Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), a fervent anti-Trump Democrat seeking to win the late Dianne Feinstein‘s Senate seat in November, wasn’t likely going to appreciate anything Donald Trump said in the debate last Tuesday against Vice President Kamala Harris.
The lead prosecutor in Trump’s first impeachment case, which found the President guilty of foreign interference in the 2020 election and obstruction, Schiff has been highly critical of what he characterizes as the potential (and past) dangers of a compromised Trump and his ability to rightfully represent America’s interest on the global stage.
[NOTE: Schiff’s warning about Trump’s weakness when it comes to global autocrats — i.e., “strongmen” — is an alarm Harris also sounded during the debate, portraying Trump as vulnerable to “flattery and favors” by foreign dictators who “can manipulate him” — a situation she claimed his own former military staff called a “disgrace.” See below.}
🔥🔥Vice President Harris: “Those dictators are rooting for you because they know they can manipulate you with flattery and favors” pic.twitter.com/FmojGd69hL
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) September 11, 2024
For all Schiff heard from Trump during the debate about the economy, immigration, abortion and other contentious issues, the Congressman wrote to constituents today to reveal a moment from Donald Trump on stage that Schiff said “scared” him.
Immigrants are not eating cats.
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) September 10, 2024
Doctors are not killing babies after they’re born.
Students are not having surgery during study hall.
The truth?
The GOP is trying to strip away our freedoms and lay the groundwork to deny the election.
And these are their absurd distractions.
Prefacing it by saying that, unlike the debate’s main meme, his concern “doesn’t involve eating cats and dogs,” Schiff emphasized this quote from Trump:
“Viktor Orbán, one of the most respected men, they call him a strongman, prime minister of Hungary… they said why is the whole world blowing up? Why is it blowing up? He said because ‘you need Trump as President. They were afraid of him… China was afraid of him. North Korea was afraid of him. Russia was afraid of him…’ Viktor Orbán said it. He said ‘the most respected, most feared person is Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was President.’”
Donald Trump, at the September debate with Kamala Harris
Schiff excoriated Trump for publicly praising Orban, describing the “ultra-conservative” Hungarian prime minister as someone “who has rolled back human rights, eviscerated their democracy, limited the freedoms of the press, and cozied up to Russia.”
[NOTE: The view of Orban as an autocratic enemy of real democracy is one that many American conservatives have ignored, but which groups like Human Rights Watch have long espoused.]
Schiff’s language characterizing Orban is nearly identical to how he describes what Trump hopes to do in a second term, including accusing Trump of having “cozied up to Putin and the Kremlin.”
Trump’s Orban praise is a warning, Schiff says, asserting that “democratic countries” — unlike the virtual dictatorships of the likes of Orban, Putin, and Kim Jong-Un — “are terrified of the prospect of a second Trump presidency.”
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