The Commentariat -- January 26, 2020
Afternoon Update:
Justine Coleman of the Hill: "Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Trump's legal team, said the Democrats 'completely failed' to meet the constitutional standard for removing Trump from office in their opening argument last week. Dershowitz told Chris Wallace on 'Fox News Sunday' that he thought the House managers presented the strongest case they could' but 'didn't come close to alleging impeachable offenses.' 'They completely failed to meet that high constitutional standard, and therefore it would be unconstitutional to remove a president based on the allegations that were made against him in the articles of impeachment,' he said." Mrs. McC: If you don't have the facts, make up something. If you don't have the law & the Constitution, make up something else. If you don't have the facts or the law, go on Fox "News."
Rebecca Klar of the Hill: Donald "Trump tweeted early Sunday morning that [Adam] Schiff, whom he called a 'CORRUPT POLITICIAN,' has 'not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!'... Schiff ... said Sunday that [the] tweet from the president is 'intended to be a threat."
Evan Semones of Politico: "Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's wife on Saturday appeared to publicly break with her husband over support for Greta Thunberg's climate change activism. 'I stand with Greta on this issue. (I don't have a degree in economics either),' actress Louise Linton wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post after Mnuchin chided the 17-year-old's call for governments to end their support of fossil fuels at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, saying she should attend college and study economics."
~~~~~~~~~~
The Democrats are relying on facts, but the Republicans are relying on Fox. -- Maureen Dowd, in today's NYT column
Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Trump's legal defense team mounted an aggressive offense on Saturday as it opened its side in the Senate impeachment trial by attacking his Democratic accusers as partisan witch-hunters trying to remove him from office because they could not beat him at the ballot box. After three days of arguments by the House managers prosecuting Mr. Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, the president's lawyers presented the senators a radically different view of the facts and the Constitution, seeking to turn the Democrats' charges back on them while denouncing the whole process as illegitimate." ~~~
~~~ Elise Viebeck, et al., of the Washington Post: "In a two-hour presentation that reserved their most provocative attacks for Monday, members of Trump's legal team echoed the president's justifications for his actions toward Ukraine and sought to plant doubts about both the prosecutors' case and its lead advocate, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.). Yet, in arguing that the case for Trump's removal was partisan and misleading, lawyers for the president omitted facts, presented claims that lacked context or minimized evidence gathered by House investigators. Their most sweeping arguments did not specifically defend Trump but instead framed impeachment as no more than a politically motivated effort to remove him from the ballot in November.... The lawyers landed repeatedly on themes that matter to Trump, including what he has described as his 'perfect' July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's report, and omissions and errors by the FBI in document submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.... The next session is expected to include full-throated attacks on [Joe] Biden and his son Hunter...." ~~~
~~~ Lauren Gambino of the Guardian: "Jay Sekulow, Trump's personal lawyer and a member of his legal team, had promised that there would be 'plenty' of material to delight the Sunday talk shows. He vowed to fill their 24 hours of allotted time over three days with all manner of conspiracies that ping from Fox News segments to the president's Twitter feed: the Bidens, the FBI warrants, FISA court orders and the like. But on Saturday, the team mostly avoided the fever swamps, focusing instead on rebutting the prosecution's case. Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel whose surname the prosecution never quite agreed on how to pronounce (it's SIP-uh-loan-ee), began with a time-honored trick of the trade: he flipped the script, seeking to turn those trying to impeach Trump into the villains who undermine American democracy." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: SIP-uh-loan-ee may be the way Pat Cipollone pronounces his surname, but Italians would pronounce it CHEEP-uhl-low-nay, "dragging out" that double "L".
