Very true,
The Liberal-Left Media Conglomerate: Yahoo, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post, NY Times, etc.
All a bunch of fucking disgusting liars, degenerates.
90% of US Media is lined-up against Trump. It’s a disgrace to this country.
Perfect example of the Lies right here.
As-if the “Abrupt Exit” has anything to do with the “embarrassing video”. These fucking liars know no depths of depravity. “Abrupt” exit, instead of just a regular exit? These liars don’t know how or why Trump does what he does. They don’t know the reason. They make everything up. They say “Abrupt Exit” and “embarrassing video” as-if there were any sort of connection between the two when there’s not. NO CONNECTION. Trump probably left for an unknown, to the public, reason. Secondly, “embarrassing” video, is it really embarrassing what these foreign faggot leaders care or think? As-if they rule America? As-if they have more authority than US? As-if their opinion matters? These liberal-leftists should go live in their countries. Anti-American. Traitors.
If you’re an American, you stand by your President when confronted by foreign enemies or “allies” pretending to be an ally.
Lastly, these foreign “leaders” are ten-times the embarrassment of what’s presumed here. Canada, France, EU? Pathetic leaders. Trump is right, by the way, these foreign countries have been “taking off the top”, taking billions and billions of OUR MONEY for free, for nothing to benefit US. Democrats-Liberals have sold US down the river. Trump is actually getting our money back.
Fuck you!
The New York Times
Opinion
Let Trump Have a Miserable Little Christmas
Deck the halls with tons of tweeting.
By Gail Collins
Opinion Columnist
Dec. 11, 2019
Hey, it looks like we’ll have impeachment before Christmas. Talk about the holiday spirit.
“They said these two things — they’re not even a crime!” Donald Trump shrieked after Democratic leaders announced the House was going to vote on whether he should be impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. This was at one of his trademark rallies during which he also referred to F.B.I. agents as “scum” and claimed that Elizabeth Warren’s marriage was a “phony, disgusting deal.”
Ho, ho, ho.
Truly we live in not-boring times. Fifty years from now, kids who’ve been watching all this action from their college dorms will be able to answer their grandchildren’s questions about Trump’s bad hair and worse values. Advanced placement high school students might be writing profiles of Jerry Nadler.
There’s been so much action that almost nobody noticed this week when the New York attorney general announced Trump has coughed up $2 million to repay money he stole from his foundation. O.K., “stole” is pretty harsh. What would you call it if somebody established a charity and then used a large chunk of other people’s donations to buy portraits of himself — one six feet tall — purchase sports memorabilia and pay off legal settlements for his private businesses?
Still waiting for the word …
The Trump charity scandal is an old story, but the impeachment process puts it in a new light. Particularly if you combine it with the money he’s piling up from his Scottish golf resort (thank you Air Force visitors), the Washington hotel (welcome, Saudi officials) and from what the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington estimated were more than 2,300 conflicts of interest between his personal finances and his day job.
A dreadful leader plus a greedy crook: It really does give us a leg up in the drive to make sure Trump goes down in history as the worst president ever. That honor’s traditionally gone to James Buchanan, who floundered in the run-up to the Civil War.
“Unlike Trump, Buchanan was a generous man,” said Robert Strauss, who happens to be the author of a biography of Buchanan titled “Worst. President. Ever.” Buchanan “took in college students who couldn’t afford their room and board,” Strauss added. He never reneged on a debt.
It was published in October 2016. Strauss is still sticking with Buchanan, whom he calls “a nice guy put in the wrong job.” Obviously, secession tops being laughed at by leaders of other democratic powers at a cocktail party. But Trump could qualify for the bottom of the barrel if you throw in personal behavior and presume it’s better to be a nice guy in the wrong job than an awful guy in the wrong job.
Andrew Johnson was another awful president and history’s impeachment star until now, but he was praised for his financial integrity. “After becoming president, when prominent New York merchants tried to give him a magnificent carriage and span of horses he refused the gift,” noted Brenda Wineapple, the author of a history of the Johnson impeachment. “‘Those occupying high official positions,’ he politely said, must ‘decline the offerings of kind and loyal friends.’”
Money always comes up somewhere in this story. “To Impeach a President who has proved through results, to have one of the most successful presidencies ever, and most importantly, who has done NOTHING wrong, is sheer Political Madness!” Trump himself wrote in an email to his supporters this week, adding quickly that he was activating “Emergency Double-Match on All Contributions.”
The House is expected to vote on impeachment sometime next week, before everybody goes home for the holidays. There have been some delays — you can’t keep members of Congress from going off to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. Or, um, weekends.
While everybody’s waiting, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been moving some other stuff along. That trade deal with Mexico and Canada, and the Democrats’ plan to control the price of prescription drugs.
Do you think that’s a good plan? Some people don’t like the idea of distracting attention from the president’s evildoing. Take your pick:
A) Nobody should talk about anything but the terribleness of Donald Trump. I sculpted his head out of mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving and squished gravy all over it.
B) I started listening to the Judiciary debate the other day, fell asleep and missed my dinner date. Give these poor people a change of subject for a few hours.
C) Anything Nancy Pelosi does is a good idea. I never thought about her at all until a few months ago, but now I believe she’s a combination of Eleanor Roosevelt, Madame Curie and Meryl Streep.
Amazing times, huh? Of course, watching the impeachment drama loses a little zip when you remember that the Senate Republicans are never actually going to toss the president out of office. But that’s a story for 2020. Meanwhile, the holidays have to be a little bit brighter when you contemplate the fact that Donald Trump is definitely not having his best Christmas ever.
David Leonhardt
© 2019 The New York Times Company
{What is going on, really?
The quick bet conjoin two very real possibilities in contradictionary tests between political correctness and transparency.
On one hand , the clarity is anything but, a contradiction in terms, which most Nowedays are too keen to understand. The other, more substantive, and procedural, involved a very classy form of deception- go for the obviously contradictory of white nationalism- supposing they will buy it, and pass it along as contentively negative within a goal constructed objective, that transcends it’s self.
So the contradiction in terms will swallow it’s own material tail. Socialism will be devoured within a hidden subjective (subjugatory) process.
In fact it is the foreign policy contradiction, that pits Russian territorial demands against Ukraine’s ,
with the former advocating. NWO inscribed in an oligarchian constitution, as the latter views the antithetically formal dialectic of conserving the teratorially gained objectives of the recent past.
What fuels the objective criteria , becoming less and not more transparent, setting in motion of the swelling of it’s execution?
The growing paradoxical synthesis between capital and labor has in certain respects rests within an increasingly schizmatic position of constructed ambiguity, and is reflected in the equally strained political agendas of both points of view.
That the subjective-objective determinative processes are informed by the public’s mass psychologically fragmented view of social coherence ; is fairly obvious , with the optically contradictory lack of awareness.
Trumpism really rests on a backdrop of international fusing, geared toward the processes of objective construction of simulated factors, that can transcend the limiting gaps , which appear controlling the processes which , inter alia are suggestive of white nationalistic dominance and control, of economic and political criteria.
But are they so? Aren’t they the psychological trigger, to optically illusive power motives, which apply more to the white power brokers who head Forbes 500 international corporations, intent on capitalizing on broader international markets, while tuting regional and anti international principles?
The contradiction is obvious, and very significant, as the former Democratic South has become the backbone of Republican strength.
