• Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Republicans already have full transcripts of the conversations and now want the audio so they can pull out of context for political purposes. But, they now can’t have them. Moving on…

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    6 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The House Oversight and Judiciary committees are scheduled to begin the process of holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with those subpoenas on Thursday.

    The White House pointed out that the Department of Justice has already provided the transcripts of the special counsel’s interviews with Biden and his ghostwriter, and has complied with the other aspects of the initial subpoena from Republicans.

    “With the information you now have, the Committees ought not proceed with contempt and should instead avoid unnecessary and unwarranted conflict,” Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs, Carlos Uriarte wrote.

    Without the votes in their narrow majority or evidence of an impeachable offense, Republicans are now struggling with how to end their probe and are looking for ways to target other members of the Biden administration.

    In their contempt reports, Republicans stated that the DOJ does not get to determine what information is useful to their investigation, and argued that the verbal nuances of an audio recording provide unique insight into a subject that are not reflected in a transcript.

    Such pauses and inflections, Republicans claim, “can provide indications of a witness’s ability to recall events, or whether the individual is intentionally giving evasive or nonresponsive testimony to investigators.”


    The original article contains 718 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    So…

    When Biden and the White House complained about the result of:

    Biden knowingly broke the law but is too old and confused to be prosecuted

    And they told us that was partisan bullshit and the interview tapes would show he has his shit together but they can’t release the tapes…

    That was complete bullshit?

    This is the same shit trump would pull.

    • Tujio@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      No. They just know that Republicans and their cable news sycophants will do the exact thing they did with the Hur report.

      Ignore the overall findings, find one sentence in it that spins it negative, soundbite the fuck out of it, and repeat it ad nauseum.

      And yes, this is the same thing Trump did. And Obama. And Bush. This has been a standard move for decades. It’s just news now because of the regressive morons in congress and their orange dictator-in-waiting.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Republicans are going to say stupid shit anyways…

        They’re already saying it.

        The only reason to hide the tapes, is they make Biden look bad. If he had his shit together, they’d be trying to release them to show people the report was biased.

        Candidate:

        This would exonate me!

        Everyone else:

        Can we see/hear it?

        Candidate:

        Objection! If people saw/heard this, it would make me look bad!

        This is a bad thing regardless of the letter next to a candidates name.

        Edit:

        Ignore the overall findings

        That’s what you’re doing…

        The overall findings was Biden knowingly committed crimes.

        find one sentence in it that spins it n

        That’s what you’re doing.

        You latched on “charges not recommended” and are ignoring the rest of the sentence that says the only reason is because due to Biden’s age and confusion, it’s unlikely he’d be found guilty as people would be sympathetic.

        You’re not even focusing on a single sentence…

        • mrbean343@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          “The only reason to hide the tapes, is they make Biden look bad. If he had his shit together, they’d be trying to release them to show people the report was biased.”

          But they already released the transcripts. They are just refusing to release the audio. There isn’t new information to be gained. Just an opportunity for Republicans to splice and dice the audio for partisan purposes.

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            It is, and it’s a god damn world salad…

            https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/full-text-robert-hur-biden-classified-documents-interview-pdf-rcna142956

            At one point he talks about how NASA can cure cancer with protons…

            Americans don’t like to read, I’m not sure how an American hasn’t noticed that.

            But all the shit we (rightfully) give trump shit about with his speaking ability and making up random shit is stuff Biden does too.

            A clip of him talking about how NASA has a cure for cancer is going to hurt him.

            And it does make sense he wouldn’t want that released.

            But be better than republicans. Hold your “team” to higher standards than just the letter by someone’s name.

            • mrbean343@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              I don’t think Biden having dementia and spewing nonsense is news to anyone. Yes it hurts him and will draw more attention in audio than in text, which is one of the reasons they aren’t releasing it.

              “But be better than republicans. Hold your “team” to higher standards than just the letter by someone’s name.”

