MSNBC analyst and former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill has long been criticized for unhinged rhetoric. That was evident on “Morning Joe” recently when McCaskill said that the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members was akin to Putin “disappearing” people. It is not the first such analogy by McCaskill, who has called those opposing the censorship under the Biden Administration “Putin lovers.” However, just for the record, Putin does not generally disappear people by putting them on flights back to their countries. He tends more toward nerve agents than immigration agents to remove people.
McCaskill’s comments have been echoed by others on the left, even before the election. On ABC’s “The View,” Whoopi Goldberg told viewers how Trump is already committed to being a dictator who will “put you people away … take all the journalists … take all the gay folks … move you all around and disappear you.”
I have expressed concerns over the alleged failure to comply with the order of U.S. District Judge James “Jeb” Boasberg in his order to stop such flights and return those in transit. To the extent that the White House is arguing that this is a non-justiciable matter, that is an argument to raise on appeal. I have criticized some judges for intrusion into areas of presidential discretion. However, the Trump Administration would only undermine such cases by defying court orders.
Trump struck the perfect tone after coming into office by pledging to comply with opposing court orders while appealing them. That is what he did in his first term with considerable success.
Nevertheless, the analogy of McCaskill is the latest example of the rising hysteria on the left. She stated on MSNBC:
“We’ve got to make sure that people cannot be picked up and disappeared like his buddy Putin does. Like his buddy. He does like his buddy Xi does, like his biddy Kim Jong Un does. They do this? They disappear people and many times murder them. So we’re not going to go down that road. I don’t care how much the president screams irresponsibly about impeachment, there’s no way.”
McCaskill tends to paint those with opposing views as Nazis or Putin sympathizers. After one hearing (where I also testified against the censorship system under the Biden Administration), McCaskill appeared on MSNBC to denounce the witnesses (Sen. Chuck Grassley, Sen. Ron Johnson, and former Rep. Gabbard) as “Putin apologists” and Putin lovers. She exclaimed, “I mean, look at this, I mean, all three of those politicians are Putin apologists. I mean, Tulsi Gabbard loves Putin.”
She has also said that Trump is “more dangerous than Hitler” — a person who committed the genocide of millions and triggered a war killing tens of millions. Yeah, that Hitler.
The problem with the escalating rhetoric is that there is nowhere to go from here. You jumped the shark. What is left after saying that Trump is more dangerous than Hitler and is disappearing people like Putin? That leaves only Ebola and cholera.
There is a danger to such “rage rhetoric” when it gives a license to others to take violent action, including attempting to assassinate a justice or a president. Indeed, once the left hit the maximal level of panic politics, you cannot ratchet down without being yourself subject to attack from the mob. You have to keep the rhetoric at a DEFCON 1 level.
There is another possibility worth considering. Every administration has come into power with sweeping changes. They are hashed out in the courts. If history is any guide, it is likely that Trump will win many but also lose some of these cases. That includes challenges to the authority of courts.
You can criticize these moves without reaching for the Hitler and Putin analogies. We have the most stable, most successful constitutional system in the history of the world. This is no constitutional crisis. We have this. Our constitution and courts will resolve any conflicts and we will continue as a free people. The only thing likely to “disappear” are the ratings and viewers of networks who traffic in rage rhetoric and panic politics.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Well, Jonathon, that was a great analogy. Libs act like putin, by having kangaroo courts, and crooked judges. The nerve agent murder, I had forgotten.
More good news!!!
“I’ve never seen anything like this in over 40 years of polling. The Democratic Party ratings have collapsed from a 47% favorable down to 29, 27 in some of these polls, and that’s an incredible loss of moderate, working-class voters,”
“Those [are the] kinds of voters that the Democratic Party needs to win elections, and it’s being shrunk to a base of left-wing advocates like Bernie Sanders and AOC who were touring the country carrying the Democratic banner. That’s not helping,”
— Former Clinton pollster Mark Penn
As long as you keep doubling down on the stupid and crazy, with far-left wing Democrats like AOC and Sanders, you will keep losing!
How marvelous!
Everyone’s a loser . Macy’s flagship 7 story building GONE! sure, Musk brought the astronauts back in an old time splash into the water pod.
No one is being educated anymore. There won’t be engineers and rocketry very soon. They have donkeys in LA now.
McCaskill is evil.
LOL, look at all these nationalist populists claiming they’re conservative. And why are they “conservative?” Because they are against child sex changes, they hate illegal immigrants, and the hate affirmative action. LOL, like those were Reagan’s top priorities.
Is it conservative to call for peace at any cost? No. These Trumptards think they’re making a “conservative” argument by saying the Ukraine war needs to stop right now even if a democratic state is at risk, even if it risks further war in Europe, even if means destabilizing geopolitics and trade. Ever heard of Hanoi Jane, idiots, who clamored for end to the Vietnam War at any cost? That’s who you are.
All we are saying, is give WAR a chance.
I don’t suppose you are in the Ukrainian—or Russian, for that matter—army, are you?
George says: Anonymous, you seem to have forgotten that Boasberg has ruled in Trump’s favor most if the time… Who committed perjury? Who are you referring to? What case?
George, the fact that you regularly demonstrate your stupidity doesn’t mean you’re going to get away with pretending to be totally ignorant of the Democrat crime wave carried out in Washington DC courts. You think Americans who aren’t your fellow Cheap Fake Americans have forgotten about your felonious “Trump-Russia Dossia” and the election fixing Obama crime wave that accompanied it?
WHO committed perjury in the FISA courts that Boasberg sat as one of the judges of – and was the Chief Justice overseeing those FISA courts?
