It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. Well, when the three Democrats are Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and Ilhan Omar, and they are all showing up for a joint interview on CNN to complain about how mean Speaker Kevin McCarthy was to them, then you can be sure of a few laughs.

Dana Bash drew the short end of the straw on CNN and ended up having all three in the studio today, allowing them their own personal little Festivus and letting them explain themselves. There really are no good explanations for some of the things that have been done and said by these three Democrats, but boy, did they try.

Let’s start with Eric Swalwell. We all remember how Kevin McCarthy just eviscerated him to the press just this last week. Well, Swalwell has some hurt feelings about how McCarthy pointed out that he was a target of a Chinese spy who got a leetle too close to him.

Did you happen to catch that timeline? Swalwell admits to having “ties” to this Chinese spy for three years, from 2012 to 2015. He had no idea what she was doing until the FBI told him, at which point he cut said ties. His defense? “The FBI never investigated me or said that I did anything wrong, and anyone who had access to the FBI report before never had a problem with it.” He even cites Donald Trump as having the ability to see the FBI report and not using it. Um, when this news came out in December 2020, Swalwell specifically blamed Trump or his allies for leaking this information in order to “discredit” him. And it may very well be true that Swalwell never gave Fang Fang any information. But he had already been associated with someone who is known to have slept with other politicians in order to get closer to them. If you haven’t noticed, Swalwell has a bit of an ego. Are we really to believe there was no ongoing affair happening? The argument is never about whether he was sleeping with a Chinese spy, it’s all about whether he was giving her sensitive or classified information. What if he’s just a dumbass who got caught with his pants down with a Chinese spy, and the FBI merely confirmed that she hadn’t gained enough leverage over him to start blackmailing him for information? Just because other committee chairs or Republican Speakers of the House decided not to kick him off the Intelligence Committee before this doesn’t mean that Swalwell is innocent. It means this story didn’t become public knowledge until the end of 2020, and that gave Kevin McCarthy the leverage to not have to break the story himself before tossing Swalwell off the committee. I don’t exactly hear a great wail from Democrat voters that Swalwell has been unjustly punished, do you?

Let’s move on to Adam Schiff, who has had quite a week for himself. First he gets kicked off the Intelligence Committee, then he whines on TikTok about it, then he launches his Senate campaign, and then he gets slapped with an ethics complaint for using official Congressional footage from the first impeachment trial in his campaign video.

Bash doesn’t seems like she’s willing to give Schiff much of a pass on anything. She points out that the Mueller Report doesn’t back up any of the “Russian collusion” claims that Schiff spent years talking about.

Democrat Adam Schiff triples down on the Russian collusion hoax. pic.twitter.com/T4HmvT1QVe

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 29, 2023

She goes on to point out that one of Speaker McCarthy’s arguments against Schiff was absolutely true. Oops.

"Ahead of the first Trump impeachment, you said the committee had not spoken to a whistleblower. In fact, that turned out not to be true."

ADAM SCHIFF: "I should've been more clear." pic.twitter.com/6qZsQbTwdE

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 29, 2023

Good for Bash for speaking up and not just letting Schiff set his “woe is me” narrative. Again, if you look at Schiff’s Senate campaign launch video, without the boogeyman of Donald Trump, he really is nothing and has nothing of substance to offer.

And then there is Ilhan Omar, who opted for the “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer” defense. She is “on a journey,” you see, and had NO IDEA that there were tropes about Jews and money. After all, she’s just a caveman who got thawed out by scientists a Somali Muslim immigrant refugee who is being blocked from being on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar says she was "not aware that the word 'hypnotized' was a trope" and "wasn't aware of the fact that there are tropes about Jews and money." pic.twitter.com/MgmdBOvPCN

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 29, 2023

Adam Schiff having to sit poker-faced next to Ilhan Omar as she talks about how she just didn’t understand her words is possibly the best part of that video. Is it really better to claim dumb ignorance over anti-Semitism? Well, this is the same Ilhan Omar who said that keeping her off the Foreign Affairs Committee, and by extension the Africa subcommittee, is RACIST.

As the only African born, not being on the Africa subcommittee is not just an elimination of a unique voice but an elimination of all the voices that have never been heard on a committee on the continent.

It’s racist, xenophobic and discriminatory.

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 26, 2023

Why have an Africa subcommittee at all if Ilhan Omar can’t be on it, really. So, she’s just an ignoramus who had NO CLUE about anti-Semitic tropes that she gladly posted on Twitter well before she was ever in Congress, but Speaker McCarthy is a racist xenophobe who is discriminating against HER. The irony is so thick you could chew on it.

I’m not sure that these three Democrats did themselves any favors by going on CNN and whining about getting kicked off their committees. As Speaker McCarthy said, they are only blocked from these specific committees. They can still have other committee assignments – which is more than the Democrats allowed Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’m not a fan of the tit-for-tat, but this is the game that DEMOCRATS chose to play two years ago. There really should be no whining that their chickens just came home to roost.

Featured image: composite image of CNN Center (via Ken Lund on Flickr, cropped, CC BY-SA 2.0), and Representative Adam Schiff, Representative Eric Swalwell, and Representative Ilhan Omar via Wikimedia Commons, official Congressional portraits, public domain