Republicans are making political hay of Pelosi’s commemorative impeachment pens, though they pulled the same pen stunt during Clinton’s 1999 impeachment, and misspelled “United States” on the pens.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi holds a weekly press conference every single Thursday, but this morning’s came against the unusual backdrop of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court swearing in senators for the impeachment trial. And so Trump’s impeachment proceedings are officially underway in the Senate, where Chief Justice Roberts adjourned the trial until next Tuesday, January 21. Pelosi and her counterpart, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, remain locked in their parliamentary and public relations gamesmanship, the latest of which is Pelosi this morning dangling the possibility that Trump should consider postponing the State of the Union address according to the Washington Examiner. (Which he would never do! She’s just fucking with him.)
Chief Justice John Roberts swears in all 100 senators for the impeachment trial against President Trump. They took the oath to serve as jurors during the trial. https://t.co/tzvsSozUKB pic.twitter.com/ix1EjR9lW1
— CNN (@CNN) January 16, 2020
But Pelosi may have fucked with Republicans more, or at least given them another histrionic talking point, with the use of commemorative impeachment pens on Tuesday to sign the articles, seen below. Right-wing media is going predictably berserk over the souvenir pens, though President Trump had just given away similar pens at his China trade deal signing ceremony only a couple hours earlier.
Nancy Pelosi has souvenir pens emblazoned with her signature that she’s using to sign the articles of impeachment pic.twitter.com/Xte3yH45vj
— Hunter Walker (@hunterw) January 15, 2020
And as the Washington Post notes in their writeup, the GOP also used souvenir pens when signing their own impeachment articles in 1999. “Senators each received their own black and silver pen to use while pledging their impartiality in Bill Clinton’s impeachment,” the Post reminds us, “though the maker had to pledge a reprint after a typo meant the keepsakes read “Untied States Senator.”
Pelosi criticizes Facebook, which has an office in her district: "All they want are their tax cuts and no antitrust action against them and they schmooze this administration in that regard...They intend to be accomplices for misleading the American people" https://t.co/7DMcsOnniz pic.twitter.com/P6dI9a1LEl
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 16, 2020
But then Pelosi’s press conference took an unexpected turn against Facebook, according to CNN. She was asked about Facebook and did not herself bring up the social media company, but in response to a Facebook question, the speaker went off; saying “they intend to be accomplices for misleading the American people with money from God knows where. They didn’t even check on the money from Russia in the last election. They never even thought they should. They have been very irresponsible.”
All entirely fair, considering Facebook left up a doctored viral video of Pelosi despite the video being flagged as false, that Mark Zuckerberg goes to privately grovel at Trump’s feet and lets Tucker Carlson yank his chain on what constitutes fake news, and of course, happily allows false political advertising often paid for shady international oligarchs. But with Elizabeth Warren and now Pelosi on record as wanting to rein Facebook in, and on the other side Trump flooding Facebook with $20 million and promising a total lack of regulation as long as his lies are never censored, it’s a terrifying possibility that Facebook will happily tip the scales to four more years of Donald Trump.
Image: brucedetorres via Flickr