~~~ New York Times liveblog: "President Trump's lawyers wrapped up a brief opening argument against his impeachment on Saturday much as they had begun, seeking to turn accusations of wrongdoing back on Democrats and insisting that there were innocent explanations for Mr. Trump's actions toward Ukraine.... The president's legal team spent only two of the 24 hours allotted to them on Saturday opening his defense, in what Mr. Trump's lawyers said was a preview of a fuller set of arguments to come on Monday. Their focus was on dismissing the House impeachment inquiry as a partisan ploy that ignored the facts in order to cast Mr. Trump's actions in the worst possible light...." ~~~
~~~ Michael Shear: "Immediately after the White House lawyers finished their opening arguments on Saturday, Democrats sought to pick the presentation apart.... House managers held a news conference to rebut the White House case, point by point. Over 30 minutes, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the lead manager, and Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, another manager, accused the president's lawyers of having little substance. Mr. Schiff said their case amounted to a single argument: that the president has the power to do whatever he wants. 'That is so deeply destructive of our national security, the integrity of our elections. It's hard to overstate the matter,' Mr. Schiff said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: I would have posted this sooner, but I was busy. Unlike Akhilleus, who was watching other Saturday morning cartoons (see yesterday's Comments), I opted for an old movie starring Richard Gere. ~~~
~~~ Trump's Lawyers Cut Impeachment Clause out of Constitution. Eric Tucker, et al., of the AP: "... Donald Trump's lawyers plunged into his impeachment trial defense Saturday by accusing Democrats of striving to overturn the 2016 election, arguing that investigations of Trump's dealings with Ukraine have not been a fact-finding mission but a politically motivated effort to drive him from the White House. 'They're here to perpetrate the most massive interference in an election in American history,' White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told senators.... From the White House, Trump tweeted his response: 'Any fair minded person watching the Senate trial today would be able to see how unfairly I have been treated and that this is indeed the totally partisan Impeachment Hoax that EVERYBODY, including the Democrats, truly knows it is.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
Now, the first point that I would like to make is that the president's counsel did something that they did not intend: They made a really compelling case for why the Senate should call witnesses and documents. They kept saying there are no eyewitness accounts, but there are people who eyewitness accounts, the very four witnesses and the very four sets of documents that we have asked for.... -- Chuck Schumer, in comments following yesterday's proceedings ~~~
~~~ Sonam Sheth of Business Insider: "... on Saturday, Trump's lawyers seemed to bolster Democrats' case [for witnesses & documents] by repeatedly claiming that they hadn't heard from a single witness who had 'direct contact' with the president.... Their statements were misleading (Gordon Sondland, the US's ambassador to the European Union, was in frequent touch with Trump and testified to Congress that the president engaged in a quid pro quo with Ukraine).... It's worth noting, too, that though the president's lawyers complain of not hearing testimony from witnesses who spoke to Trump directly, the defense team led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone could easily solve that problem by retracting Trump's sweeping directive last year barring all executive branch officials across six agencies from cooperating with the House of Representatives' impeachment inquiry." Thanks to Ken W. for the link.
Mrs. McCrabbie: I think the head-on-a-pike story is essentially superfluous, but Jonathan Chait does a good job of disposing of it: "How convenient for the Republicans, that being accused implicitly of violating their conscience for political expediency should be the very thing that gives them license to violate their conscience for political expediency. It is as if stating the accusation grants them permission to fulfill it."
Mrs. McCrabbie: It seems to me that the main difference between elected Republicans & elected Russian Communists is that there are, percentage-wise, fewer elected Republicans than elected Communists. But their fealty to their respective dictators is identical.
Ken Vogel & Ben Protess of the New York Times: "For more than an hour one evening in 2018, President Trump sat around a dinner table in a private suite in his Washington hotel with a group of donors, including two men at the center of the impeachment inquiry, talking about golf, trade, politics -- and removing the United States ambassador to Ukraine. The conversation, captured on a recording made public Saturday, contradicted Mr. Trump's repeated statements that he does not know the two men, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who went on to work with the president's personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to carry out a pressure campaign on Ukraine.... [The tape] does seem to shed light on the origins of Mr. Trump's interest in the issue, and to foreshadow his administration's withholding of military assistance from the country as part of the pressure campaign. It hints at the motivations of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman, who had come to believe that [Ambassador Marie] Yovanovitch was opposed to their business plans in Ukraine, where they had tried to break into the natural gas market, according to associates of the two men.... And it provides a glimpse of something rarely seen: top-tier political donors getting a chance in an intimate setting to share their views with the president and press their agendas with him." ~~~
~~~ Zeke Miller, et al., of the AP: "... Donald Trump inquired how long Ukraine would be able to resist Russian aggression without U.S. assistance during a 2018 meeting with donors that included the indicted associates of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. 'How long would they last in a fight with Russia?' Trump is heard asking in the audio portion of a video recording, moments before he calls for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. She was removed a year later after a campaign to discredit her by Giuliani and others, an action that is part of Democrats' case arguing for the removal of the president in his Senate impeachment trial." The report goes on to relate some of Trump's other remarks recorded in the 80-minute tape.