Sure George; here’s a short list to jog your memory:
Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch
Obama’s Attorney General Sally Yates
Obama’s FBI Director James Comey
Obama’s former FBI Director Robert Mueller
Obama’s former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe
Obama’s FBI lawyer Kevin Klinesmith
…. and about a dozen other of Obama’s DoJ and FBI headquarters lawyers.
WHAT case George?
Every single FISA counterespionage warrant Obama’s felon Democrat lawyers applied for based on Obama’s illegal “Trump-Russia Dossier”. The one that Obama and Clinton illegally hired two foreign spies – the Russian one being under investigation by the FBI at the time for espionage on behalf of Putin.
They repeatedly perjured themselves to Boasberg and other judges that their illegal “dossier” was US intelligence agency evidence, not commissioned political lies and smears.
They repeatedly perjured themselves to Boasberg and other judges that their “dossier” had been verified by the required “Woods Procedures” before being presented to Boasberg and others judges.
And each time they committed the felony of uttering false documents to Boasberg and his FISA court: the same “Trump-Russia Dossier”.
Furthermore George: Boasberg as your hero judge of the week has not pulled a single one of them back into his courtroom – or any of the other FISA courtrooms that he oversaw – to face jail sanctions for repeatedly committing those felonies right before his eyes, in the court rooms he was responsible for.
How long do you plan on alternately playing dumb and then playing Constitutional Expert on the same day, George?
Please vote for your favourite corrupt, scumbag, weasel, anti-America, pro-criminal fake-law judge below. The competition is fierce.
1. John Robert (D)
2. Amy Coney Barrett (D)
3. Amy Berman Jackson (D)
4. James Boasberg (D)
5. Ana Reyes (D)
6. Amit Mehta (D)
7. Arthur Engoron (D)
8. Beryl Howell (D)
9. Roger Taney (D)
10. Ana Reyes (D)
Post your top selection below. Winners will be announced in a forthcoming post.
Your list needs an infusion of DEI
How about
11. Clarence Thonas (R)
12. Aileen Cannon (R)
13. Matt Kacsmaryk (R)
This vote is not to identify the top law abiding judges. This vote is to identify your favourite corrupt, scumbag, weasel, anti-America, pro-criminal fake-law judge.
The United States of America is suffering a coup d’état and rebellion by the Juristocracy, and Professor Turley is vacationing in communist Germany?
If I am not wrong, freedom of speech in Germany consists of speech approved by the de facto communist government; the born, raised, and steeped communist Frau Comrade General Secretary Angela Merkel served as a de facto dictator for sixteen (16) years and only recently left office; German tariffs on the U.S. are excessive; Germany failed to meet its NATO budgetary requirements, etc. ad Marx.
Did the Good Professor just defect from the Constitution to the Communist Manifesto and back into the Deep Deep State “Swamp”?
Turley always “expresses concerns” whenever the Trump administration is doing these patently illegal things but how much does shredding the constitution and separation of powers matter when you get those big checks from Fox News?
Another CNN commie plant: here to assure us Trump is “shredding the constitution and separation of powers”.
You know: like when he repeatedly sent his Attorney Generals and FBI Directors to perjure themselves to the FISA courts with the illegal “Biden-China Dossier” he illegally paid foreign spies to write and “leak”, in order to get illegal FISA spy warrants to violate thousands of Americans Bill of Rights protections.
All so that he could use the FBI and those illegal warrants as his personal STASI in hopes of fixing the presidential election, or removing Biden if that failed and Biden won!
Trump eliminatingthe Separation Of Powers by claiming that he, Trump, can take those student loans provided by Congress and personally transfer those loans from the adult students who entered those loan contracts to the shoulders of blue collar American taxpayers instead.
Damn you for doing those things, Trump! Damn you Turley for getting a paycheck from CNN to help Trump do that!
OT for Dennis and others who fixate on every minor fluctuation that purportedly fortells the demise of Musk or Trump
Financial Times reports that X is now valued at $44B the same as the price Musk paid for it
So much for the idiot stories that it was being overshadowed by BlueSkies or whatever.
https://www.ft.com/content/d4616dec-c4c7-417f-8549-134710bbc5b1
Chief Justice Roberts does not support the Constitution, the Acts of Congress, the President, or the Vote of Americans.
The Supreme Court of 1869 found that because secession is not prohibited, secession is prohibited, and the Supreme Court of 1973 found abortion to be a federal, constitutional right and freedom, but the Supreme Court of 2025 cannot find that the head of the executive branch may exercise executive power exclusively as the Constitution does, and it cannot find that an Act of Congress gives the President the power to order particular aliens and enemies “to depart out of the territory of the United States” “during the continuance of this act” or “whenever…any…predatory incursion shall be perpetrated….”
__________________________________________________________________
FIFTH CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES:
At the Second Session,
Begun and held at the city of Philadelphia, in the state of Pennsylvania, on Monday, the thirteenth of November, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven.
An Act Concerning Aliens.
SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That it shall be lawful for the President of the United States at any time during the continuance of this act, to order all such aliens as he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, or shall have reasonable grounds to suspect are concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations against the government thereof, to depart out of the territory of the United States,…
An Act Respecting Alien Enemies
SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government, and the President of the United States shall make public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies.
Just when I thought it might be getting safer to read about retired Dimocrats, “Now comes Claire McKaskill………..”
Should President Trump ever fulfill her fantasy, then I would plead with him: Dear sir, by all that’s righteous, please put Claire on that list!
Those networks that invite McCaskill to share her views on what’s going on in the country are losing viewership every week.
I’m gratified to see that Prof. Turley has chosen to shine some light on this former person of influence.
Of course what Claire should be told, along with Whoopi, is BE AFRAID…….BE VERY AFRAID…….assuming they’re on the list to be disappeared as they believe.
Indeed…..and in the mean time, just simply push that “Channel” button either up or down on your tv remote. It’s quick, easy and legal! 🙂