              No. Fuck that. We tried that and ended up with a conservative majority on SCOTUS. Don’t do anything to give Republicans or Trump an advantage. I’m just as disappointed as anyone that Biden is the best candidate the Dems can produce, and that his campaign slogan is effectively “better than Trump”. But I don’t agree with making it easier for Republicans to hurt your campaign just for the sake of taking the moral high ground. Save that conversation for when your opponent isn’t a literal fascist. Make the Republicans work for it. If the transcript doesn’t titillate your Fox News braindead audience then too bad.

              • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                . Fuck that. We tried that and ended up with a conservative majority on SCOTUS

                Refusing to fight for Obama’s SC pick so that it could be used to get people to vote for a candidate disliked by most people from either party is not “having standards”.

                It’s wild to hear someone even suggest that’s what happened…

                • MrVilliam@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  Refusing to fight for Obama’s SC pick so that it could be used to get people to vote for a candidate disliked by most people from either party is not “having standards”.

                  If this is what you think happened in 2016 after Senate Republicans openly admit that they blocked Obama’s SC pick, then I hope nobody is listening to you because you’ve lost all credibility. They even said that they would do the same thing to a Republican president, but then they moved faster than I’ve ever seen Congress move to install a new Justice just a few weeks before the 2020 election. There’s video of Lindsey Graham telling people to use his words against him if they behaved differently with roles reversed, and he behaved differently, and then that interview video went viral right before the election. There’s no excuse for not knowing what happened, so I have to assume that you’re just arguing in bad faith, trying to sow division.

        • czech@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          But the transcripts show that the “due to age and confusion” was a mischaracterization by Hur. It’s like when Barr declared the Mueller report exonerated trump.

          There are a lot of podcasts that break it down if you’re not interested in looking at the transcripts yourself.

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            There are a lot of podcasts that break it down if you’re not interested in looking at the transcripts yourself.

            Literally just posted it and I’ve read it…

            Most people aren’t politically active to be on a sub about it, they’re not going to read it.

            Like, I run into this all the time, Biden supporters just don’t seem to understand how disengaged people are with Biden as president.

            If the I tervirw makes him look good like you claim, what’s wrong with releasing it so people can hear the good bits?

            Why care if Republicans are going to talk shit if they’re already talking shit and won’t stop for any reason?

            The optics of Biden hiding it are worse

            • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              If people are disengaged, there are no optics to hiding it because the only people who will even know already have their minds made up.

              Releasing it just gives Fox and their ilk material to chop and edit to make Biden look bad.

              There’s no upside to releasing it when the transcript is already out there.

            • Drusas@kbin.run
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              6 months ago

              If the I tervirw makes him look good like you claim, what’s wrong with releasing it so people can hear the good bits?

              Because anybody with even a basic awareness of how Republicans operate knows that people won’t hear the good bits. The statements will be chopped up and released as distorted propaganda pieces.

              They already have the transcript. There is nothing to be gained by giving them the audio. All it would do is allow them to further rile up their bases with disinformation.

              • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                Because anybody with even a basic awareness of how Republicans operate knows that people won’t hear the good bits.

                Who cares?

                We aren’t going to flip Republican voters, he’s not gaining any he doesn’t already have.

                Elections are won and lost on dem turnout, and if the audio makes Biden seem capable, that makes the “old and confused” reason for not charging him bullshit.

                And that might be enough for them to also write off the reasoning for not charging him, and maybe even the fact that the report found him guilty

                They call Biden a fucking communist, no matter what happens, republicans will always tell their voters it’s the worst thing ever.

                So who cares what they’re going to say?

                If this gets more voters to the polls, it’s a win for Biden.

                • czech@lemm.ee
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                  6 months ago

                  If we don’t care what republicans think then why do we care about meeting their demands to release the tape?

                  If elections are won and lost on dem turnout then why give republicans the opportunity to create misleading sound clips? Do you think more dems are likely to listen to the entire tape or just a few moments stitched together played on the radio?

    • Thann@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      Abusing executive privilege to gain an upper hand in the election is exactly what trump would do.