The question of slavery has become more generic, constituting extending to broad factors that signal gaps between the economically advantaged versus the disadvantaged, rather than those which narrowly factored segregated ethnic groups .
Can the forces generated , reach levels that precipitated the forces that led to the civil war? The amount of repression is fueled by the relative naivete of those whose assumption of power is transcended from institutions of faith based ideas , this is why the constituted original intent of the founding father’s literal meaning has been put under the microscope of axiomatic analysis.
This is why demands for procedural lack is put forward as weaknesses in equivocating meaning of applying rules to content. The substantiality of material dialectical antithesis is clothed in verbatim contradiction, necessitating Trumpism to have developed a new style of political grandstanding ( tweeting) that can make objective assessment of using contra indicative , fallacious presentations almost common place.
The Democrats can not arrange an optical illusive demonstration on the same level , therefore they have to diminish the significance of Ukraine’s corruption at par with Russia’s.
That Trump is as involved in corruption with the Russian oligarchs, as the charge against the Ukraine oligarchs who stole US military funds funding the fight between the Russians and the Ukranians, is the real picture emerging from an international swamp, that is not fueled by party affiliation. That much is pretty clear, and the premise that Russia manufactured the Ukrainian meddling , is equally tenuous, albeit, even if true, is a minor one, set to distract from the major one.
The major premise, the one which only philosophers can fathom, is, that the dialectical materialism, it’s loss after the fall of Communism, had directed an unprecedented conflict that outed the topical maps of the limited neuro-lingual descriptions of their very basic weaknesses .
Such which were aptly described against Russel’s ’ sense-data’ a basic idea that fell sense, common sense, the sense of social democratic ideas into the abyss of Das Capital.
Capital swallowed a nationalistic synthetic, simply because it has reached limits. The internationalistic necessity to absorb other national economies, heretofore existent even from the early 1950’ s, reached the climactic stage of today’s politicall and economic conflict, that only a pathetic comedian could pull off.}
…and when you take back what is yours, see what happens? I really don’t have much more than that to say on the matter, as after the General Election is over today, it’ll be back to Brexit-business as usual, so so-much for the short reprieve from hearing its name being uttered… in meeting rooms, and along hushed corridors.
Why can’t we keep on having/taking your money, they cry! into their breakfast-plate of eggs royale and freshly-ground morning coffee…
My favourite person to debate with, telling my other favourite person to debate with, to pretty much go fuck himself. 
This place is too funny sometimes. 
3 yes 17 no.
For Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Justice
Final Impeachment coming in a few days.
The New York Times
The Trump Impeachment
Judiciary Vote
For Trump, Impeachment May Be a Political Plus but Also a Personal Humiliation
As the House moves toward what even he says is an inevitable vote to impeach him for high crimes and misdemeanors, President Trump toggles between self-pity and combativeness.
President Trump at the White House this week. In private, he accepts no blame and expresses no regret, but he rails against the enemies he sees all around him.
President Trump at the White House this week. In private, he accepts no blame and expresses no regret, but he rails against the enemies he sees all around him.Credit…
By Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman
Published Dec. 12, 2019
Updated Dec. 13, 2019, 5:37 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — Under pressure over his possible impeachment, President Richard M. Nixon supposedly talked to the paintings in the White House. President Bill Clinton absently toyed with his old campaign buttons. President Trump punches out Twitter messages in the lonely midnight hour.
Long after his staff has gone home, long after the lights have gone out elsewhere around the capital, the besieged 45th president hunkers down in the upstairs residential portion of the Executive Mansion venting his frustration and cheering on his defenders through social media blasts.
This is a season of conflicting impulses for a president who often seems governed by them. As the House moves toward what even he says is an inevitable vote to impeach him for high crimes and misdemeanors, Mr. Trump toggles between self-pity and combativeness. He looks forward to a Senate trial that he seems sure to win and thinks that it will help him on the campaign trail when he travels the country boasting that he had been “exonerated” after the latest partisan “witch hunt.”
But he nurses resentment over the red mark about to be tattooed on his page in the history books as only the third president in American history to be impeached. No matter what some of his critics say, advisers said he genuinely does not want to be impeached, viewing it as a personal humiliation. Even in private, he accepts no blame and expresses no regret, but he rails against the enemies he sees all around him.
“He doesn’t like what’s happening,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a vocal ally who has spoken with the president several times this week. “He thinks it’s unfair. But I think he’s resolved himself that they’re going to do it, they’re out to get him. I think he’s more determined now to win than ever.”
Mr. Trump’s mood has actually improved in the past couple of weeks, advisers say, as Republicans have risen to his defense. He has grown more energized, bombarding followers with tweets and retweets defending himself and attacking his enemies.
He set a record for his presidency on Thursday with 123 total tweets in a single day, eclipsing the record he had set on Sunday with 105, according to Bill Frischling of Factba.se, a service that compiles and analyzes data on Mr. Trump’s presidency. That was more in a single day than he posted in any full week in 2017. All told, it brought his total since Sunday to 367, the most since taking office of any week — with two days still to go.
Eighty-seven of the tweets on Thursday came from 7 to 10 a.m., just as the House Judiciary Committee was opening its marathon meeting to approve two articles of impeachment.
Mr. Trump decided against presenting a defense during a Democratic-run House inquiry he deemed unfair, conceding that a vote to impeach along party lines was inevitable. But he has set his sights on a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate as a more conducive venue to air his views about the impeachment battle and mount a defense that he imagines more like an offense.
That could put him at odds with Senate Republicans whose interests are not the same as his. Absent dramatic new revelations, Mr. Trump appears assured of escaping conviction in the Senate since that would require a two-thirds vote. But he has been eager to call witnesses Senate Republican leaders are not anxious to summon, like former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the unidentified C.I.A. whistle-blower whose complaint kicked off the impeachment inquiry.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, talked with Mr. Trump this week about holding a relatively abbreviated trial without calling witnesses, according to a person briefed on the conversation. Mr. McConnell envisioned a trial lasting about 10 to 12 days and sought to convince Mr. Trump that a quick acquittal without the spectacle of a parade of witnesses would be better for the president.
Mr. Trump seemed amenable, but he often changes his mind and no one is certain where he will end up. He sent his White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, and his legislative affairs director, Eric Ueland, to meet with Mr. McConnell at the Capitol on Thursday.
Still to be determined is who will represent Mr. Trump at the trial, whether it is short or long. Mr. Trump is said to have talked with several prominent lawyers about taking on his case, but multiple people said that Mr. Cipollone had resisted bringing in new representation, leaving him to serve as lead counsel.
Among those being considered is Alan Dershowitz, the famed lawyer who represented O.J. Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein, Roman Polanski and Mike Tyson and has defended the president on television. But he would probably offer guidance from the private legal team outside the White House as Mr. Cipollone takes the lead.
For Mr. Trump, the impeachment battle has become the defining test of his presidency, weighing him down and charging him up all at once.
Some advisers said the collective burden of three years in office and the nonstop investigations had taken a toll on him. People who have spent time around him lately said he seemed fatigued and might have gained weight. Some who work in the White House have noticed that he seems more standoffish, less likely to engage in small talk with those outside his inner circle.
