Tipsheet

The Media's Sick Obsession With Adam Schiff

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  January 24, 2020 8:15 AM

While the rest of America has likely had way too much of impeachment trial manager Rep. Adam Schiff in recent days (if they know who he is at all, that is), the mainstream media can’t get enough.

The California Democrat was “dazzling,” according to CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin:

"I thought it was dazzling. I thought the way he wove through both the facts of the case and the historical context was really remarkable. It was the second-best courtroom address, since it’s like a courtroom, that I ever heard, after a prosecutor named Jonathan Benedict in the Michael Skakel case in Connecticut is the best I ever heard, and it’s still the best, but that was — when you consider the volume of information he covered using the video, as I think Jake mentioned earlier, the — you know, the witness testimony, the documents, it’s very persuasive stuff."

Former top Mueller lawyer Andrew Weissmann likened it to a "Spartacus moment" on MSNBC: 

"This reminds me of the quote from — supposed to be Lincoln — who said, To sin by silence, when they should protest, Makes a coward of men. That’s the people who are thinking it’s better to stay silent and ‘I can do better by trying to do the right thing.’ This is really an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment where people really need to stand up. And I read the same thing which was that this was a speech really aimed at the better angels. And I think Adam Schiff did a really great job."

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CNN's Wolf Blitzer, meanwhile, called Schiff's speech "very powerful and forceful."

Thanks to Tom Elliott, founder and editor of Grabien Media, you can see how bad the obsession is in under two minutes. 

The adulation was enough to make President Trump's reelection team "sick":

Republicans had similar takes. 

“If they mean senatorial-esque by being long-winded and just bloviating for hours on end, then mission accomplished,” former Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz told Fox News about the media's praise for Schiff's opening arguments.