GOP Witnesses get EXPOSED under CROSS-EXAM at Hearing

GOP Witnesses get EXPOSED under CROSS-EXAM at Hearing

so how are donald trump’s cabinet members responding to these scorching cross-examination by democratic congress members what they’re doing now is just not answering the questions at all and answering different questions literally giving the middle finger to congress but magic mike johnson is okay with it cuz maga mike johnson doesn’t even really think the house of representatives should exist at all he believes it should just exist for whatever donald trump wants to do with it so much for co-equal branches of government so let me show you some of this uh recent democratic cross-examination of donald trump’s attorney general pam bondi so you have democratic congress member morurell and he’s cross-examining pam bondi about a decision by the doj to construe donald trump’s pardon for january 6th insurrectionist to also include all of their other criminal conduct in most cases so if donald trump pardoned you for being an insurrectionist any other kind of related conduct if the fbi discovered that you were involved in other crimes under the trump doj by and large you get a pardon for the other crimes as well so a fair question to ask the attorney general watch what took place let’s play it uh in addition to my uh role uh here uh the committee that i serve on as an authorizer overseas capital security as well as federal elections so i’m closely following the aftermath of january 6th uh recently several defendants who received presidential pardons related to that day are now arguing in court that the pardon covers crimes like for instance illegal firearm possession discovered in a search of an individual’s home in california months after january 6th what’s your position on whether the pardons cover these separate offenses yeah the pardon power rests with the president not the department of justice and some of that is pending litigation and i cannot discuss pending litigation well i’m not asking you about who has the right to a pardon i think as the department of justice uh in february wrote the pardon is an act of grace which removes the punishment from a crime a person has committed it further said “in its effect the granting of a pardon is in no sense the overturning of a judgment of conviction it is an executive action that mitigates or sets aside punishment.” so is the chief law enforcement officer what’s your opinion not the president’s power of whether he can offer a pardon that’s pretty clear in the constitution but for crimes committed uh unrelated to january 6th um are would you suggest that the pardons would cover activities or crimes potentially committed outside of that by the same person well i don’t know if you’re referring to joe biden pardoning his son after he said he would not pardon hunter biden or the referring to january 6th all the sentences that um the people that were on death row i’ve met with those families but all of those sentences were commuted um i’m not going to comment on pardons on either side of the aisle so well i i i’m not asking about either side i’m asking you’re the chief law enforcement officer of the united states you have a responsibility uh directly you sworn oath to the constitution not the president want to know what your views are on the extent to which pardons cover potential crimes committed by individuals who have been pardoned but unrelated to january 6th do you mean the ones that were done by the autopin um i i’m not going to discuss anything that could mr chairman respectfully i i you know m deluro accused you of filibuster and i think that’s the height of filibustering this is a serious serious topic and for you to suggest that you don’t have an opinion or to divert to other things that had nothing to do with january 6 pardons i think is uh frankly um demeaning to your responsibilities and your job with that i’ll yield back next you have democratic congresswoman dean and she cross-examines donald trump’s attorney general pam bondi about uh her ties to the qatari government and her taking huge amounts of money from the qatari government and not disclosing it during her confirmation hearing here play this clip attorney general have you ever been registered as an agent of a foreign principal under the foreign agents registration act i assume you’re talking about when i represented the country of qatar for a very short time hold on hold on no for antihuman trafficking for the world cup antihuman trafficking for the world cup attorney put words in my mouth you want to talk about incompetence you’re the one that said joe biden on pbs was competent you had to retract those words mr to me don’t don’t insult them publicly this is so discourteous this is so outside the committee’s guidelines taking a personal shot at me while swiping at biden very strange and very unprofessional of you the answer is yes or no and the answer is yes you were registered as a lobbyist for cutter is that correct yes never mind don’t answer uh did you disclose that when you went before for the senate for confirmation yes or no no it was not in your documents the answer is no president trump this was discussed at my confirmation hearings in it was well it was discussed but you failed to bring up the conflict that you had president trump recently announced he’d accept that $400 million uh cutter airplane because it was just prettier than the one he was flying around in uh is it true that you uh gave advice that this was legally permissible yes or no i will not discuss any advice that my office of legal counsel gives to the president of the united states on any matter when you spoke before the senate you said you would ask for ethical advice did you recuse yourself from that issue and talking about unprofessional you say the president wanted a jet because it’s pretty excuse me this is a senate this is a he said it personal hearing he said it himself and then congresswoman dean is asking pam bondi if she has concerns about donald trump’s conflicts of interest to which pam bondi answers a different question and as you’ll see she just keeps on bringing up joe biden over and over again play this clip april the 2nd uh you’re a part of this you know the the president uh uh has dabbled in memecoin uh he had you the doj disband the national cryptocurrency enforcement team his son re recently launched the executive branch club a private club with uh $500,000 memberships here in uh dc uh any of this seem like it might