thank them for their support and encouragement throughout the years.

"Today, I am announcing that I will depart Congress at the end of next week. I look forward to staying involved in our political process, as well as spending more time in Colorado and with my family."

A special election to replace Buck as representative for Colorado's 4th congressional district will be held on June 25.

Speaking to CNN after his announcement, Buck hit out at what he claimed was growing dysfunction in Congress.

He commented: "It is the worst year of the nine years and three months that I've been in Congress. And having talked to former members, it's the worst year in 40, 50 years to be in Congress. But I'm leaving because I think there's a job to do out there that I want to go do.

"This place has just devolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people."

When asked whether Donald Trump becoming the Republicans' presumptive presidential candidate influenced his decision to step down, Buck said: "Whether he was the nominee or not, I think our system is broken in how we choose candidates and I want to get involved in that process."

Johnson said he was "surprised" by Buck's announcement and hadn't been informed in advance, though a spokesperson for the Colorado Republican claimed he left a voicemail message stating his intentions 30 minutes before the public announcement.


Ken Buck teases more Republican resignations coming

Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) arrives to the House Chambers on February 6, 2024 in Washington, DC. After announcing his resignation, Buck teased more Republicans could soon be quitting the House as well.GETTY IMAGES


Views​


Speaking to NBC News senior political reporter Sahil Kapur, Republican Rep. Pat Fallon described Buck's move as "very surprising. Very disturbing. Very alarming. Very concerning."

Jake Sherman, founder of political website Punchbowl News, posted: "It's amazing to me that Ken Buck resigned effective next week and the speaker of the House and House majority leader seemingly had no idea in advance."

Earlier this month, in an interview with NewsNation, Buck said: "I am not going to lie on behalf of my presidential candidate, on behalf of my party. And I'm very sad that others in my party have taken the position that as long as we get the White House, it doesn't really matter what we say."



What's Next​


Buck's announcement that he will leave the House months earlier than originally planned presents a major challenge to Rep. Lauren Boebert, his fellow Colorado Republican. Boebert was seeking to replace Buck as representative of Colorado's 4th Congressional District at the November election, stepping aside from the state's 3rd Congressional District which she currently represents.

However, the Republican firebrand won't be able to stand in the June special election to replace Buck unless she steps down from her seat.

Posting on X, former GOP congressman Adam Kinzinger said: "By resigning early, Ken Buck is giving an advantage to anyone but Lauren Boebert.

"She cannot run in the special election since she already occupies a seat, so another person will be elected to serve out the term, and it won't be Lauren. Smart."
 

Reality Check

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When asked by Axios whether he was coming under pressure from colleagues over his decision to resign, Buck replied: "I think it's the next three people that leave that they're going to be worried about."

One person they really need to worry about is Brian Fitzpatrick. If he resigns, his district is going blue.
 
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