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Oddly, however, the report does not include the answer to Trump's question about Ukraine's need for U.S. assistance. According to this PBS News report by Yamiche Alcindor, "Someone replies, 'Without us, not very long.' Trump appears to echo the voice saying, 'Without us.'" The report includes the full video, most -- but not all -- of which pictures the ceiling. More on this in yesterday's Commentariat. ~~~
~~~ Marcy Wheeler zeroes in on the original source of the videotape, who she believes is Lev Parnas. She explains her theory, "All of which suggests Parnas is trying to carefully manage what he'd sharing with HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence], presumably focusing on the latter period of his work to get Masha fired, when he could claim to be doing Rudy Giuliani's bidding, and not the earlier part, when prosecutors claim he was working for some Ukrainian. For better and worse, that likely means that Rudy is at least partly a victim of Parnas, someone who was desperate and weak and easily manipulated into doing really stupid things -- just like Trump -- who could then be claimed as the real actor behind this operation."
Lauren Egan of NBC News: "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday attacked an NPR correspondent who reported that he berated and cursed at her following questioning over Ukraine, claiming 'she lied to me' and describing her actions as 'shameful.' 'NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly lied to me, twice. First, last month, in setting up our interview and, then again yesterday, in agreeing to have our post-interview conversation off the record,' Pompeo said in a statement. 'It is shameful that this reporter chose to violate the basic rules of journalism and decency.' Pompeo did not challenge the details of Kelly's claims about his statements or demeanor during their conversation.... Kelly said she did not agree to be off the record at any point, and had communicated in advance to Pompeo's office that she intended to ask him about Iran and Ukraine." Mrs. McC: Gee, I can't decide whom to believe, a seasoned liar or a seasoned reporter. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Pompeo Confuses Ukraine with Bangladesh. Deirdre Shesgreen of USA Today: "Pompeo, in his Saturday statement, suggested Kelly, a long-time reporter, did not correctly identify the location of Ukraine on the map. 'It is worth noting that Bangladesh is NOT Ukraine,' Pompeo's statement said. Mrs. McC: It is remotely plausible that Kelly could have confused the location of Ukraine with, say, Romania. It is not even barely plausible that she confused Ukraine with Bangladesh. The two countries are 3,600 miles apart and, obviously, in different regions of the world. But you, Mikey? I'm not so sure. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Update: Aaron Blake of the Washington Post agrees with me. ~~~
~~~ Jonathan Chait, too: "The notion that an experienced foreign affairs reporter would be unable to locate a country that has been at the center of domestic and world news -- and would think it's next to India, not Russia! -- is implausible, and indicates not only Pompeo's dishonesty but the sheer level of absurdity he believes he can pass off.... It would be tempting to say the pressure of the Ukraine scandal is getting to Pompeo, but it's probably more likely that this is just the kind of person Pompeo is -- and the sort of behavior that has drawn him to Trump, and Trump to him." Mrs. McC: It's like a Fat Liars club.
Do you think Americans care about Ukraine? -- Mike Pompeo to NPR reporter, Friday ~~~
~~~ Top U.S. Diplomat to Fly to Ukraine or Bangladesh or Someplace. Nahal Toosi of Politico: "Mike Pompeo was already expecting to navigate a political minefield when he landed in Kyiv next week. But after the secretary of State's explosion at a respected NPR journalist, his trip just got a little more complicated.... 'Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?' he asked her -- a question arguably insulting to Ukraine as well as Americans. 'He used the F-word in that sentence and many others,' said Kelly, who has a master's degree in European studies from Cambridge University and said she correctly identified Ukraine.... Pompeo, whose own role in the impeachment scandal remains something of a mystery, faces a series of politically perilous questions[.]..." Related stories linked yesterday. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Nik Steinberg in a Politico Magazine opinion piece: "Since the House hearings, I’ve spoken to more than a dozen career Foreign Service officers, and it has become clear that the impeachment process has had a major collateral effect that reaches well beyond Trump himself. They say it has sharply hurt morale within the department, and in particular has eroded their faith in Pompeo. Many of the interviewees had initially hoped the secretary would rebuild the department after Rex Tillerson's efforts to strip it down, but they have instead seen Pompeo stand by silently as his employees were sidestepped and smeared. And they worry the loss of bipartisan trust in career diplomats, whom the president and his allies in Congress have cast as 'radical unelected bureaucrats,' will inflict lasting damage on the institution's role in foreign policy-making. I've agreed to keep the interviewees anonymous because of the Trump administration's record of harassing or marginalizing public servants they see as questioning their policies. But the people I spoke with serve primarily in senior roles in the department, and almost all have served for over a decade." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Is it any wonder? After serving your country for years or decades in posts far and wide, you can be abruptly fired and your personal safety threatened because the POTUS* hears a rumor from some guy he says he doesn't know & has never spoken to. Even if your difficult work has been exemplary, if somebody says -- without evidence -- that he heard you said something that hurts Trump's feelings, he will "take you out." That audio tape reported yesterday is among the best evidence that Trump doesn't give a rat's ass about U.S. international policy. Related stories linked yesterday. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Presidential Race
Des Moines Register Editors: "The outstanding caliber of Democratic candidates makes it difficult to choose just one.... The Des Moines Register editorial board endorses Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses as the best leader for these times. The senior U.S. senator from Massachusetts is not the radical some perceive her to be. She was a registered Republican until 1996. She is a capitalist.... But she wants fair markets, with rules and accountability. She wants a government that works for people, not one corrupted by cash.... A qualification: Some of her ideas for 'big, structural change' go too far."