Concerns about his health spiked after a mysterious, unannounced weekend trip last month to the hospital. The White House insisted it was simply a head start on his annual medical checkup, but provided few details about what was done and why. His White House physician climbed into the presidential limousine for the ride to the hospital rather than travel in another vehicle in the motorcade.
Other presidents facing impeachment strove to hide how much it weighed on them, even as they brooded and raged in private. Mr. Nixon sought to give the impression it had not affected him, but behind the scenes, aides worried about his stability in the last days in the White House. He asked Henry A. Kissinger, his secretary of state, to kneel and pray with him.
“Nixon tried to hold it inside, but not too successfully,” said Evan Thomas, the author of “Being Nixon,” a biography of the president. “Remember ‘the president is not a crook’? And the sweat on his face as he said it?”
Mr. Clinton seemed to mentally disappear during meetings as his mind dwelled on the struggle to remain in office. During a Middle East peace negotiation in Gaza, an aide spied the president scribbling down on his notepad: “Focus on your job. Focus on your job.”
Mr. Trump, in his own way, is more transparent. Rather than pretend he is not bothered by the attacks on him, he lashes out at his enemies. Rather than affect a stiff-upper-lip demeanor in public, he fumes about the injustice he feels. “Trump is incapable of impulse control,” said Douglas B. Sosnik, a senior adviser to Mr. Clinton during impeachment.
Mr. Trump lately has taken the advice of some advisers by highlighting policy priorities, as Mr. Clinton did. In recent days, he advanced trade deals with China and with Mexico and Canada. During an event on child care on Thursday, he stuck largely to the script and never mentioned the word “impeachment.”
For a while after the revelations about his efforts to pressure Ukraine to help him against his Democratic rivals while withholding American security aid, Mr. Trump grew deeply upset. He felt isolated and abandoned, according to people in contact with him. He questioned why Democrats would not just let him govern. He lamented that he had done nothing wrong. He was angry at any Republican on television saying otherwise.
What Mr. Trump’s advisers worry about is the snapback of his anger once the impeachment process is over. They predict he will be furious, and looking for payback.
Since the public hearings before the House Intelligence Community, he has felt invigorated, pointing to the testimony of Gordon D. Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union who did not directly implicate Mr. Trump telling him to link the aid to his demand for investigations of Democrats, although Mr. Sondland added that he thought that was clear.
Mr. Graham said he warned Mr. Trump against that in a phone call on Wednesday night. “I just told him we know how impeachment ends, then after that your fate’s in your own hands,” Mr. Graham said. “Get back to being president and have a good story to tell.”
The Impeachment Inquiry
House Panel Delays Vote on Impeachment ArticlesDec. 12, 2019
Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent and has covered the last four presidents for The Times and The Washington Post. He also is the author of five books, most recently “Impeachment: An American History.” @peterbakernyt • Facebook
© 2019 The New York Times Company
A lot of appearent anger on the faces of Republicans, in contrast of their claim of the absence of proof by the Democrats of a prima facie case!
Now, things get interesting both: nationally and internationally.
MagsJ:
Something is always owed when money is given or lent, something that is worth the price, to finance wars or proxy wars, as in the interesting war of attrition game theory.
There value of redeemable and irredeemable lending and gifting of moneys both have negative and positive consequences, sometimes it is better not to attempt to take back what has been given.
Hey! Boris won smashing! But to some , Brexit is a bad deal, perhaps leading to the dissolvence of the UK.!
Is this the split image of what goes in the US?
Hello MagsJ !
Something is always owed when money is given or lent, something that is worth the price, to finance wars or proxy wars, as in the interesting war of attrition game theory.
There value of redeemable and irredeemable lending and gifting of moneys both have negative and positive consequences, sometimes it is better not to attempt to take back what has been given.
Boris won smashingly. But to some , Brexit is a bad deal, perhaps leading to the dissolvence of the UK.!
Is this the split image of what goes in the US?
The reversal of psychological fact finding originated with the Revolutionary War, and the flight from British rule was the centerpiece. France played the modern version of Brexit, as Trump plays the current role with Boris. Roles do change, the content and the processes which govern the dynamics return in revised forms, and who will know who is on -first , or third, beneath the dignity of those forming an everlasting web of conjectures , innuendos and inferences.*
*Inferences , it seemed to me to be the key code to what was meant to represent the gap between what difference exists between presumptions and elements that went for ‘facts’ ; in yesterday’s judicial argument in the House of Representatives.
Guardian
Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s Twitter bullying of Greta Thunberg: ‘Today was an unpresidential day even by our very unpresidential standards.’
Late-night TV roundup
Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘A rotting yam mocking a 16-year-old with Asperger’s’
Late-night hosts responded to Trump’s Twitter attack on Greta Thunberg and the slog to a House vote on articles of impeachment
Jimmy Kimmel
“Today was an unpresidential day even by our very unpresidential standards,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday night, a day in which Donald Trump bullied the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg on Twitter. Thunberg, 16, was named Time magazine’s person of the year this week for her activism, beating out finalists Nancy Pelosi, the Hong Kong protesters, the anonymous whistleblower on Trump’s pressuring of Ukraine, and Trump himself. Ever the gracious loser, Trump called Thunberg’s Time cover “ridiculous” and tweeted that she should “work on her Anger Management problem [sic], then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!”
It’s rich coming from “the sweaty old man who’s mad at a magazine because they didn’t put him on the cover of it”, Kimmel said. “And the fact that Greta Thunberg is a teenager makes this especially insane.”
In response, Thunberg simply changed her Twitter bio to “a teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend.”
Stephen Colbert on impeachment: anger is Trump’s ‘happy place’
Kimmel had nothing but praise for her burn: “Trump hasn’t been roasted that thoroughly since the last time he locked himself in his tanning bed.”
Additionally, “aside from the obvious vomitousness of that rotting yam mocking a child with Asperger’s – again, because she’s more popular than he is – this tweet he posted has the potential to get very interesting” because Trump retweeted congratulations to Thunberg from the actor Roma Downey. Downey is married to Mark Burnett, the producer of The Apprentice, and if Trump starts a war with Burnett’s wife, Kimmel explained, Burnett could “accidentally” release all the behind-the-scenes footage from years of Trump’s defining reality TV show.
The unedited video could have “who the hell knows what – Trump crushing Sudafed and snorting it off a conference table, maybe punching his son Don Jr in the face, pulling his penis out and forcing Meatloaf to say how fat it is,” Kimmel joked. “All that footage gets released, and maybe that will be how Greta Thunberg saves the world.”
Trevor Noah
On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah provided an update on the assholery of the Trump family. “The Trump family has a long history of being assholes,” Noah said, “but lately, you could say that they’ve been stretching the limits of how big an asshole a person can be. Starting with President Trump himself, who apparently has nothing better to do than pick fights with children.”
Noah referred to Trump’s bitter tweet about Thunberg. “Come on, man, the president of the United States is on Twitter, bullying a teenage girl,” he said. “Just try to imagine any other president doing something like this. Imagine FDR doing a fireside chat where he just goes in on Shirley Temple – ‘My fellow Americans, this little girl can’t dance for shit!’”
In other asshole news, Noah continued, reports emerged recently that Donald Trump Jr went to Mongolia this summer and killed an endangered sheep with a laser-sight gun. “What kind of asshole wants to kill an endangered species?” Noah said. “Like, most of us don’t even want to take the last nacho out of the bowl and Don Jr is out here putting panda bears in chokeholds.
