Jay Ashcroft flopped when faced with the most dreaded predicament amongst grandstanding blowhards: a follow-up question
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s attempt to justify his ludicrous threat to have President Joe Biden removed from the state’s electoral ballot spiraled into chaos over the most basic of questions: “How so?”
During a Monday interview with CNN’s Boris Sanchez, the Republican was asked how he justified his threats to have Biden removed from the state’s ballot in retaliation for recent attempts to remove Trump from state ballots on grounds that his actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election constitute insurrection. The constitutionality of such a removal will soon be reviewed by the Supreme Court.
“What would then be your justification for removing Joe Biden from the ballot in Missouri. Has he engaged in your mind in some kind of insurrection?” Sanchez asked.
“There have been allegations that he’s engaged in insurrection,” Ashcroft replied. He was then met with the most dreaded predicament amongst grandstanding blowhards: a follow-up question.
“How so?” Sanchez asked, prompting Ashcroft to demand that Sanchez stop interrupting him. “You can’t say something like that and not back it up,” Sanchez countered.
“You interrupted me before I could back it up,” a flustered Ashcroft complained. “Are you scared of the truth?”
‘What’s your legal argument?’
‘Your honour, it’s the perennial argument of I’m rubber, you’re glue, as put forth in the case of Billy vs Jimmy in the schoolyard, 1954. The teacher in that case argued that Billy was, in fact, glue…’
I’m sorry, but Billy v Jimmy is not consistent with this nations Historical Traditions. Your argument needs to include a valid ruling from between 1776 and a time period that justifies my argument, whether or not the precedent at that time was to provide justice only to land-owning white men.
So sayeth we Court Supreme.
Ashcroft: “Are you scared of the truth?”
Sanchez: “Oh, I am not terrified of the truth at all, seems like you might be.”
You need to watch those clips in the Xitter link. Sanchez is on fucking fire and does not let up.
I’ll watch it somewhere, but it’s not going to be at TwitX.
Edit here: https://youtu.be/pIsVB-H_M_8?feature=shared
The most relevant part starts around 4:22 but the whole thing is good (well, up until the YouTuber jumps in with his take, which fortunately is after the CNN segment)
I couldn’t get over his use if the word “extrajudicial” to describe what’s happening in court cases. What a bumbling moron.
Fantastic. 🍿
I also immediately switched off when the YouTuber started talking.
BTC is actually a pretty well established political YT’er and has some great rundowns of the political climate. I’m sure you’d change your tune if you watched a few vids.
He’s got a very intense delivery style that comes off very used-car-salesman to me. I don’t think he’s wrong about stuff, I just don’t enjoy watching his presentation style.
We need more journalism that pushes back like this.
We certainly do, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves into thinking that would accomplish much with these fuckers. They’ll just start avoiding the journalists that refuse to stay neutral or lob them softballs.
It’s not like their supporters are going to shame them for doing that, either. I’m shocked any Republican talks to any reporter that isn’t from Fox News anymore.
They’ll just start avoiding the journalists that refuse to stay neutral or lob them softballs.
The problem with that is thinking that the follow-up question, “How so?” is anything BUT neutral or a softball. It’s just a basic question; it literally could not be MORE neutral.
This fool could have been on Newsmaxx or OANN and gotten that same question from a friendly interviewer trying to offer him the space to lay out more slanderous innuendo, unaware that Jay Ashcroft is completely unprepared for even that tiny amount of latitude.
I know that’s not your position or what you personally are advocating, but jesus fucking christ that’s an easy one. “So-and-so did something bad.” Response: “How so?”
To blatantly twist a quote from The Godfather, Jay Ashcroft showed up for that interview with nothing but his dick in his hand . . . and his hand wasn’t even full.
Isn’t Missouri the show me State? Is this fucktard going to show any evidence of insurrection or just blather on about how other governors have made the claim of insurrection against Biden? My god Republicans are stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid to the fucking core.
Their business is only in propping up accusations, so he’s just gonna blather.
Sure, but he sucked even at that. “How so?” could have been Ashcroft’s opening to lay out even more baseless slander, but he couldn’t even get that right, lol
You can’t tell me this clown is not inbred. Or at least the progeny of some sort of greasy-haired weasel creature.
some sort of greasy-haired weasel creature.
Brutal imperialist torture lawyer, as it happens.
The tragic end result of a meerkat left alone with a vial of human growth hormone and a copy of atlas shrugged
He’s the son of former (G.W. Bush) U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft… soooo…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Ashcroft
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ashcroft
https://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/justice-is-blind-but-most-visitors-aren-t-1078680.php
He’s the son of former (G.W. Bush) U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft… soooo…
I first mistakenly parsed your sentence as saying Ashcroft is the son of BOTH G.W. Bush and John Ashcroft, like some kind of satanic love child or something, lol. What’s really bad is that my brain didn’t just puke it back up immediately but spent a second or two there, like, yeah, I can kinda see that . . .
The follow-up question was literally “What accusations are you making against Biden to justify removing him from the ballot?”
Like dude, you can literally make up anything and your base would eat it up. You couldn’t even do that. What a moron, and he’ll still lose almost zero support from his base because they didn’t actually pay attention.
Like dude, you can literally make up anything and your base would eat it up.
The reason doesn’t matter. This is purely a tit-for-tat because Trump fell off the ballot in Colorado, Maine, and… I guess now Nevada? His base will still eat it up. Nobody who regularly votes for him is going to see the back end of this interview, just the headline, because they all think CNN stands for “Communist News Network”.
you can literally make up anything and your base would eat it up
They know.
They do. Every day.
Ashcroft got absolutely roasted holy Christ. “Duh duh duh huh what??? There have been allegations! I just don’t know them”
What a snowflake. He literally whines about being interrupted.
Gosh, how rude. Ashcroft wanted to ride out the clock with a gish gallop and the mean interviewer wouldn’t let him. What happened to journalistic standards?
Why would Rolling Stone link to Shitter rather than directly to the CNN interview?
They are enabling their oppressor
Edit: I tried to post the clip from CNN. After it hanging because it was stuck on the pop ups to allow it to track me even off their site and requests to push non stop ads to my cell phone in the middle of meetings and dinner I gave up.
There has to be a way.
Someone upthread linked to the Brian Tyler Cohen video as an alternate video source (the exchange that is the focus of the above article starts just after the 4 minute mark):