No, he’s right. Donald Trump is not one to double-deal, act irrationally, espouse contradictory ideas, pursue seemingly conflicting goals, or play his “friends” and enemies against one another.
I know we don’t always see eye-to-eye, but I gotta admit that HurricaneDitka is really nailing it in this thread.
You keep accusing your opponents of reading into things, and you say Trump approved lethal weapons of Ukraine without any evidence that he knew about it. We know that Mattis favored arming Ukraine, we don’t know if Trump was occupied on the golf course when the first decision to provide lethal arms was made in 2017.
Further, the law requires that Ukraine get the aid. Trump only got in the way of what the law required, which is the whole problem — you can’t turn around and give Trump credit for failing to stop something that he tried to stop.
Talking to a knowledgeable person about this, I am told that the State Department sent notice of this package because Pompeo also disagreed with Trump’s stupid holdup of the funds.
Well that IS the main talking point that was emailed out this morning to everyone (even the Democrats! - oops!)
You’ve been just sitting in the weeds for 13 years waiting to pull the pin on that one, eh?
Quite so. Trump is also not one to grab anyone by the pussy, obstruct justice, side with Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies, illegally misuse campaign funds, engage in prostitution and try to hush it up, publicly lie 12,019 times as of last August, or threaten a foreign leader if he doesn’t investigate a political opponent. He’d never do any of that. HurricaneDitka nailed it.
Paraphrasing a comment in a news article I read:
“If someone powerful said they’d give me a couple hundred million dollars, withheld it, and then asked me to do a few things, I would sure understand that I was expected to do them”.
Pretty much nails it.
Michael Cohen was great at this stuff, but got caught out by his bosses increasingly erratic behavior.
Rudy Giuliani is a fine understudy, but he was called to the majors a bit too soon. And, of course, Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior didn’t help.
There is precedent for this with the Mueller Report.
My guess is the impeachment process will probably run through January. The question is what does McConnell do then? Assuming Trump is impeached IMHO there’s three ways it could go, one of which is highly unlikely. The unlikely outcome is a trial and conviction. The likely outcomes are just not having a trial at all or having a trial that’s set up to exonerate Trump and make the impeachment look like a witch hunt. I think the show trial route is the high risk high reward option, especially for Republican senators in purple states. Did I miss any options? Which of these three do you all think is most likely to happen?
This also turns one of the Republican talking points against them. They have tried to point out that Trump wasn’t the first one to bring up the topic of corruption investigations…It was the Ukrainian president who first mentioned “draining the swamp” and Trump was just following up on the flow of the conversation. Now we know why the Ukrainian president mentioned it…He knew coming into this call basically what it was going to be about. Trump was just formalizing a request that had already been communicated.
Giuliani has about the same level of cognitive functioning as his boss:
Rudy Giuliani denies asking Ukraine to investigate Biden – before admitting it
Since it’s money authorized by Congress, he doesn’t have much of a choice. Eventually someone was going to start raising a stink.
Before that happened, Trump decided to go all Donnie The Hair to see if he could get anything in exchange from the money he had to give them anyway. The Ukraine folks probably just are not willing (or able) to wait so they went along with it. I’d prostrate myself for a lot less coin than that, especially when said prostrating was along the lines of “oh yes, you’re awesome, we’ll investigate whatever you want and stay in your resorts while vacationing.”
Republicans: Don’t know any of this.
Also Republicans: Don’t know other things too. (insert gratuitous smilies and emoticons here)
He’s far enough into senility that he can’t remember who he’s for or against. Instead, whomever he talks to most recently (and strokes his ego) determines his latest actions and opinions. He has a history of turning on his supposed allies and friends whenever it benefits him personally. A fine role model for your children.
Yes, the memo makes it clear that “it’s all there.”
The problem is, we live in an age of extreme cynicism. Democrats can say that Trump is corrupt as hell, and the public believes that he is. But they assume a false equivalency. It’s not as if the Democrats can argue that there are no political motives and that they don’t benefit from impeachment - it’s obvious that they do. I guess what I’m saying is that blatant corruption is now baked into the system. Obvious falsehoods are baked into the system. Thanks to people like Oliver Stone, in the eyes of far too many, American government is inherently nothing but total shit, totally bereft of good actors, and they’re all equally bad or nearly so.
Dictator time.
Trump is the President of the United States. Just because Republicans yelled “You lie” or jabbed their fingers into the president’s chest on tarmacs when he happened to be black doesn’t mean that the leader of a country with .6% the GDP of the US lacks respect. Especially when hundreds of millions of dollars that could be the difference between them being taken over by Russia are dangled over his head.
It’s Trump for fuck’s sake! If that morally bankrupt goldfish had the same favorite color two days in a row it would be a miracle.
Interesting idea from Politico’s Edward B. Foley:
He outlines how this is, in fact, possible under the constitution. And it takes away the argument that the Democrats are just doing this to destroy any chance of Trump running because they are “scared” of him.
I can just see the campaign ad:
‘In January, Republicans chose to ignore his crimes and not convict Trump. Now it is up to you. Convict him. Vote.’
That’s how authoritarian regimes work.
“Yeah we lied, but fuck you all anyway. What are you gonna do about it?”
Can we just offer Trump that we declare next Thursday to be “Trump is an awesome president day!” and and he can make a speech that since he accomplished so much more than any other president, he is resigning? And we all clap and pretend. Just give him an out and end this goddamn nightmare.