“It’s obviously not great karma for Little Bo Creep to be killing off a species, so you would think maybe the Trumps could make things up to the universe with their family charity,” Noah continued. “Except this family is so cartoonishly villainous, they even do charity like assholes.” Noah pointed to a recent New York court ruling which ordered Trump to pay back $2m he stole from his charity for campaign purposes and a $20k painting of himself for his resort.
The court also ordered Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr to attend a training session on how to not misuse charity funds, a training Noah jokingly obtained. His “New York State Guide to Avoiding Charity Abuse” offered straightforward advice: “Don’t steal from a fucking charity, asshole.”
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert recapped the day in Congress, in which the House judiciary committee debated whether to send two articles of impeachment to the House floor. “But first, they spent hours proposing highly specific and asinine amendments,” Colbert said, such as Florida congressman Matt Gaetz’s amendment to name Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Gaetz publicly mocked Hunter Biden’s struggles with drug addiction, which is “pretty ballsy for a congressman to bring that up when he was arrested for DUI in 2008”, Colbert said.
Meanwhile, “the president is putting on a brave face in public but impeachment seems to be getting to Trump,” Colbert explained. According to a report from CNN, aides say he has “appeared distracted and unfocused during conversations”.
“Yes, distracted and unfocused, unlike the old, laser-focused Trump,” Colbert panned, before imitating the president: “‘My fellow Americans, I come to you tonight to announce that American ground forces are – hey, there’s a guy I know, anyway, China, give me dirt on Joe Biden, bing, bing, bong, bong, bong flush your toilet 15 times, goodnight!”
Trump is also reportedly surprised that it’s the Ukraine scandal that’s led to impeachment. “Yeah, me too,” Colbert said. “After all the shady deals he’s been involved in over the years, he gets tripped up by a phone call? Trump getting impeached for Ukraine is like Paul Newman winning an Oscar for The Color of Money – he definitely deserves it but it should have happened way before this.”
© 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
This is why!
Welcome to Politics.
The Liberal-Left are like Moslem Terrorists in the Middle East, using children to shield themselves from bullets on the frontline, as they shoot at you.
Then a children gets hit and they scream as though the other side is evil.
If you want to bring Children into your Holy War, then don’t be surprised by these results.
Greta Thurnberg is probably low-IQ, appealing to emotionalism, and has no substantiated claim toward “Global Warming” or “Climate Change”, as-if these terms were anything more than buzzwords the Liberal-Left now use as excuses to push their agenda, often involving taxation, theft, and extortion.
Oh dear…
So it’s not over yet, and the House of Representatives vote next week will be the definitive vote… based on? 
Well… global debts are constantly being written off, and foreign aid is gifted not lent, so there is nothing to take back, so what is left being owed?
That will be a discussion to be had when Party leaders meet, but the majority of Brits want Brexit and want to remain in the UK… it’s not like we haven’t talked about this, as a Nation, over the decades.
Well… US politics always seemed complicated, but it now seems that media output is being tailored towards a wider non-US audience in recent months, and we can now therefore see the similarities in processes and how the US political system works.
IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY
Trump faces fight-or-flight moment in Senate impeachment trial
Analysis: With his legacy, his re-election and his movement on the line, it would be quite a retreat for the president to sidestep a full Senate trial.
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Dec. 13, 2019, 5:57 PM EST / Updated Dec. 14, 2019, 7:30 AM EST
By Jonathan Allen
WASHINGTON — The closer Republicans get to a Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, the more it looks like an improvised political explosive.
The White House and the Senate Republican Conference are united in their desire to dispose of it, but divided over how to do that in the way that inflicts the most damage to Democrats and the least harm to them. The choice is between a show that gives Trump the chance to turn the tables on his accusers, or a quick dismissal that amounts to an exercise in self-preservation for him and GOP senators.
In other words, it’s fight-or-flight time for Trump.
With his legacy, his re-election and his movement on the line — at a time when congressional Republicans are in lockstep defense of his actions — it would be quite a silent retreat for the chest-thumping, trash-talking Trump to slip away from the chance to have a made-for-TV trial befitting his reality-era presidency.
He sounds like he doesn’t want to.
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“I wouldn’t mind the long process, because I’d like to see the whistleblower, who’s a fraud, having the whistleblower called to testify in the Senate trial,” he said Friday, referring to the anonymous intelligence community official who first accused him of wrongdoing in a complaint filed with the intelligence community inspector general.
He also noted that he believes that the House’s impeachment process — the Judiciary Committee there approved two articles against him on Friday morning and the full House is expected to approve them next week — has benefited him.
“It’s a very sad thing for our country, but it seems to be very good for me politically,” he told reporters.
And yet he also signaled some willingness to listen to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and some White House advisers who prefer a trial with more “no” and less show.
Download the NBC News app for full coverage of the impeachment inquiry
“I’ll do long or short,” he said.
But while McConnell has kept power in the Republican conference for more than a decade by averting risk, Trump didn’t get to the Oval Office by playing it safe. His instincts likely lean toward brawling.
The hope inside the GOP right now is that if he does want to brawl, it’s with Democrats, not fellow Republicans. And so they’re seeking a sweet spot of consensus that suits him.
“The president should have every right to put on the defense he wants,” said Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who is among a group of lawmakers that resisted McConnell’s initial plan for a quick trial that would preclude witnesses. “And I have every confidence that [White House Counsel] Pat Cipollone and the rest of the president’s defense team will give him the best advice to make the right decision.”
The calculus is complicated by a set of instincts and interests shared by the president and some of his most aggressive allies in the Senate that are broadly at odds with those of McConnell, Republican senators in tough re-election bids, and White House officials who fear that a circus-like trial could result in unnecessary pain for everyone.
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Like any leader of a party caucus in Congress, McConnell will place his first loyalty with his peers and keeping them in power. But what’s perceived as good for Republicans in hard re-election fights — a quick trial that puts less of a spotlight on Trump’s alleged misdeeds and the senators’ handling of them — doesn’t fit with Trump’s apparent desire to present his case before the presidential election season heats up.
This Senate, a far more hospitable arena for Trump than the House, is the only remaining venue for him to litigate it.
“What’s interesting is they’re totally split on it right now,” said Rachel Bovard, a former Senate Republican aide who keeps in close touch with GOP officials. Some “want to sail directly into the wind … that’s what the president wants.”
The truth is that either option could backfire.
A speedy trial might make Trump look more guilty, because Democrats will argue he ran and hid behind Republican votes without defending himself. At the same time, a longer version might expose Trump and GOP senators to further revelations about the Ukraine scandal, or simply the humiliation of a public spectacle.
“Get it over fast is the best way,” Bovard said, concluding that more time tends to lead to unforced errors for Senate Republicans. “Everything they touch goes sideways.”
McConnell is clearly eager to avoid a bigger public split with Trump that could hurt Republican senators with Trump’s base. On Friday, he spoke with Fox News’ Sean Hannity about his efforts to coordinate with Cipollone, who may lead the president’s defense on the Senate floor and who could, conceivably, be a witness in the trial.
But even in tying himself to Cipollone, he revealed that he remains favorable to a quiet trial that would be positively un-Trumpian.