Presidential Race 2016. Obama Got That Right. Daniel Arkin of NBC News: "Barack Obama called Donald Trump a 'fascist' in a phone conversation with Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia during the 2016 presidential election, Kaine says in a video clip featured in an upcoming documentary about Hillary Clinton. Kaine, Clinton's running mate on the Democratic ticket, recounts the call during an exchange with Clinton that was caught on camera in 2016.... The clip appears in an episode of 'Hillary,' a four-part documentary series that will be available on Hulu on March 6.... Obama has rarely publicly attacked Trump since leaving office, and his description of Trump as a fascist -- as recalled by Kaine -- is a far sharper attack than he offered in public during or after the campaign." ~~~
~~~ Edward-Isaac Dovere of the Atlantic: "In the Sundance interview [on Saturday], Clinton said that Obama had never used the word fascist in conversations with her about Trump. But, she said, what Obama 'observed was this populism untethered to facts, evidence, or truth; this total rejection of so much of the progress that America has made, in order to incite a cultural reaction that would play into the fear and the anxiety and the insecurity of people -- predominantly in small-town and rural areas -- who felt like they were losing something. And [Trump] gave them a voice for what they were losing and who was responsible.'" Mrs. McC: Of course Trump is a fascist. I'm only sorry the House managers didn't mention it. Kudos to Jerry Nadler; he came close. In his closing argument he called Trump a "dictator." Though he certainly aspires to be and believes he has a right to be a dictator, Trump isn't technically a dictator yet. There are still some checks & balances. The Senate, alas, is not one of them.
Shoshana Zuboff has a longish op-ed in the New York Times about "surveillance capitalism," which she doesn't clearly define but seems to be something like, "Big Brother is here, and he's not Donald Trump; he's Mark Zuckerberg." ~~~
~~~ As a sort of companion piece, Adrienne LaFrance of the Atlantic and Hillary Clinton are horrified by Zuckerberg's totalitarian, Trumpian views of "truth."
News Ledes
ABC News: "Basketball legend Kobe Bryant is among five people who died in a helicopter crash in the wealthy Southern California residential neighborhood of Calabasas, ESPN has confirmed." An AP story is here. ~~~
~~~ A Sports Illustrated obituary for Bryant & his daughter Gianna, who also died in the crash, is here.
Share Article
Reader Comments (15)
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-lawyers-inadvertently-made-case-for-witnesses-impeachment-trial-2020-1
A whole lotta duh! going on earlier today. Expect more Monday.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/25/opinion/sunday/obama-trump-senate-trial.html
Dropped by for a short visit with the safe and sane Kristof last night before I went to bed. Kristof presents some thought experiments that pose alternatives to the present impeachment trial, along the lines of "what would you think if Obama...."
I'd already tried that one. If Obama had done what the Pretender has done, as loyal a Democrat as the last fifty years of Republicans have made me, I'd convict him in a second and exile him to a carefully selected location in Arizona.
But he wouldn't have, and that's the real point, or one of them, of this charade. Obama is not the Pretender and Democrats are not Republicans. I tried to point that out:
"Much room to speculate here but I'd like to take us down a different, less hypothetical path.
No doubt, that vice-principal would (and should) lose his job. What he did was unethical in the extreme. But I'd point out he (like Trump) is a public employee and would therefore be held to a higher standard of conduct than we have become used to seeing in the corporate/Wall Street world.
