The absurdity of the Democrats’ ongoing Russia obsession after the hostile Mueller investigation was unable to find anything to hang Trump on, was not lost on Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz Thursday. During a House Judiciary hearing, Gaetz tore into Nadler for wasting the American people’s time with their Trump-deranged endeavors when there are more serious issues — like the humanitarian crisis on the border — to focus on.

The Democrat-led Judiciary Committee voted on Thursday to authorize subpoenas for 12 witnesses as part of their never-ending inquisition of President Donald Trump, Politico reported.

On a party-line vote, the committee empowered Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) to issue subpoenas to current and former Trump administration officials who were central figures in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation of Russian contacts with the Trump campaign. The subpoena list also includes Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, in addition to some of Mueller’s key witnesses: former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and former White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter.

Some of Nadler’s comments during the hearing were so ridiculous and off-base, they had to be stricken from the record.

“The purpose of the markup, the subject matter of this markup, are subpoenas to deal with two very, very serious subjects,” Nadler began. “One is the child abuse — frankly negligent homicide going on at the border by this administration, and we have to get to the bottom of it and that’s why we have these subpoenas. And the other are the flagrant abuses of power and obstruction of justices also by this president, and we have to get to the bottom of that,” he said.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Nadler then went even further, saying that the subjects of the markup were “the child abuse, and as I said, negligent homicide and systematic torture of children …”

At this point, Rep. Doug Collins (R- Georgia), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, objected.

“This is completely out of order,” he said irritably. [Democrats until recently had refused the Trump administration’s request for emergency funding to address the humanitarian crisis at the border].

Nadler insisted on continuing. “The subject of this hearing is the child abuse, and… and… and abuse going on at the border and the abuses of power by the president. Uh, excuse me, the subject is the, is the — by the …”

“Point of order!” Collins exclaimed. “I move to take the gentleman’s words down.”

“What words?” Nadler asked sheepishly.

Collins suggested taking a short break so they could discuss why the Judiciary chairman isn’t allowed under House rules to make spurious accusations of criminal wrong-doing against the president of the United States.

After consulting with his aides, Nadler withdrew his words about the president obstructing justice.

“I will withdraw those words and say that the systematic use of power by the president to–uh– by the administration — to–uh defy the subpoenas by this committee and other committees.”

After consulting with his aides some more, he asked for unanimous consent to withdraw his previous words.

Then he tried one more time to express himself appropriately.

“The purpose of this markup is to consider the child abuse — and other terrible things happening at the border and the subjects that we discussed a moment ago about the administration and to issue subpoenas to get to the bottom of both of them,” he said.

At this point, the Republican congressman from Florida spoke up.

The very different speaking styles of the two congressmen — Nadler halting, uneasy and inarticulate; Gaetz fiery and flowing — were striking.

Nadler seemed to be ticking off far-left talking points he didn’t even believe, and, frankly, seemed to be under the weather or heavily sedated. Gaetz, on the other hand, passionately conveyed his righteous anger and disgust with the Democrats’ destructive tactics.

“I believe House Democrats need to take a hint from the American people,” Rep. Gaetz began. “The vast majority of the American people do not support this impeachment in drag that continues to fester up in the House Judiciary Committee.”

“I would suggest that you need to move on to issues that impact the lives of the American people, not your own politics and the affliction of your own Trump Derangement Syndrome,” he added.

Full text of Gaetz’ remarks below:

During the last Congress, it was all about the Mueller report! It didn’t matter that committees in the House and Senate had found that there was no criminal conspiracy with Russia. We just had to keep calling the president an agent of a hostile foreign power while we waited for the Mueller report. Well, then we get the Mueller report. The Mueller report concludes that there’s no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Well then it can’t be about the written word of the Mueller report. We gotta get Mr. Mueller here. He’s got to be here, he’s got to bring it to life with his words. So very well, we prepared. No Republican objected to Mueller coming. He’s on his way next week. But now, we’re here voting on these subpoenas because it still won’t end with Mueller’s testimony! Even if Mueller comes and answers your questions, you already know that you want to bring in these 12 additional witnesses regardless of what Mr. Mueller says. So it kinda begs the question, why bring Mueller in in the first place — because this is never going to be over. And that’s really the message to the American people. They’re never going to get over this. They couldn’t deal with the fact that Donald Trump won the election when all the media pundits and all the Democrat talking heads said he had zero chance to win. Remember, her was supposed to win 100 million to zero according to the FBI lovebirds [Peter Strzok and Lisa Page]. But he wins, and they can’t deal with it so then they have to go delegitimize the presidency through all these endeavors and now we’ve got the dispositive proof. I don’t think there are any Americans who truly believe there was a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia who are not Democrat members of Congress. So now we are in a circumstance where the only way to get them to not focus on this Trump/Russia stuff is to take them out of power. Because as long as they have the committee gavels, this is the deal — this is the show. There could be endless hearings, endless reports that the president wasn’t engaged in a criminal conspiracy. I think that a better endeavor would be to figure out why the heck the president was falsely accused for two years. How do we get to a point where political opposition research — dirt — that was paid for by Democrats, polluted by Russians, shuttled into the senior levels of our government by deep state actors like Bruce and Nellie Ohr … How did all of that function as a basis to divide us and distract us?

Gaetz agreed with a congresswoman who had earlier declared that the committee was “losing focus.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re definitely losing focus!” he laughed. “We should be focused on reducing prescription drug prices, we should be focused on the nearly 5,000 people who show up every day at the Southern border that the Trump administration has been talking about.”

We should be focused on ways to limit burdens on Americans so they can live the full potential of their lives. But they’ll never get over it. There will never be an end for them. And that’s what’s truly sad. Because we have 300 million-plus Americans who are counting on us to be the people’s House — to do the work that rises to the great virtue of the greatest country that ever lived. When I hear my colleagues talk about humanity and being humane — just think about the fact that it was your own Whip — Mr. Clyburn, who laughed, laughed, chuckled, laughed when asked about the humanitarian crisis that was building on the border.

Gaetz shared a short video on Twitter of Clyburn laughing at the idea of a border crisis back in January:

January 9th 2019:@CNN “Is there a crisis at the border? The President said there is a humanitarian crisis at the border? Is there?”@WhipClyburn: “Absolutely not” **After months of denial, Dems finally admit @realDonaldTrump is right. There is a CRISIS on our southern border. pic.twitter.com/Hsg2N9Yg25 — Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) July 11, 2019

“It’s like you guys didn’t even hear that. You guys just launched off into your talking points,” Gaetz charged.

He had previously played the clip to committee members.

It wasn’t the Republicans that were in denial. Dems didn’t act when President @realDonaldTrump wanted Congress to provide funding to the border crisis. Dems refused to acknowledge the crisis…UNTIL NOW. pic.twitter.com/2wkh0rwYAR — Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) July 11, 2019

I think I heard the distinguished gentleman from Georgia, Mr. [Hank] Johnson say we use ‘psychological operations’ on the Democrats on the committee. I guess he was referring to me. When we feed you your own words back from your own leadership — if you consider that a psychological operation, I deeply apologize. We’re merely trying to point out the inconsistency of the positions you’ve held in an effort to get you to work with us and to try to reform our asylum laws. And by the way, we’ll do it with you in a bipartisan way. Your own colleague, Mr. Gonzales from Texas, has introduced a great bill to force people to seek asylum in their home countries. Instead of just sitting around talking about the border, and you guys cry harder or we cry harder, or you laugh harder or whatever, that is not productive for anyone. But your own members have bills that would help us solve these problems but you won’t bring them up for a vote. And they’re bills that have bipartisan co-sponsorship. So save us the lectures on humanity. Because there’s nothing humane about the fact that that children in Central America are being stolen, rented, trafficked, and then sent right back across the border to do it all over again. That’s what’s inhumane. And that’s what these asylum laws allow for. Children being used like a fast pass into this country. It’s despicable and you have the ability to bring bills forward to fix it and you should do it!

Gaetz told reporters on Wednesday that he had visited the Yuma border station in April “and the human condition that I observed in Yuma was the worst state of the human condition I have ever seen in my life.” He added, “I could tell you that the Border Patrol agents and the Homeland Security agents that were there were dealing with conditions that they had not trained for, they were not equipped to handle, and they were doing the very best they could under terrible circumstances.”