“I’m going to take my cues from the president’s lawyers,” McConnell said. “But, yes, If you know you have the vote, you’ve listened to the arguments on both sides, and believe the case is so slim, so weak that you have the votes to end it, that might be what the president’s lawyers would prefer, and you could certainly make a case for making it shorter rather than longer since it’s such a weak case.”
Of course, the president doesn’t always do what his lawyers want — especially if they’re telling him to shut up and take the win.
Jonathan Allen
OPINION | WHITE HOUSE
December 14, 2019 - 12:00 PM EST
Is a trap being set for Trump in the Senate trial?
BY DOUGLAS MACKINNON, OPINION CONTRIBUTORThe views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The HillTWEET SHARE EMAIL
Can 20 U.S. senators withstand the potentially irresistible temptation to reverse the results of the 2016 election and remove a president a number of them openly or privately dislike?
Since Donald Trump announced his intention to run for the White House on June 16, 2015, many of the entrenched elites across the various power centers of Washington and beyond have spent many of their waking hours trying to stop or unseat him.
The political charade of an impeachment “investigation” is but the latest example. But that impeachment charade could harbor the greatest threat to Trump’s presidency.
Over the past week, I have heard from three seasoned Republicans who fear that President Trump and the West Wing are seriously underestimating the potential danger of a Senate trial. Human nature and common sense dictate that, despite the well-meaning resolution circulated by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) condemning the House impeachment process, it’s important for the White House to understand that the weight of history is settling upon the shoulders of these senators - some of them quite weak - and because of that pressure, private conversations are taking place and a trap may be sprung for the president in that trial.
A potential trap set by seemingly loyal Republican senators.
Those I spoke with, like others, worry that the impeachment process, especially a potential conviction in the Senate, will forever poison the integrity of our constitutional and congressional processes and put every future president at risk of having his or her election reversed for partisan and ideological reasons.
But such is the lingering animosity about Trump by many in the GOP establishment, and there very well may be enough Republican senators willing to topple the first domino and set in motion a chain reaction - no matter the consequences.
In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in October, former governor and U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley put her finger on the greater issue, saying in part, “President Trump is a disruptor. That makes some people very happy, and it makes some people very mad. … When I was in the administration, I served alongside colleagues who believed the best thing to do for America was to undermine and obstruct the president. Some wrote about it anonymously in The New York Times. Others just did it. They sincerely believed they were doing the right thing. I sincerely believed they weren’t. … No policy disagreement with him … justifies undermining the lawful authority that is vested in his office by the Constitution.”
What’s at stake, Haley said, “is not President Trump’s policies. What’s at stake is the Constitution.”
She is correct, but does all of this go beyond Trump being a disruptor? As we have witnessed, Trump is being opposed, called out and undermined through leaks by multiple anonymous and named sources from the “deep state,” his own National Security Council, former White House staff, former and current Pentagon, State Department and diplomatic officials, members of Congress and their staffs, and basically every other agency within the federal government.
There appears to be a common thread that runs through all of this opposition and stated hatred: “He is not part of the club. He is not one of us. He can’t be controlled.”
The unrelenting opposition to Trump is not based on the fictional quid pro quo with Ukraine’s president but rather a desperate need by the entrenched establishment from both political parties to maintain the status quo of their all-powerful club - aka part of the “swamp” Trump sought to drain.
For Trump to be convicted in a Senate trial, 20 Republican senators would have to join forces with the 47 Democrats. We should not worry about those who openly dislike Trump, such as Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Susan Collins (R-Maine) or Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska); we should worry about those in the purple states, who face tough reelection fights in 2020, and those who have continually criticized and demeaned the president in private.
What is driving all of this, of course, is the fear that Trump will win reelection. Well, 63 million Americans voted for him in 2016, and 20 GOP senators soon may have the power to invalidate those votes. Can they resist doing so and vote not to convict? Conventional wisdom says that will be the outcome. But as we all know when it comes to Donald Trump, you can throw conventional wisdom right out the window.
For that reason, when it comes to a trial in the Senate, Trump and the West Wing need to remember the sage advice of President Ronald Reagan: “Trust, but verify.”
Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant and author, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administratio
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What a farce, implying the Republicans will not back Trump, after the corruption, sedition, and outright Treason the Democrats have already committed against America.
Wether the Constitution is based on a present model, or an approximated objective, the partiality and the partisanship of it’s interpretation can be understood, in light of past or future variable elements of the sense of that understanding.
However , such dialectic makes little sense without that variability, since the Republicans see it as transcending that interpretation in an absolute sense, and that basically is shown by the evidentiary charges of foreign interference and collusion.
That reduces the applicability if said constitution’s understand ing in terms of contradictory rhetoric.
Today the difference is further fine -tuned by relativistic inferencial terms, and hence the contradiction appeals to a wider scope of interpretation.
The party line further fragments this divided partisanship, whereas a single layered divided one dimensional rhetoric rules the bilateral model.
Functionally independent, by checks and balances , excluded elements mirror preceding interpretations, irrespective of actual mutual involvement ; In stead of a smooth and continuous procedure - the disjunctives eliminate the need for a
functional middle.
In stead , the view of a center as a shifting fulcrum on a single trajectory ,is a description based on elements that inherently make sense. The continuity is comprised of elements which may not cohere with each other.
The time we spent here arguing about the idea of the gaps within that continuum , giving rise to original framing and content , may give pause
to giving a more accurate sense of how the shift toward either side of the aisle may effect equilibrium in establishing constitutional intent. Rather , instead by split mandate on the idea of check and balances, a progressive, rather then a regressive (make America great again) inductive could be far more effective to us and future generations.
That one of the earliest charges against Trump was an absence of a declared mandate, a charge that lead to the actual position we as society find ourselves in, often goes unrecognized nowadays.
The missing element is precisely the theatrical dialectic, that has.been used to create the anomaly as collusive. Hegel & Marx , instead of developing the required continuous structural succession to create an ever widening conjunction in form and practice,( as shown by the the existentially reduced phenomena of the the spirit of the constitutive aspects of the nothingness of the spirit) , had no relation to the manner in which it effected the materiality of it’s sensibility. They are mere expressed opinions in fragmented terms. The gap created a demand for resolution, and the filler, Kant’s imperative in categorical terms comes to mind.
No mention from either side of a.compromise, basically because putting party line of either into a compromising situation, widens the gap , rather then narrowing plausibility, into contradictive points of view. The constitution is reduced to competing , rather then unified modes of interpretation.
Nowhere do the colluded economic and political considerations seen as related, that is why the major defense Trump uses to his lack of mandate in the impeachment procedure is the materially precedented defense: the roaring economy, as he sees tax cuts play into it. He disclaims any qualitative and unified priority as a necessary distinction, and the fact that the tax cut improves mostly the upper social strata , does not enter the equation in his mind.
Great Compromises in United States history lay historically alongside the necessity to change the consisting negative effects prior assumptions of larger collusive and unrecognized relationships to the fragmented logically continuous sequences, that mirrored the actual spatial-temporal spaced out facts and fictions.
That Ayn Rand was able to justify this with a shrug, developed the view which made the transcendental irrelevant , and created the idea that Marxism dealt a fatal blow to the dialectic.
When the USSR was replaced by a diminished Russia, the loss of the material invalidated and totally expunged the idea of spiritual progressive development. It’s consequence was split by partisan rhetoric, in literal terms of what constitutes political development, within the confines of narcissistic brackets, returning it’s self as subsisting as in for it’s self, rather then in it’s self.
