CNN's Daniel Dale went through each of the claims made by McCarthy as reasons to open an impeachment inquiry into Biden — and found them lacking for evidence.

Not a big CNN fan, but this is a very well-done dissection.

  • wagoner@infosec.pub
    178·
    1 year ago

    The strategy here is to be able to say Biden was impeached, just like Trump was, when it comes to 2024. Devalue the process. Neutralize Trump’s impeachments. You say Biden’s is illegitimate? So does trump about his.

    It doesn’t matter to this strategy if the claims have any value. It doesn’t matter if they never get voted on, either. Just having an inquiry could be enough.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
      411·
      1 year ago

      Conservatives love this shit. Every time the left starts using a new term, after about a six month lag the right will start using it, but they’re so goddamn stupid they don’t know what it means so they just use it as a general insult.

    • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      The strategy here is to be able to say Biden was impeached, just like Trump was, when it comes to 2024. Devalue the process. Neutralize Trump’s impeachments.

      We as a society have a real problem, when one side loses the culture wars, and decides a pyrrhic victory is the way to go, what happens to all of us then.

    • June@lemm.ee
      5·
      1 year ago

      Yep, 100% delegitimizing impeachment that doesn’t include removal from office. Though, they did that with Clinton already.

    • Ibex0@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago

      Absolutely, minimize the whole concept of impeachment AND if you get any new information, (like Hillary’s email server being revealed during Benghazi hearings) that’s a bonus.

  • ZeroCool@feddit.chEnglish
    73·
    1 year ago

    Turns out that it’s extremely difficult to provide damning evidence for imaginary crimes you’ve dreamed up.

  • Jordan Lund@lemmy.oneEnglish
    70·
    1 year ago

    So much emphasis on the FBI 1023 form by people who either have no idea what that form is, or people who intentionally misrepresent what it is:

    https://socxfbi.org/SFSA/SFSA/Featured-Articles/Message-from-the-FBI-on-the-FD-1023-Request-from-Congress.aspx

    “As many of you know, the FD-1023 is the form our special agents use to record raw, unverified reporting from confidential human sources (CHSs). FD-1023s merely document that information; they do not reflect the conclusions of investigators based on a fuller context or understanding. Recording this information does not validate it, establish its credibility, or weigh it against other information known or developed by the FBI in our investigations.”

    Bolding mine.

    It’s literally the FBI equivalent of “Some-body once told me…”

  • RickRussell_CA@lemmy.worldEnglish
    421·
    1 year ago

    The claims against the Bidens haven’t really evolved since Giuliani and Bobulinski made them in 2020.

    Not sure what impact they expect these claims to have, again, more than 1 year before the next election. Whatever shot they are trying to take, it’s going to be long forgotten by autumn 2024.

    • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
      10·
      1 year ago

      They invested so much screentime into this, it’s important to keep the flame alive. Same as with Clinthazi in 2016

    • resin85@lemmy.caEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

      “A psychological analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend” - Walter C. Langer

    • krakenx@lemmy.worldEnglish
      42·
      1 year ago

      Voters could theoretically get upset at the waste of taxpayer dollars and the distraction from solving the many problems the country faces and vote them out.

      • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
        25·
        1 year ago

        In other words, no, because the only thing that maters to the people who vote for them is the little R next to their name. The only way they risk being voted out is if another Republican runs against them.

        • TechyDad@lemmy.world
          5·
          1 year ago

          And for around 30% of Americans, the only reason they would vote out Republicans over a failed Biden impeachment would be because of the “failed” part, not the “impeachment” part.

      • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        and vote them out

        That’s kind of the flaw in our system that our Forefathers never considered, if the voters become ineffective in doing their job.

        • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          1 year ago

          Honestly there are a lot of problems with the system in the US, some of which the founders actually foresaw but couldn’t agree with how to fix (like the problem with two parties). I’d argue that they did consider voters becoming ineffective, but that’s yet another thing they really didn’t have a good solution to. In theory, that’s part of why the electoral college exists, or more accurately they were worried that ignorant masses would vote in a populist. Ultimately it’s been shown that the electoral college hasn’t really helped things there at all.

