Tom Cotton, Jim Lankford Pull Sunday Lying Duty
It's your Sunday show rundown!
We begin today's Sunday show roundup with Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma. Making appearances on both CNN's "State of The Union" and ABC's "This Week," Lankford did his best to be a one-man version of the "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil" monkey.
On CNN, Lankford pretended to be offended that Adam Schiff referred to a report that Trump had threatened senators if they didn't stand with him while simultaneously "seeing no evil" by ignoring Trump's C-level gangster threats towards Schiff when pointed out to him. ( We covered it here .) On ABC, Lankford decided to go with "hear no evil" as he told George Stephanopoulos why we shouldn't see new witnesses -- like saying that the House "rushed" impeachment by not waiting on courts to decide subpoenas. Stephanopoulos wasn't having it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Of course, the big difference from the Clinton trial is that in the Clinton trial, those witnesses were heard in the House and they were called in the Senate and the White House did not completely stonewall the investigation.
Stephanopoulos then asked about the appropriateness of Trump asking for foreign assistance in an election.
STEPHANOPOULOS: He's asking the Chinese, he's asking the Ukrainians to investigate the Bidens. Do you think that's appropriate?
LANKFORD: Well what the president's trying to express there is his frustration that no one's paying attention to what is potential corruption with the Bidens in the past, that everyone seems to be focused on him, that he's been through two-and-a-half years of investigation in the Mueller Report, everyone's been focused on him but no one seems to want to even ask the question about was there potential corruption here --
STEPHANOPOULOS: No, he's asking the Ukrainians and the Chinese, do you think that's appropriate?
LANKFORD: I think he is asking for an investigation, as you would with anyone else, with any other American. It is a unique thing, obviously, that this is a person running for political office as well but it's not new, as the House manager said that this only started after Biden announced his investigation. This was a consistent theme for the president to say everyone should be able to be looked at in this process.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But he's asking the Ukrainians and the Chinese to look at it, if he were too concerned why not have the Justice Department look at it? Why not have an investigation through the proper channels? Do you think it's OK to ask a foreign nation to investigate a political opponent as the president did right there?
LANKFORD: So to be very clear the Justice Department is in the process of doing some investigation, working with foreign nations to be able to track through how some decisions were made, what was done on the FISA report and other things. So there is Justice Department work that is happening right now with the Counsel Durham that's in the process of working with foreign countries --
STEPHANOPOULOS: They're not investigating the Bidens. But (inaudible) --
LANKFORD: They're not investigating the Bidens, that's true.
Stephanopoulos tried one last time to get Lankford to admit how illegal it was by trying the old "If Obama had done this" rhetorical scenario:
STEPHANOPOULOS: The question is, is it appropriate for a president to ask a foreign leader to investigate -- by extension -- let me just see, because you're seeming to say it's OK. If President Obama had asked President Putin to investigate President Trump's activities in Russia, had he asked President Xi to investigate the Trump's family's businesses in China, that would have been OK?
LANKFORD: Well, I don't know that he did or didn't. I have no idea. And I'm not --
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well there's no evidence that he did. You know he didn't do that.
That's right folks! Either Lankford is too much of a liar/idiot to not know that Obama didn't or enough of a racist lying scumbag that he needed Stephanopoulos to immediately debunk this before it turned into another rightwing conspiracy. Here is the full video.
Over on CBS's "Face The Nation," Republican senator from Arkansas Tom Cotton, a veteran, was asked about Trump's statement that no one was hurt or injured in the January 8 Iranian missile attack on an airbase in Iraq after the Pentagon said Friday that 34 US service members had been treated for concussion symptoms and traumatic brain injuries. After playing a clip of Trump describing their injuries as "I heard that they had headaches and a couple of other things, but I would say -- and I can report it is not very serious," Margaret Brennan asked Cotton about Trump dismissing those injuries.
BRENNAN: Veterans groups are calling for the president to apologize. Should he apologize for calling it nothing serious?
COTTON: No I thi- he's just descr- he's not dismissing their injuries. He's describing their injuries.
BRENNAN: He said they're headaches and not very serious.
COTTON: I think he's describing their injuries. He's not dismissing their injuries. Head injuries can be on anywhere--
BRENNAN: He said headaches, I don't consider them very serious.
COTTON: Well, that's like saying that having a flesh wound is not very serious than having a--
BRENNAN: Well, veterans groups -- and I know you're a veteran and I know you--
COTTON: And veterans--
BRENNAN: --know people who have suffered from TBI--
COTTON: --veterans can have a different point of view.
BRENNAN: As do I. Don't you think it's serious that the president may need to apologize?
COTTON: No I mean, if it isn't- if they are in fact, all these injuries are not serious, if they're on the less serious side of the scale than the severe traumatic side of the scale, the president is just describing what happened. And I'm not dismissing them.
Dismissing them is exactly what Cotton is doing. Here is the full video complete with Tom Cotton's cowardice and his creepy smile:
Have A Week!
And you deserve kindness. Yer a GOOD ONE, and you take care of yourself, okay?
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