There the distinction became axiomatic and contradictory. The 'for-it’s self became the contrary of what it should have developed into, it mirrured the conjectures of mimicking the sudden morphed values, that negated the conservative values of institutionalized policy and long held cultural predicates. The process was shorted, at a much faster rate then cultural associations could absorb.
The resulting confusion has become an international, macabre dance, of power played determinants, with blind determinism of the will to succeed became the battle cry.
This old dance, has nothing but a foreboding structural precedence behind it, and should resonate with it’s loosely associated forbidding aspect, an aspect that can be associated with dialogue going underground, each party becoming almost a secret organization, each with it’s own particular agenda.
This is the time to recognize imminent danger, and not long after from hence, when the waste in human value is belatedly and with feigned regret is finally expressed.
There is more to this diatribe, then seemingly simple obfuscation can gain the power, to enable a national/ international will to set the agenda by which to govern, not only through materially induced Machiavellian stratagem, but by reliving the spirit of the Law, which does transcend the historically significant milestones which required action through time.
Compromise was at several times in history a requisite by which to go on living , by measure of rationality.
Evidence already gathered has revealed John Bolton’s deep misgivings about the way Trump was pressurising Ukraine for personal political gain.
Trump impeachment inquiry
Trump impeachment: Democrats push for Bolton to testify in Senate trial
Schumer writes to McConnell seeking terms of trial
The lies have it: how Republicans abandoned the truth
Ed Pilkington in New York
Mon 16 Dec 2019 08.38 EST
Democrats are pressing for John Bolton, the former national security adviser fired by Donald Trump in September, and the president’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, to be called to testify in the impeachment trial expected to be held in the Senate next month.
Trump impeachment: Democrats fume as Republicans rally behind president
The demand that two key eye witnesses to many of the most contentious elements of the Ukraine scandal should testify was contained in a letter from Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, to his Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell.
The request sets up a bruising clash over the terms of only the third impeachment trial in US history.
The trial, which Schumer proposes should start on 7 January, is now all but certain. The House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats, is set to vote in favor of two articles of impeachment on Wednesday.
In his letter, Schumer lays out a possible structure based on how Bill Clinton’s impeachment was organised in 1999. He pointedly notes that the ground rules on that occasion were approved by a vote of 100-0.
He writes: “Senate Democrats believe strongly, and I trust Senate Republicans agree, that this trial must be one that is fair, that considers all of the relevant facts … The trial must pass the fairness test with the American people. That is the great challenge for the Senate in the coming weeks.”
But hopes of a similar bipartisan agreement over the likely trial were all but dead in the water before Schumer sent his letter. Republicans have made clear they have no intention of abiding by constitutionally proscribed parameters for the trial, which effectively place senators in the role of jurors.
McConnell, who as the majority leader will have ultimate say over how the trial is conducted, has stated brazenly that Trump will not be convicted and that he will design the trial in consultation with the president – the lead juror in league with the defendant.
“Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with the White House counsel,” McConnell said last week.
Other senators have indicated they have made reached a verdict of acquittal even before the first witness is called.
“I have made up my mind, I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here,” Lindsey Graham, the Trump apologist from South Carolina, has said.
This weekend, footage of Graham speaking in 1999, when he was a House manager in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, made the rounds on social media.
“I have a duty far greater than just getting to the next election,” Graham said in the footage. “Members of the Senate have said, ‘I understand everything there is about this case, and I won’t vote to impeach the president.’ Please allow the facts to do the talking … Don’t decide the case before the case’s end.”
Though the Republicans are in the driving seat, their control is not beyond challenge. Were the Democrats to persuade just four Republicans to vote against party lines they could reach the 51 votes needed to determine some features of the trial.
In an interview with CNN on Monday, Schumer implied that getting those four votes was not out of the question, though he would give no names of potential targets.
“There are a good number of Republicans who are troubled by what the president did,” he said, “who want to see all the facts.”
Speculation has focused on senators including Mitt Romney of Utah, who has criticised Trump relatively strongly, and moderates Susan Collins, of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Trump faces two articles of impeachment. The first accuses him of misusing his office to bully Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden in a way that would benefit Trump’s re-election campaign; the second charges the president with obstructing Congress by blocking witnesses to impeachment hearings.
Despite the hyperpartisan battle ahead, Schumer’s demand for Bolton and Mulvaney to be called as witnesses could be significant as it goes to the heart of the evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that impeachment is devised to penalise.
Two other key officials have also been requested by the Democrats: Mulvaney’s senior adviser, Robert Blair, and Michael Duffey, associate director for national security, Office of Management and Budget.
Trump impeachment: Lindsey Graham will ‘not pretend to be a fair juror’
Evidence already gathered has revealed Bolton’s deep misgivings about the way Trump was pressurising Ukraine for personal political gain, reportedly complaining: “I am not part of whatever drug deal [Trump aides] are cooking up”.
Mulvaney’s testimony would also be potentially critical given his statement in October that there had indeed been quid pro quo with Ukraine. The Trump administration withheld almost $400m in military aid to the country at the same time as demanding an investigation into Biden.
Alongside Schumer’s letter, the Democrat-controlled judiciary committee also released early on Monday its complete 658-page report into impeachment.
It charges Trump with placing “his personal, political interests above our national security, our free and fair elections, and our system of checks and balances. He has engaged in a pattern of misconduct that will continue if left unchecked.
© 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
This thread started in April 2018 still idealizes a bunch of corrupt mass media organizations. Will you ever learn Meno?
Trying to be objective here is like looking for a skull of a mind who has been severed by a two edged sword prior to Descartes’ “I am because I think”.
Really,
Wendy, really…
Throughout, I have emphasized the middle ground, advocated by the greatest centrist the world has ever known, Immanuel Kant. He admonished the evil genius , who really put himself in the centerfold of a helpless narcissist, a narcissist who owed his genius not to himself, (although reading him one would think so( but as our very own Peacegirl would have it- he could not help it.)
Now the will not to go go insane from the effects of social constraining derivatives, offering little choice in matters that bifurcirate ideal forms from ego constructs-but wait-I will promise to lighten up, by first de-differentiating the should with the factual is:
And if You think I’m kidding, Wendy, be assured this plays into it per program
The objectives of the well esteemed doctors, and these were esteemed generational men, who planned their livelihood, hoodwinking all the people who were written off …
The point is what followed was rationalizations which disallowed rationality, and the charge that it is the democrats who are trying to diminish Democracy , does give rise to talking points.
But this whole thing is seen as just another day in the life, and needs to inform through media and whatever it takes, including the impeachment.
The people will disallow the Constitution itself , as do nihilists the bible.
To be perfectly real and honest, we are grappling with the ideally real, which is being sold down the toilet with an inherent humanist platform, a non existent idea, that Trump tried to run on, on absentia-( not the platform, but it’s ghost)- and it ran on contradiction, the same as the one pushed by Ecmanu, who sees it as a necessary tableau, for sanitiy’s sake, so the Ameican bible thumpers can understand as they are understood.(Messianic, yea?)
The thing is people don’t know who they really are any more, or what, especially the Southern Anti Be beloomers, who actually do themselves in with vapid, watery issues of the toilets, into which all the garbage should be dumped.