          Really it’s a bunch of poorly thought out half measures. Like the fact that there’s both a Senate and Congress, with Senate intending to represent the “state”, which is really just a hastily slapped together replacement for the House of Lords in the UK. In other words, the Senate is supposed to represent the will of the rich “nobility” that run the states, or in the terms of the US at the time, the wealthy land owners (considering how much corporations spend on bribing senators these days it’s arguably working, although that’s probably not a good thing). Realistically there should probably only be a Congress which is the stand in for the House of Commons and represents the will of the people, although you would need to rethink what kinds of checks you could put against Congress then (maybe a mandatory constitutional review by the courts before new laws can be passed rather than waiting for the law to pass and then having it challenged?).

          The entire US government is like a fun-house mirror version of the UK government at the time. The President is a stand-in for the King/Queen, although one with drastically curtailed powers (ironically with the reforms the UK government has gone through since then the President is actually much more powerful than the King/Queen in the UK currently is). Congress is the House of Commons. Senate is the House of Lords. The Speaker of the House is the Prime Minister. The courts run largely the same, although there’s some fairly good tweaks there to address some of the abuses that were common in the UK at the time, as well as a couple decisions that have made things worse. Each State functions as a stand-in for one of the noble houses.

          Considering modern technology, and the connected nature of the world these days, if we were going to take a second stab at organizing the government I think it would end up looking vastly different from our current system. To start with there would be actual systems in place for the public to censure representatives, rather than relying on their peers to police each other (or at least some mechanism for another branch to punish or remove those that break the laws). Further it’s clear the experiment with states hasn’t really worked out. Some other mechanism needs to be worked out because the current system causes all kinds of problems and doesn’t really solve most of the ones it was meant to solve.

          • Cosmic Cleric@lemmy.worldEnglish
            5·
            1 year ago

            I’d argue that they did consider voters becoming ineffective, but that’s yet another thing they really didn’t have a good solution to. In theory, that’s part of why the electoral college exists, or more accurately they were worried that ignorant masses would vote in a populist. Ultimately it’s been shown that the electoral college hasn’t really helped things there at all.

            I think the electoral college was more to prevent someone who is harmful for the country to lead it, a safety switch against populism of sorts (one can argue it failed miserably with Trump, depending on your political leanings).

            I was speaking more towards citizens not knowing who their elected officials even are, or bother to vote out of laziness or cynicism. Most elections have way less than 100% voter turn out (not that I blame citizens somewhat for that, as it can be hard to vote, but still).

            Rank Choice Voting system seems like a good way to fix it, as wel as allowing 100% voting via mail-in ballots. That would go along way to getting people to stop watching Netflix and getting off the couch and participate.

    • zik@aussie.zone
      12·
      1 year ago

      Maybe not the impeachment but if any of the accusations are based on reports to police (or the FBI) then “making a false report” to police is a crime and that could be prosecuted.

  • twelvefloatinghands@lemmy.world
    34·
    1 year ago

    I’ve been thinking that fact checking alone is not enough. Are there any projects focused on identifying the sources of false talking points?

      • dudinax@programming.dev
        3·
        1 year ago

        I don’t think so. Much of it gets funneled or even created from the top.

        I was surprised in 2020 by how many “grassroots” election conspiracy theories became popular because they were promoted by the Trump team.

    • JeffCraig@citizensgaming.com
      101·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, I was gunna say: this impeachment attempt is obvious political theater, but I’m not about to listen to anything CNN has to say about it.

      They’re a major part of why politics are all a complete joke now.

      • Saraphim@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        I think the downfall of legitimate news was inevitable. When CNN went 24 hours there was a lot of “how can they possibly find enough news to fill all that time?” And it was a legitimate question. The answer is that they can’t. So they manufacture things instead- opinion pieces that sound mysteriously like fact news, panels sitting around supposing what something could mean, interpreting events instead of factual explanations. It became a 24 gossipy talk show. And then even regular regional news followed suit. I don’t even bother to watch the news anymore, because it’s not news. It’s a bunch of jabbering assholes just making noises with their faces.