Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) on Thursday night delivered his latest speech in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, and the media predictably loved it.
The New York Times called it “emotional” and “fiery.” Newsweek called it “powerful.” The Daily Beast had a headline that read: “Adam Schiff Stands Up and Speaks the Truth at Mitch McConnell’s Upside-Down Stalinist Show Trial.” The Washington Post called the speech “passionate.”
Schiff claimed Thursday night that Democrats “believe that we will have made the case overwhelmingly of the president’s guilt,” adding that Trump withheld money from Ukraine to “coerce” it into starting “political investigations.” Schiff then asked repeatedly whether this means Trump should be removed from office (the answer of course, to the California Democrat, is yes):
And this is why he needs to be removed. Donald Trump chose Rudy Giuliani over his own intelligence agencies. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own FBI Director. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own National Security Advisors. When all of them were telling him this Ukraine 2016 stuff is kooky, crazy Russian propaganda. He chose not to believe them. He chose to believe Rudy Giuliani. That makes him dangerous to us, to our country. That was Donald Trump’s choice. Now, why would Donald Trump believe a man like Rudy Giuliani over a man like Christopher Wray? Okay. Why would anyone in their right mind believe Rudy Giuliani over Christopher Wray?
Say what you want about Giuliani, but the FBI has proven itself to be a mess of an organization that is either politically motivated to go after those who disagree with its workforce or a bureau full of incompetent employees who can’t do anything right, and Wray doesn’t appear to be the man who can fix the agency.
Schiff also proposed hypotheticals to impugn Trump, suggesting that if Russian hackers released information related to Burisma, the Ukraine energy company that inexplicably employed former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, Trump would do nothing about it.
“Can you have the least bit of confidence that Donald Trump will stand up to them and protect our national interest over his own personal interest? You know you can’t, which makes him dangerous to this country. You know you can’t. You know you can’t count on him. None of us can. None of us can,” Schiff said.
Schiff continued on in this matter, bringing up Russia and Trump’s joke in 2016 about the country hacking Hillary Clinton’s emails. Despite the hypotheticals and grandstanding, the media and the Left are trying to suggest Schiff’s speech “will go down in history.”
As a reminder, while Schiff spoke at length about unrelated matters, it took Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) just one minute to shred Schiff’s credibility:
We’re supposed to believe Adam Schiff today and everything he’s saying? This is the guy who said, ‘We have more than circumstantial evidence that there was coordination between Trump and Russia, and Russia influenced the election.’ That turned out to be false. Adam Schiff said that the Nunes memo was false. Michael Horowitz told us no it wasn’t; it was exactly right. Adam Schiff said you can trust the FISA court. Michael Horowitz told us last month that no, you can’t; they lied to the FISA court 17 times. Adam Schiff told us we look forward to hearing from the whistleblower. Adam Schiff said we’ve had no contact with the whistleblower.
Then just yesterday, the story where he misrepresents to all of you to Chairman [Jerry] Nadler and most importantly to the White House counsel that Mr. Z is Mr. Zelensky, when in fact it was Mr. Zlochevsky. But today we’re supposed to believe him? He just talked for two hours and 15 minutes, and we’re supposed to believe everything he said today, in spite of that history, where seven important things he had exactly wrong? … That’s the kind of game that they’re playing here, and, again, I think that the American people see through it all.