For those who don’t follow Congress closely, the phrase “taken down” probably doesn’t mean much, but for members engaged in debate on Capitol Hill, it’s quite important. NBC News reported, for example, on some unexpected drama on the House floor yesterday.
Action on the floor of the House of Representatives paused for more than an hour Wednesday after Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., listed off the criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.
As the former president’s legal crises have intensified, it’s become common for members to reference Trump’s troubles during floor arguments, though it’s usually Republican peddling conspiratorial nonsense while defending their party’s presumptive 2024 nominee.
Yesterday, however, McGovern took some time to mock his Republican colleagues who traveled to New York to show their support for Trump during his criminal trial. “Maybe they want to distract from the fact that their candidate for president has been indicted more times than he’s been elected,” the Massachusetts Democrat said.
The comment drew a rebuke from Republican Rep. Jerry Carl of Alabama, who was presiding at the time. It prompted McGovern to ask whether it was “unparliamentary to state a fact.”
Undeterred, the Democratic congressman kept going with a series of additional facts.
“We have a presumptive nominee for president facing 88 felony counts, and we’re being prevented from even acknowledging it,” McGovern said. “A candidate for president of the United States is on trial for sending a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign and then fraudulently disguising those payments in violation of the law.
“He’s also charged with conspiring to overturn the election,” McGovern continued, referring to Trump. “He’s also charged with stealing classified information, and a jury has already found him liable for rape and in a civil court. And yet, in this Republican-controlled House, it’s OK to talk about the trial, but you have to call it a ‘sham.’”
It was at this point when Republican Rep. Erin Houchin of Indiana interrupted, insisting that McGovern’s “words be taken down.” As NBC News’ report explained, “Representatives can make such a request if they feel one of their colleagues has used disorderly language.”
In general, the relevant rules are supposed to discourage House members from personally attacking each other during floor remarks. In this instance, however, Republican concluded, after a surprisingly lengthy delay for deliberation, that McGovern wasn’t allowed to go after the former president, either — even though everything McGovern said was almost entirely true.
As part of the process, McGovern was prohibited from speaking again for the rest of the day, though the Massachusetts Democrat said via social media, “Apparently, Republicans are allowed to say that Trump’s trial is a sham, and the judge is corrupt and the jury is rigged. But it’s against the rules for me to even acknowledge that the trials exist.”
Of course, there is a degree of irony to the circumstances: Had Republicans ignored McGovern’s (accurate) remarks, they likely would have gone largely unnoticed. But by targeting the congressman’s list of Trump scandals, far more people saw and heard the comments.
Once again, the GOP might want to familiarize itself with a phenomenon known as the Streisand effect. The Merriam-Webster definition is as good as any: “The Streisand effect is a phenomenon whereby the attempt to suppress something only brings more attention or notoriety to it.”
In other words, the more someone tries to divert attention away from a story, the more it ends up having the opposite effect.
I have no idea whether McGovern planned for this — he is, by any measure, one of Congress’ most clever members — or whether Republicans stumbled into the misstep all on their own. Either way, it was good to see the Democrat’s list get some deserved attention.
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