be a problem might be profitering from the office and maybe you and your ethics team might be concerned about these conflicts of interest your own and the president and his family yes or no any concerns what i would be concerned about in pennsylvania are all the child sex cases that we’ve prosecuted all the cesam cases that we’ve prosecuted did you hear my question i asked the witness to actually answer questions that are asked woman dean chair chairman please let the witness answer the question she didn’t and i would like to ask you one more question you’re not just complicit in this you’re actively helping and profiting isn’t it true that on april the 2nd the same day that trump announced his chaotic tariff regime that plummeted the stock market you sold more than $1 million worth of your shares in trump media stock trump media stock fell 13% in the following days seems you avoided that loss well done i yield back may i answer that chairman i complied with my ethics and yeah i would take a class in financial literacy if you think i profited from that because i lost a tremendous amount of money congresswoman and also on page 25 of my sj2 it um lists my involvement with qatar for antihuman trafficking for the world cup thank you and here you have democratic congresswoman deloro cross-examining pam bondi and uh pam bondi basically says “oh i don’t like the way you’re asking me that question i will answer it very calmly unlike you.” here play this clip ask me a question you asked me a question and you haven’t answered my question so they’re going to be out on the streets working you haven’t answered my question you haven’t mr chairman i’d like an answer to my question and the question is not being answered how many atf law enforcement officers and industry operations investigators do you anticipate will be lost to attrition as a result of the funding reduction you are proposing you are proposing a 26% cut to atf for fiscal year 2026 as well as a 4.4% cut to dea so you’re going to merge the two agencies together and then you’re going to short change their resources so neither one of them will be able to do the job that they have been designed to do you’ve got a 34% cut to the highintensity drug trafficking areas program no dedicated money at all for the organized crime drug enforcement task force so my view it’s fair to say that the trump administration proposal short changes federal efforts to stop illegal gun trafficking and federal efforts to stop the flow of dangerous illegal drugs like fentinol as i was attempting to answer your question very calmly unlike you um excuse me what the excuse me madam attorney general answer yes or no tell me what the numbers are i don’t want to hear all of your filibuster about this go ahead please tell us the numbers so we are reorganizing atf agents want to be out on the street okay let me let me answer the question for you i’m going to answer it for you paige you know mr chairman you give me a a a certain amount of time and i have a high respect for you but i don’t have to listen nor do my colleagues have to listen to a filibuster when it’s a simple question but i have an answer to your question it’s what page 146 of the department’s fiscal year 2026 budget and the performance summary explicitly says and let me quote atf will eliminate 541 industry operation ex investigators reducing atf’s capacity to regulate the firearms and explosive industries by approximately 40% in fiscal year 2026 atf will perform fewer regulatory uh inspections and the department summary goes on to say and let me quote atf anticipates a reduction of approximately 284 support personnel and 186 agents based on historical attrition patterns and these personnel cuts will impact atf across various functions.” unquote if the capacity to regulate firearms industry is reduced by 40% if you are losing 186 atf law enforcement agents on top of that it is clear the direction you are headed with this budget now let’s bring in democratic congress member jake alenclaus congress member i was just showing these clips of pam bondi’s testimony yesterday where she was being cross-examined by uh democratic congress members and her answer to everything was basically joe biden autopen joe biden and not actually answering the questions you know or giving some kind of snarky remark um and then not answering the questions and filibustering look we saw this with pete hegs who wouldn’t answer the questions and he would be just outright like just rude to senators and congress members your time is up you don’t get to ask me questions anymore so i i just got to ask you you know as a member of congress when these trump you know regime cabinet members show up they don’t bring the budget with them they’re unprepared they’re not answering questions how are you dealing with this how are you how do you plan for this i’m planning for it right now because secretary kennedy of health and human services is coming to my committee tomorrow morning and we’re going to have to address exactly this it’s a confluence of two factors the first is that the president has appointed people based on loyalty not based on either professionalism or competence and so you’re getting witnesses who just don’t know their own portfolio right rfk doesn’t know the first thing about medicare or medicaid uh pam bondi doesn’t understand due process and down on the line i i will say i just had a hearing with secretary of energy chris wright and it was refreshing because he actually understands energy portfolio and i just remark upon that because it’s the exception not the rule with this cabinet to actually have a cabinet member who knows what they’re talking about uh the second factor at play here is that congressional republicans don’t take themselves seriously they don’t hold this administration to account they don’t think they’re members of a separate and co-equal branch of a government they think they’re courters to mara lago they act like it but here’s the question for democrats can we go out to the public and make the case that says including to reluctant trump voters of 2024 hey listen we know you don’t agree with us on everything but do you want this guy’s worst impulses to be checked by congress like do you do you just want him to have to have a little bit of oversight and accountability for these next two years because if you do vote democrat for house and senate and we will put a check a check on his worst ideas i think that that can win over some of these reluctant trump voters