Prior to House Intelligence Committee Chairman and lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff’s appearance on NBC News’ Meet The Press this morning, Donald Trump took to Twitter to rant (and threaten?) Schiff. From NBC News:
President Donald Trump on Sunday suggested House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., will pay a “price” for his role in the impeachment saga. “Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man,” Trump tweeted. “He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!”
The president posted those comments after writing earlier Sunday that his impeachment “is a massive election interference the likes of which has never been seen before.”
Speaking with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Schiff, the lead House impeachment manager, said he thought Trump’s tweet is “intended to be” a threat to him. Trump responded later Sunday by calling Schiff a “conman.”
Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!
During an appearance on NBC’s Meet The Press, host Chuck Todd repeatedly quizzed Democratic presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, on his relationship with African-American voters and whether being openly gay could be an obstacle in winning their votes.
Reading from an interview with Reverend Rodric Reid of the Uplift Church in Indianapolis, Todd recounted Reid’s thoughts on Buttigieg’s marriage to his husband, Chasten.
“‘I guarantee it’s going to be an obstacle for the candidate from South Bend,” read the quote from Reid. “That is really still a touchy subject, specifically and especially in the African American church.”
“Now, I think it could be overcome, because we are gradually getting to a point of, and I don’t want to say ‘accept,’ but we are getting to a point of realizing this is the culture that we are going to have to begin to live with and adapt to it,” added Reid.
Todd then turned to the Mayor and asked how his outreach efforts to the Black community are going.
“They’re going well,” said the 37-year-old mayor. “And we are working very hard to engage people across the party, but especially black voters, who expect you to demonstrate, especially when you’re new on the scene, what your values are and how you’re going to promote policies that lift them up.”
Buttigieg then pivoted to Donald Trump adding, “I also think we have a moment on our hands when we can do the exact opposite of what the president has done.”
“The president has used identity as a wedge, used race as a wedge to divide people who have common interests,” the young mayor explained.
Instead of dividing people, Buttigieg suggested recognizing our “distinctive identities,” whether the Black or LGBTQ community, could help to “build bridges, to reach out to people different from us, knowing that anybody who has been on the short end of an equation of exclusion has a way to sympathize with people who’ve had different experiences with exclusion in this country.”
“And if we build a solidarity around that, then people who have, for whatever reason, felt a lack of belonging or felt exclusion or felt discrimination in this country, even though those patterns of discrimination are very, very different, when all of us come together, we win, and we are all better off,” he added.
‘Meet The Press” host Chuck Todd and Mayor Pete Buttigieg
Todd wasn’t done with the subject, though.
The NBC host told Buttigieg he’d spoken to African-American congressmen who like what they’ve heard from the mayor and could see themselves supporting his campaign, but are concerned some of their more socially conservative constituents may have issues with his sexuality.
Todd wondered what could Buttigieg do to win over those voters?
Noting that he won his second term as mayor in a 80 percent landslide as an out candidate, Mayor Pete answered, “I’d invite them to look at what happened in South Bend.”
He continued saying he was confident “that American voters, especially Democratic voters, will not discriminate when the opportunity comes up to choose the right leader for the future.”
It is worth noting that a recent Post and Courier/Change Research Poll of likely Democratic primary voters in South Carolina, which holds the third presidential primary in the country and is the first real gauge of African-American voters mood, shows Buttigieg has recently surged into third place with 11% behind former Vice President Joe Biden (37%) and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (17%).
So it would appear that Mayor Pete’s outreach to the Black community is showing positive results.
You can watch Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s full interview on NBC’s Meet the Press below. The discussion on Buttigieg and the Black vote happens at the 12:57 mark.
In an exclusive interview with Meet the Press, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-Ind.) talks to Chuck Todd about his 2020 presidential bid and why he believes Democrats are looking for generational change.
A devout Episcopalian, Buttigieg says at one point that the president “acts in a way” that is inconsistent with the scripture he hears in church.
“It’s something that really frustrates me because the hypocrisy is unbelievable,” he said during the interview. “Here you have somebody who not only acts in a way that is not consistent with anything that I hear in scripture or in church, where it’s about lifting up the least among us and taking care of strangers, which is another word for immigrants, and making sure that you’re focusing your effort on the poor.”
“But also personally how you’re supposed to conduct yourself,” he added, saying that much of Christianity calls for “humbling yourself before others.”
I see folks on Twitter getting crunchy about Buttigieg getting an inordinate amount of attention these days, but I disagree.
He’s got folks getting him on talk shows like MTP, The View and GMA, so more power to him.
I don’t hear anyone coming away, after listening to him share his positions, thinking he’s not worthy of the attention.
I think he’s moved beyond the ‘niche’ thing as the ‘gay candidate’ to impressing a lot of people with his commonsense approach to governance. Two terms as an executive leader, and years as a military veteran, make a solid base for this guy.
Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton, speaking to Chuck Todd on NBC News’’ “MEET THE PRESS” addressed her evolution on marriage equality:
“On same-sex marriage, like a lot of people, including our president, I did evolve. And I was not raised to even imagine this.
And I’m thrilled now that it is the law of the land. And I have a lot of good friends who are now able to be married because of the changes we’ve made legally and constitutionally.”
Terrible misstep by Chuck Todd of Meet The Press this morning as the panel discussed the deaths of nine black church-goers at the hands of a young white racist this week.
Instead of focusing on the race issue, Todd swung right and aired a clip of only black men currently in prison for using guns to kill.
“The circumstances you are about to see are very different from the racist violence in Charleston,” Todd explained. “In this case, in the inmates are African-American that you’re going to hear from. But their lessons remain important.”
“And we simply ask you to look at this as a color-blind issue that’s about just simply gun violence,” he added.
Following the video clip of several tearful black men who said that they never intended to kill anyone when they picked up a gun, Todd returned to his panel of guests for comments.
“Passing a law isn’t going to change the culture,” Todd opined.
“But passing the right law — passing a law that frankly we’re not going to pass would take a lot of guns out of circulation, would make the gun not the normal thing one reaches for when one wants to aggrandize ones self-esteem,” columnist Eugene Robinson argued.
Robinson agreed that the video of the black men had been “powerful,” but he said that it did not fit the circumstances.
“There wasn’t a terribly diverse set of people who were talking,” the columnist observed. “Right now, we’re talking about a horrific crime committed by a white man, we’re talking about the search for two escaped murderers who are white men.”
“So we should point out that this is not just an African-American problem.”
“No, no, no, no,” Todd replied. “And it wasn’t intended to be that way.”
Painfully disconnected. Good on Eugene Robinson for bringing proper perspective to the “discussion.”
‘Meet The Press’ host David Gregory said that no pro-gun rights senators would agree to go on the show on Sunday.
“We reached out to all 31 pro-gun rights senators in the new Congress to invite them on the program to share their views on the subject this morning,” he said. “We had no takers.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) joined the show to discuss a greater need for gun control. She announced that Senate Democrats would intrduce a new bill banning assault weapons on the first day of the new Congress in January.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a staunch advocate for gun control, also appeared on the show. Bloomberg helped found the group “Mayors Against Illegal Guns.”
Prior to House Intelligence Committee Chairman and lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff’s appearance on NBC News’ Meet The Press this morning, Donald Trump took to Twitter to rant (and threaten?) Schiff. From NBC News: 
