Snopes or not - you'd have to be intentionally dense to keep at it.
As Democrats scramble to protect the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) after it was indicted for fraud, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., attempted to have the truth about an infamous anti-Trump hoax the SPLC peddled removed from the congressional record.
At a Wednesday
hearing of the House Judiciary Committee titled “The Southern Poverty Law Center: Manufacturing Hate,” ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.,
launched into the heavily debunked claim that President Donald Trump praised white supremacists at a 2017 Charlottesville rally as “very fine people.” Notably, the hearing took place in light of a grand jury indictment of the SPLC that detailed its reported funding of an individual involved in planning the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally. The SPLC was one of many left-wing entities that
spread the same hoax Raskin parroted.
Later in the hearing a Republican congressman disproved Raskin’s false claim by citing Trump’s actual words.
“I do need to call out the ranking member for deliberately perpetuating the Democrats’ dishonest claim that Donald Trump praised the Nazis at Charlottesville when he said there were ‘very fine people on both sides,’” Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said, challenging Raskin. “What the ranking member knows, but chose to leave out, is that Trump then said, ‘I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.’ The ranking member knows this, and the fact that he perpetuated that today speaks for itself.”
This rebuttal prompted Johnson to step in and try to have the truth officially removed from the minutes of the hearing. Johnson cut off McClintock’s questioning time to demand that Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. — who was filling in for Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as chairman — have “the gentleman’s words be taken down.”
McClintock “mentioned twice that the ranking member misled, deceived, and lied to this committee,” Johnson continued, making the argument that impugning the words of a committee member violates the rules of decorum. Issa ruled that it did “not violate the rules of decorum.”
