Sounds Like Projection & Misinformation

Human scum

The president tweeted this today: “Corrupt politician Adam Schiff’s lies are growing by the day. Keep fighting tough, Republicans, you are dealing with human scum who have taken Due Process and all of the Republican Party’s rights away from us during the most unfair hearings in American History. But we are winning big, and they will soon be on our turf.”

Human scum? Given all the felony indictments, guilty pleas and convictions that the felons the president surrounded himself with, that sounds like the president is projecting his own moral character and temperament. Psychological projection is a defence mechanism the ego uses to defend itself against unconscious impulses or qualities by denying their existence in themselves but attributing them to others.

Not working

Other projections from the GOP are common at present. One is the false assertion that democrats are not working but are wasting time with impeachment hearings. One of the things that constitutes working for congress is legislating and legislating in a democracy requires compromising. If there is no compromise, then it's not democracy and instead is some form of tyranny, oligarchy or single-party rule.

At present, congressional GOP members refuse to compromise and when there is legislation, the GOP Senate ignores it instead of opening up communications on compromises. In fact, while democrats have done their job the GOP is proud of not doing its job. For example, Senate majority leader McConnell openly calls himself the ‘grim reaper’ who will kill any House legislation he dislikes. As of about six months ago, the Grim Reaper had killed over 100 pieces of legislation the House had passed. Legislation requires compromise when the House and Senate are controlled by different parties.

It goes without saying that when circumstances demand it, the House needs to hold an impeachment inquiry. That is working under House rules, despite GOP allegations of single party unfairness and refusal to compromise. The Senate will deal with impeachment in its own way according to its own rules. Legislation requires compromise when the House and Senate are controlled by different parties. Impeachment does not require compromise between the parties.

Lies

The president’s tweet quoted above accuses Adam Schiff of lying. In view of the president’s staggering public record of making over 13,000 false and misleading statements as of October 9, 2019, he is arguably projecting once again. No other president in recent history has come close to this level of blatant contempt for truth and disrespect for people who do value honesty. With a track record like that, the president has earned and deserves no trust from anyone. That some people choose to trust him despite a record of chronic lying is their own choice made for their own reasons.

Some House GOP members are advancing a debunked narrative that the Ukraine, not Russia, interfered with the 2016 election to help the president win the Electoral College vote. In her opening statement this morning, Fiona Hill, former White House Russia expert testified that this narrative is false and harmful to US interests and to the Ukraine. Her written speech on this point reads as follows:

“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.

The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.

The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.

..... 

I say this not as an alarmist, but as a realist.” (emphasis added)

In view of existing evidence, the false GOP Ukraine interference narrative is at least misinformation and lies at worst.