CNN This Morning
May 23, 2023
7:30 a.m. Eastern
POPPY HARLOW: Because we have you guys -- brilliant political minds -- I want everyone to listen to what James Comer -- Congressman, Republican Congressman -- said yesterday, Obviously, he is the chair of the House Oversight Committee, and this ongoing probe he has into Biden and the Biden family. Here's what he said on Fox yesterday.
CONGRESSMAN JAMES COMER (R-KY) (from Fox & Friends First): You look at the polling, and right now, Donald Trump is seven points ahead of Joe Biden and trending upward. Joe Biden's trending downward. And I believe that the media is looking around scratching their head, and they're realizing that the American people are keeping up with our investigation, and they realize something's wrong here.
HARLOW: So he's linking his investigation to Biden's poll numbers. It's reminiscent of what Kevin McCarthy said in 2015, vis-a-vis Benghazi and Hillary Clinton. Let's listen.
CONGRESSMAN KEVIN McCARTHY (R-CA) (from Fox News, dated Sept. 29, 2015): Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.
HARLOW: He a few days later walked that back, Errol, and said, "No, now, I didn't imply in any way that the work is political. Of course it's not."
ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR (laughing): Yeah, okay. Well, it cost him the speakership in 2015. On the other hand, he's the speaker now, so perhaps the politics are changing. I think what you saw from Comer is, look, saying the quiet part out loud, saying on national television what you would normally say in a closed room with donors or inside your caucus as you're making political strategy.
It's nice that he sort of laid out for us exactly what they're doing. I think there'll be a backlash -- I don't think Americans like to see their government being used in such a nakedly partisan fashion. I think it will cause a lot of people to discount whatever it is they come up with, and, in the end, he may wish that perhaps he had kept his mouth shut.