But it ain’t so easy. The baby may be dumped in with the bathwater, and we all know who the baby is.
But the fact, each generarion lives for that blessed child -naivety, innocence, social good will, liberte and justice, and fraternity for all.
But aue contraire, the French supported amexit, now the are verboten Brexit. The party has not changed, it has proceeded non stop, with major players gone through a hundred years’ long myopic amnesia, and to all of them all the reduxes, the deconstruction , don’t mean anything, they still invoke meant masturbatory amnesia, and ww1 & 2, really did not happen
They can retreat back, via the time machine invented by Mr. Wells, who was involved in this way back, before even the decline of the West put western imperialism on notice.
Wendy, the object to it all gives sufficient ground to objectivity, and the philosophers of the mind, realized this -the kundalini of the mind, I think-therefore?- the had to come up with something that meant something.
playing the devil’s advocate, an
, that the precious middle could only be presently effected by some magical system, for even bubbles, nor great schizms could envoke the promise of some Great Compromise.
Was it Henry Clay? Yes I think it was but I will look it up.
.Freud’s analysis worked ok, until the reduction ignored eidectic logic, and opened the gates of societal madness.
This is why clay did and up comic trump can not succeed, because he is by now an emperor disrobed…
Merely comic effecting some temporary relief, kind of like the THE BAPTIST was in the orgasmic days of the Ceasar.
Someone has to become real, and the only reality nowedays stands on relief,
relief of those homeless world wide, who have to bite the bullshit.
The Babtist , of course will be followed by a greater genius, a greater evil genius, who at least has to admit to the farce, and teach the children with a minimum of hypocracy, otherwise? Well, they will start philosophy even before learning to read or rite…
The models of objectivity will mistakenly simulate dolls who even now prefer real men, and not machines.
The ideal will crumble as the grains of sand they were built to live in.
The sea will wash them away, with the coming tide.
Who? What ? It is the antichrist.
POLITICO
WHITE HOUSE
Trump savages impeachment proceedings in letter to Pelosi
“More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials,” the president wrote.
President Donald Trump wrote: “You are declaring open war on American democracy.” | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
By QUINT FORGEY and CAITLIN OPRYSKO
12/17/2019 02:39 PM EST
President Donald Trump on Tuesday savaged House Democrats’ impeachment proceedings in a six-page letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi that read like a collection of his most vitriolic tweets.
The fiery missive, frequently punctuated with exclamation points, came loaded with hyperbolic assertions — including the president’s claim that “more due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials” and his accusation that Pelosi and House Democrats “view democracy as your enemy!”
Trump charged that the current impeachment drive “represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power” by Democratic lawmakers that he argued has been “unequaled in nearly two and a half centuries of American legislative history.”
“By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American democracy,” he wrote.
The heated correspondence comes a day before the House is expected to vote on articles of impeachment charging the president with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, likely making Trump the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.
But the broader intent of the letter to the speaker — which appeared to represent little more than a messaging document, rehashing the same grievances Trump has frequently aired mixed with legal defense — was not immediately clear.
White House counsel Pat Cipollone issued a similarly confrontational letter in October to Pelosi and the three committee chairs leading the impeachment probe, writing that their inquiry lacked “any legitimate constitutional foundation” and stating that the administration would not comply with Democratic lawmakers’ requests.
Trump’s letter Tuesday, however, represented his first formal, written rebuke to House Democrats since they launched the process to remove him from office.
In one portion of the letter, Trump falsely accused Democrats of denying him due process throughout the inquiry. The White House has twice been offered the chance to have lawyers present in different phases of public hearings for the inquiry and declined both opportunities. Instead, Trump’s legal team has begun to coordinate with members of the Republican-led Senate for an upcoming trial.
The president also tried multiple times to turn Democrats’ accusations back on them, even as he mocked the two articles of impeachment he’d been charged with: abuse of office and obstruction of Congress. He argued that former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential 2020 rival whom Trump sought a Ukrainian investigation into, was the one who was truly guilty of abusing his office. And he asserted that Democrats were “turning a policy disagreement between two branches of government into an impeachable offense” while establishing a deeply damaging precedent for presidents to come.
He blasted the charges against him as “completely disingenuous, meritless and a baseless invention of your imagination” and “preposterous and dangerous,” dismissing Democrats’ allegations as “fantasy” despite having hours of testimony to back them up.
Trump also dinged the speaker for what he labeled “your false display of solemnity,” calling Pelosi’s consistent somber demeanor when discussing the inquiry “perhaps most insulting of all.”
He accused lawmakers of harboring “Impeachment Fever,” calling out several key players in the investigation by name, and said that members who vote to impeach are showing “how deeply they revile the voters and how truly they detest America’s Constitutional order.”
Trump railed about the process in person to reporters at the White House moments after the letter was transmitted, but wouldn’t take any responsibility for his behavior, which has been criticized even by some of his backers in Congress.
“No, I don’t take any,” Trump responded instantly when asked whether he accepted any of the blame for the current political storm. “Zero, to put it mildly.” His interaction with reporters functioned as an abridged version of the letter he’d sent to Pelosi, making several of the same arguments as he sat beside the Guatemalan president.
Although Trump wrote that he had “no expectation” Pelosi would bring the impeachment proceedings to a halt, he added: “I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.”
© 2019 POLITICO LLC
Giuliani digs in deeper on Ukraine as Trump is on the verge of being impeached
Trump’s impeachment shouldn’t be the sole worry for aides involved in the Ukraine scheme
A president’s immunity from prosecution while in office has not historically spared his aides from indictment when they’ve acted on illegal directives.
Image: Gordon Sondland and Oliver North
Getty Images
Dec. 3, 2019, 8:56 AM PST
By Michael Conway, Former counsel, U.S. House Judiciary Committee
History teaches that doing the bidding of a president does not shield subordinates from the consequences of breaking the law. Whether in Watergate in the 1970s or the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, a president’s immunity from prosecution for acts while in office has not spared senior administration officials from being indicted for acting illegally in carrying out presidential directives.
That specter complicates the decision faced by current administration officials whose testimony has been sought by Congress in its impeachment inquiry. President Donald Trump’s order that they refuse to testify has had the side benefit of allowing them to hide their own actions from Congress and the public. On the other hand, it exposes them to the Republicans’ talking point that the officials were rogue agents in dealings with Ukraine.
The U.S. ambassador to the E.U., Gordon Sondland, decided to testify. On his third attempt to explain his role in Ukraine to the House Intelligence Committee, he sought to protect himself by swearing that he was acting “at the express direction of the president.” But if Sondland made this assertion in the belief that invoking the president’s role would protect him from potential criminal liability, he is woefully mistaken.
Related
OPINION
Robert Redford: America is in crisis. It’s time to rid ourselves of Trump.
The president’s scheme, Democrats argue, was intended to trade military aid to Ukraine or an invitation to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a White House meeting with Trump, for Ukraine’s announcement of an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter — which could be seen by prosecutors as bribery, extortion or illegal campaign finance violations. If so, Sondland could be prosecuted even if, under existing Department of Justice policies, Trump cannot.
And Sondland is not the only one to face potential legal exposure. According to Sondland, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Office of Management and Budget head Mick Mulvaney and Rudy Guiliani were all “in the loop” on Trump’s plan to have Ukraine investigate a Trump political opponent.
