Jim Jordan tries to hold House committee hearing about imaginary whistleblower, and it’s a complete disaster for him
By now it’s abundantly (and in some cases almost hilariously) clear that the various “whistleblowers” the House Republicans claim to have against President Biden and the Democrats are either illegitimate or imaginary. We’ve even seen James Comer claim that one of the supposed whistleblowers is missing.
House Republican Jim Jordan used to be a competent villain, but these days he seems insistent on playing losing hands and, well, losing. Today Jordan held a public hearing about the imaginary testimony from the imaginary whistleblower, and it went about as poorly as you’d expect.
At one point House Democrats called out Jim Jordan about how House rules require him to turn over the supposed testimony from the supposed whistleblower, for which Jordan had no response:
Jim Jordan isn't happy when Dan Goldman confronts him about rules during the "weaponization of the FBI" hearing.
Jordan: "We have the whistleblower testimony. He does not wish it to be made available to the Democrats at this time."
Goldman: "He doesn’t make committee rules!" pic.twitter.com/MeG8SWF08m
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) May 18, 2023
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But things got even uglier when Jordan and his fellow House Republicans tried to spin the hearing at a press conference. At one point a reporter pointed out how suspicious it is that one of Donald Trump’s associates actually paid one of these supposed whistleblowers. Jordan’s response was one of the dumbest things he’s ever said:
REPORTER: Today's hearing is about how the FBI is politicized, but do you think it's appropriate for some of these whistleblowers to be paid by one of Trump's former advisers?
JIM JORDAN: They got a family! How are they supposed to feed their family? pic.twitter.com/L8lAx4z3qO
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 18, 2023
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At this point it’s fairly obvious that House Republicans keep chasing this dead end story about imaginary Biden financial corruption, because Donald Trump wants that to be a thing, in order to distract from the fact that Trump was just criminally indicted on thirty-four felony counts of financial corruption. The thing is, no one is buying it.
No persuadable voter believes that there are secret whistleblowers against Biden. No one is tuning in for these embarrassing hearings. Simply put, no one cares. Jim Jordan has always made a career out of hyping phony scandals about Democrats. But he used to be somewhat effective at selling those phony scandals. These days Jordan is as laughably ineffective at it as the rest of these House Republicans, because they’re all simply focused on keeping Trump sated on his way down so he doesn’t spitefully take the entire party down with him.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report