who swung to him in 24 well if you think about all of the things that he promised lower prices on day one that didn’t happen that there would be an end to all wars that didn’t happen that housing would become affordable uh that hasn’t happened that he would stop inflation that hasn’t happened you can go on and on and on and then there’s just the kind of daily betrayals which in all of the distractions sometimes fade remember when he said uh the doge rebate that doge was going to be so successful we’re going to give every one of you five every american gets $5,000 from doge remember he said that and uh you know there he’s going to go through fort knox and find all of this gold and we’re all going to get rich he’s going to eliminate the irs because the tariffs are going to be so successful that all we’ll need is an external revenue service so it’s just a a barrage of lies you think it’s registering with the american people yes but we have to connect the dots because the american people over the last decade have been trained and have acclimatized to his post-truth politics and so what you have to do is be able to connect the dots between his chaos and corruption and the higher costs of daily life and that is what campaigns are built around i think we also have to connect the dots between the chaos and incompetence of his administration and the lawlessness that people are feeling pervade ever more parts of the economy and society even though americans actually still broadly agree with president trump instead of democrats on immigration for example they don’t like the way he’s going about it they don’t want to see unmarked vans with masked officers harass 25-year-old graduate students on the streets of somerville and that disconnect between a policy that he promised people and the images that they are seeing that feel viscerally wrong to them that can register we saw it with the no kings day protests which were some of the most successful demonstrations in modern american history but now it’s on democrats to build that public pressure into a winning midterm strategy finally let’s talk about rfk um and rfk jr and his disastrous i think it’s everything everybody feared frankly and worse and the promises that he even made to senators to secure the needed votes to get confirmed you know he lied about getting rid of the you know the board that deals with vaccination review and and things like that so how i i know this is an area too that you’re that you’ve always i mean you focus on a lot of areas but this is an area too near and dear to your heart so speak to our audience here about just how bad it is when it comes to this guy the corruption conspiracy and quackery is eye watering rfk has spent the last two decades peddling in pseudocience and conspiracy theories one to enrich himself and two to sew distrust that has directly led to children dying of preventable infectious diseases uh and what we have to do is take out the knees of their self-righteousness the maha movement has come to washington dc and it has claimed this mantle of an anti-corruption crusade oh all of these scientists at the food and drug administration they’re all on the take or all of these uh cdc or advisory commission on immunization practice uh professionals they’re just grifting the fact of the matter is it is in fact rfk and his henchmen who are engaged in corruption and once we can point that out squarely to the american public i think it undercuts many of their pseudocience claims because people will see them for what they are which is self- serving you know so for example cali means rfk’s chief of staff functionally chief of staff he owns and controls his own business on the side which has tripled in value in the last year and which basically hustles supplements and saunas to uh people using tax or pre-tax dollars and he’s changing federal policy to help his own company and that’s just one example there are many others of the lieutenants around rfk abusing the public trust before we go anything you think that’s not getting the attention it deserves that while we have this huge audience here you want the american people to know i always like to ask that question when i speak to members of congress because you often get asked the questions by the interviewer but i’m sure there’s things on your mind that i wish i could just talk about that one there’s lots of things but anything in particular the media’s attention has moved from los angeles to the middle east understandably i still though am thinking about those 700 marines deployed to los angeles they’re deployed from 29 palms which is a training base in inland empire california it’s where i trained for two years as a platoon commander of infantry i know these marines not personally but i know who they are i trained with these kinds of of young men and women and these are war fighters who have signed an oath to obey the constitution and to fight america’s enemies they are not sweating and bleeding in the desert heat of 29 palms to be used as a political prop for the president in los angeles in a grossly unnecessary and illegal deployment of marines for law enforcement purposes they’re not trained for it they’re not equipped for it it’s going to be terrible for their morale and we as americans have to understand that his abuse of the military for his own political ends it’s not just bad for the citizens of the united states it’s bad for those service members as well most of them are kids they’re under the age of 25 what’s your message to them now or their family members who may and probably are watching the midas touch network and you know know that you were a leader of of them when you know when when when you were there the united states military is the most lethal warfighting force in the history of the world but that’s not its most exceptional quality its most exceptional quality is that service members and officers swear an oath not to an individual not to a party but to the constitution and they need to remember that oath congress member jay ga claus thank you thanks for having me on everybody hit subscribe let’s get to 6 million subscribers the truth is more important

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump’s Cabinet Members like Attorney General Pam Bondi getting exposed at Congressional hearings under cross-examination by Democrats and Meiselas interviews Democratic Congressman Jake Auchincloss about his investigation into RFK Jr.

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