Plunge the nation into a major recession and there is little personal consequence to the bad actors. Or perhaps a brokered court settlement, most often paid with corporate money, or oodles of cash to ease the pain for the few selected to fall on their sword.
Trump is used to that world, a world of little or no consequence, where bad behavior is, as it has been for him throughout his life, encouraged and rewarded.
What we see happening is the fulfillment of a Trump-campaign promise, one of the few. He said he'd run the government like a business..or at least like one of his own.... ...and he is.
And today's Republican Party, the party of family values, is just fine with that."
Obama did some good stuff but he did some stuff I thought he should have been impeached for. The Treaty Against Torture and US Code Title 18, Part 1, chapter 113c require that if there is an accusation of torture the government is required to conduct an investigation. There's no provision to "look ahead instead of back" if the President thinks that's more convenient. The 5th Amendment to the Constitution says that NO PERSON shal "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Obama was quite open about asserting that he had the authority to kill any person accused of being connected to a terrorist organization. The fact that he wasn't impeached is understandable, since Americans are so frightened of "terrorists," but he still should have been. George W. Bush much more so, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan ... I can't think of anything offhand that Carter or Ford should have been impeached for.
Procopius,
Yes, purity in politics is hard to come by.
If Congress had not handed over the keys to the increasingly unitary executive as they have over the decades since Vietnam and even more quickly and happily since 9/11, no doubt Obama's Republican Congress, who pretty much hated him, would have impeached him for doing those nasty things they wanted him to do but wished to have no part of themselves.
Brave souls, Congress. Especially brave, those tough-talking R's.
Akhilleus' Viewing Guide to the Trump Defense (such as it is)
As Marie mentioned yesterday, it will take a strong stomach to get through the upcoming Lie-a-Thon on behalf of the dictator Trumpskyev (or Trumpolini, take your pick). But your old pal Akhilleus has some suggestions to make the viewing slightly more interesting, if not completely amenable (actual amenability is only possible, given the circumstances and the jamokes involved, if one is either hooked up to a Kool-Aid pump, a bought off, immoral senator, or a member of the Trump Crime Family).
Anyhoo, be that as it may, here's da suggestions:
Ahem...
Numero One-o. A lie counter at the bottom right of the screen. Every time one of the Trumpy ninnyhammers lies, a counter rolls to keep track of the tsunami of mendacity. There could be side bets in living rooms across the land for how quickly they get to 1,000.
Due. A laugh track (I kinda like this one, myself). Producers can choose, depending on the level of outrageousness, from a menu of options ranging from titters and giggles to "howls of derisive laughter".
Trois. A house band, which will include a drummer with all the toys from wood blocks and cowbells to rototoms, and a variety of ride cymbals in order to produce the appropriate rim shots, cymbal crashes, and bass drum ba-dum-bums after each and every flying monkey assertion, as in "...perfect phone call!" CRASH! As R senators take a break to check their underwear for skid marks, the band can play bump music to take them out. I suggest the Merrie Melodies cartoon theme.
Cuatro. A crawl at the bottom of the screen listing the previous night's Lotto numbers for all relevant states. Might as well provide SOME kind of public service.
Five. A bit like the counter, but more accurate. In the same way viewers can register their interest in test screenings, a Lie-O-Meter could indicate the level of stupidity and mendacity for each claim. Moving bar graphs can track the intensity of audience reactions to each taradiddle, fabrication, distortion, and whopper.
Sei. Eye-Roll Cam. A picture-in-picture block which relays the jaw drops and eye rolls of intelligent citizens (not Trumpbots, natch) as Trump's mob lawyers pile up the bullshit. Should provide a nice offset to the kindergarten-serious scowls and phony grimaces affected by the jabronis.
Sept. Real time refutation of the lies, dissimulation, false claims, misdirection and baseless assertions of the stooges. Kind of like a director's track on a DVD. This wouldn't be as tough as it might seem since there won't be anything like the highly detailed, factual, in-depth, granular presentation of the Democratic House Managers. It will mostly be variations of "I know you are, but what am I?"
Finally, the best way to enjoy the Trumpy Lawyer Lie Fest?
Cancel the whole fucking thing! Do not pass Go, do not collect your fees (he won't pay them anyway), and escort your client directly to Impeachment Jail!
Feel free to offer your own suggestions.
Here is a long, extensive wade through the legality of U.S. government's targeted killing program under domestic law (from LawFare) to fill in Procopius' mention of this in his comments. From what I can glean, it isn't a clean sweep––very complicated and burdensome.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/legality-us-governments-targeted-killing-program-under-domestic-law
Today I was thinking of beginnings––namely how Steve Bannon began the unraveling of the coat of many colors that this country possesses.
1) His method of attack –-the most important lesson of tabloid politics.
2) His connection to David Bossie (producer of the "Hillary film" that eventually became the reason for the S.C.'s decision in the Citizens United case–- shattering the rules on campaign spending and began the unlimited flow of money into politics.)
3) In 2011, Bossie took Banon to meet Trump at his Tower who at the time was thinking of running for president. The chemistry between Bannon and Trump was immediate.
4) Unlike the political professionals, Bannon like Trump were both "fluent in in the argot of Wall Street and Hollywood" according to Josh Green who wrote about this relationship in his book about Bannon.
5) So thereafter Bannon, whose disheveled eccentricity posed no "alpha male" threat for Trump, we heard early in his rallies, "where's my Steve?"
6) And "My Steve" began dishing up a serious sounding ideology which in a word was destruction of norms. And we, of course, have been living with the results.
Trump has been impeached and will forever be the third president to have that label. I have grave doubts that he will be ousted or even resign but he will go down as, to use his word, A"DISASTER" and I would add a constant danger to us and to our allies. Bannon taught him well but Trump had already been tapped by the immorality and soullessness long ago.
And I would add that whomever becomes president (other than Trump) they better have a stellar foreign policy person or persons on board; the cleanup alone will be a daunting task.
@Ak, my wife and I have kinda an MST3K thing going on.
@unwashed; 217 episodes? I may not live that long.
Unwashed,
Haha. That was on my list as well but I thought it might be a tad obscure. Love that stuff.
As Jennifer Rubin says here...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/26/trump-lawyers-weak-start-opens-door-devastating-questions/
....questions certainly do abound and I would hope we see them gaily abounding through much of this coming week.
The tape revealed much about Trump, one thing that jarred me was near the beginning when the discussion about Ukraine mentioned oil...and Trump, very surprised...sez, "...they got oil?" He didn't know. Other voices said 'Oh, yes, they have a lot of resources."
What? Why do I still find myself shocked (after all the evidence of stupidity we've seen and heard from this president*) that in 2018 his knowledge about Ukraine and why Russia has such an interest in the country. Yeah, let him find Ukraine on a map.
MAG,
Let him try to find Ukraine on a LABELED map. Ignorant prick.
After reading the MoDo column (which I rarely do these days--my days of going straight to the NY Times editorial and Op-Ed pages are looooong gone), it burned me to read that Richard Burr (R-Asshole) handed out fidget spinners to all R "senators" (not a single fucking one of them deserve a quotation-mark-free title) so they could all demonstrate to the Foxbots their essential Don't Give a Shit-ness
About Facts or the Truth. Or the United States of America.
This is way past disgraceful. This really is treason. And that picture of the Turtle being escorted by a couple of security guards, shit-eating grin making his jowls even flabbier, knowing that he's going to win because has outlawed the Constitution, the rule of law, ethics, and basic morality makes me want to see what garrotes are going for on Amazon: he's Marlowe's, Faust without youth, but one who, we can all hope, will be dragged to hell as payment for his reprehensible greed for power, and on the verge of the pit, beseeching Satan for mercy, only to find that Satan is Trump himself, who laughs at him for allowing himself to become a ratfucking cog in the Trump machine.
Sorry, my temperature just went up about a dozen degrees. I have to go now.
@Akhilleus: Sometime last year, CNN hired well-known fact-checker Daniel Dale. He knows a lot of Trumpian lies off the top of his head. Dale & a tech should get up chyrons of the lies ASAP. Yes, as you suggest, a counter is a must. I'm not kidding.
So Schiff "has not yet paid the price"? In a just world it would be The Donald out shilling for shekels to pay his debt to the nation.
Once again the words of the mob boss are blasted out to the public, and the public shrugs.
@PD Pepe Thank you for that link to Lawfare. I should have bookmarked it long ago and now I have. It's a good exposition of the fog surrounding political policies. I sometimes feel that Franklin Delano Roosevelt should have been impeached for violating the Neutrality Act by ordering US Naval vessels to engage German U-boats and by providing arms to England. On the other hand I'm really glad he did, but he himself was aware that he risked impeachment for it.