The law, however, has a more formal term for being in a “loop” to obtain an illegal act: conspiracy. And even though Ukraine never announced the investigation, a conspiracy to commit attempted bribery or attempted extortion runs afoul of federal criminal statutes even if the effort ultimately failed.
Related
OPINION
Impeachment shows Kim Kardashian is a better adviser to Trump than Rudy Giuliani
Prosecuting Trump aides for illegal acts the president requested they perform would not be without precedent. Multiple White House and administration officials serving both Presidents Nixon and Reagan were indicted and convicted for federal crimes committed by them in furtherance of presidential objectives.
In the Watergate cover-up, three key Nixon aides — Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, White House adviser John Ehrlichman and former Attorney General John Mitchell — were indicted and convicted for conspiracy to obstruct justice, including hush money payments to Watergate defendants, obstruction of justice and lying under oath.
In its final report, the House Judiciary Committee found that Nixon had directed those subordinates in the cover-up including his “directive to Haldeman on June 23, 1972, to have the CIA request the FBI to curtail its Watergate investigation.” That directive ultimately led to Nixon’s downfall: Following the Supreme Court decision ordering the release of White House tapes, the recording of the June 23 meeting was called a “smoking gun” that led Republican congressional leaders to persuade Nixon to resign.
Trump faces fight-or-flight moment in Senate impeachment trial
At Haldeman’s sentencing hearing, his lawyer, John J. Wilson, told Judge John J. Sirica that “whatever Bob Haldeman did, so did Richard Nixon.” He added, “I hope that your honor considers whatever Bob Haldeman did, he did not for himself but for the president of the United States.” The court, though, was unmoved: Haldeman was sentenced to 30 months to 8 years in prison; so were Ehrlichman and Mitchell. Haldeman served 18 months before he was paroled.
In the next decade, another set of senior government officials learned the same hard lesson. Acting at the behest of then-President Ronald Reagan, officials became involved in the sale of arms to Iran despite an embargo and used of some of the proceeds — in direct contravention of a congressional ban — to aid guerrillas fighting in Nicaragua. The episode, called the Iran-Contra affair, was investigated by an independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh.
After carrying out Reagan’s orders, and thereby committing acts for which they eventually faced legal liability, 14 officials ended up being indicted in connection with the scandal on charges including perjury, withholding evidence, obstruction of justice, false statements and more. The defendants included national security advisers John Poindexter and Robert McFarlane, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams and White House aide Oliver North.
An internal analysis by a lawyer on Walsh’s staff, which was publicly released in 2011, recounted what Weinberger said to Reagan — who approved the operation — in a White House meeting on Dec. 5, 1985. Weinberger raised the prospect that they might all end up in jail, adding “visiting hours are on Thursdays,” according to the report.
Of the 14, nine defendants were convicted, one case was dismissed and, while North and Poindexter were also convicted, their convictions were reversed on appeal. The final two defendants (Weinberger and a CIA supervisor) were awaiting trial in December 1992 when President George H.W. Bush, having just lost his re-election bid, pardoned the two and four others who had been convicted. In granting these pardons, Bush was acting on the recommendation of his attorney general, William Barr, who is now serving in that role for Trump.
Sondland and others may harbor the hope that the president, perhaps at the urging of Barr, will exercise his pardon power for anyone criminally charged in the Ukraine episode. But before putting their faith in such a prospect, they may want to see how that worked out for former Trump helpers Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn — all of whom were prosecuted and convicted, and two of whom are already serving time.
Michael Conway
Michael Conway served as counsel for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in the impeachment inquiry of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974. In that role, he assisted in drafting the committee’s final report to the House of Representatives in support of the three Articles of Impeachment adopted by the committee.
© 2019 NBC UNIVERSAL
You can’t find common ground with GOP fantasists
OPINION
Republican impeachment lies are protecting Trump, but they could destroy America
Republicans appear intent on extinguishing the most fundamental ingredient of a self-governing republic, the concept of truth. That’s deeply sinister.
Republicans in Congress are avidly denying the obvious truths about President Donald Trump’s serial criminality. Though they lack the votes to stop impeachment in the House of Representatives, they are poised to acquit Trump in the Senate, where they easily can block the necessary supermajority of 67 votes required to evict a president from the White House.
The facts of the case are damning. Not only is Trump on record, in a document released by the White House itself, of engaging in extortion and bribery, but his conversation with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky was the culmination of a plot months in the making. Yet no matter the facts of the imbroglio, the Republican legislators either baldly deny them or interpret them in phantasmagorical ways.
“Ukraine blatantly interfered in our election,” says Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, repeating a baseless Russian propaganda line. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, meanwhile, says flatly that the Democrats “are willing to block witnesses from coming in here and testifying before Congress.”
Never mind that it is Trump himself who has taken the extra-constitutional step of ordering all executive branch officials not to comply with congressional subpoenas, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who now wants to exclude witnesses from the Senate trial.
Extinguishing the concept of truth
Acquittal in the Senate, when it comes, will be an example not of democratic deliberation, of the careful sifting and weighing of facts to arrive at some approximation of truth, but the exercise of raw political power.
This is not how a developed democracy should function. Rather, it has something important in common with tin-pot tyrannies in which the leader manipulates the factions and interest groups beneath him to build unbridled power.
To be sure, the political actors backing Trump in Congress are not acting lawlessly; quite the contrary. They are playing the role allotted to them by the Constitution: representing their constituents, i.e., Trump’s base, which opinion polls show would want to stick with him even if he were to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.
Yet there is nonetheless something deeply sinister about the Republicans’ behavior. They appear intent on extinguishing perhaps the most fundamental ingredient of a self-governing republic, namely, the concept of truth.
It would be one thing — semi-respectable — if Republicans were to maintain that Trump’s misdeeds in Ukraine, however deplorable, did not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. But it is something else entirely to recycle Russian-inspired propaganda, to maintain the wholly incredible narrative that Trump was doing nothing but attempting to fight corruption in Ukraine, or to deny the obvious fact that there was a quid, a pro and a quo when Trump held up military assistance to Ukraine and conditioned its release on the performance of a “favor, though.”
Bedrock threat: Trump impeachment charge on obstruction of Congress will define our future as a nation
These Republicans are propagating blatant lies, just like their incessantly lying leader —who blew past 15,000 “false or misleading claims” on Monday and followed up Tuesday by sending House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a six-page letter crammed with falsehoods. They are insouciantly telling us that white is black and black is white, and never mind the obvious falsity of these propositions because, in the end, no matter the truth, they have the votes to acquit.
Senate on path to reward criminality
This exercise of political power in raw fashion could prove to have profound consequences for the future of human freedom. As the possibility of reason and compromise are destroyed, a venerable constitutional democracy, once the beacon of hope around the world, is coming undone.
William Webster, the only man to head both the CIA and the FBI, someone known to be extraordinarily careful with his words, is warning of a “dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love.”
Fake news tsunami: Denying, ignoring and making up facts are the real Trump-era obstacles to common ground
If the Senate fails to convict and remove Trump, the outcome of our struggles will hinge on an election in which one side will have been effectively granted a license to cheat, a license that can be used again and again. Criminality will be rewarded and law-abiding behavior punished. Grievous injury will have been inflicted on our democracy and with it the cause of democracy around the world.
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, was Mao Tse-tung’s famous aphorism. In our gentler American context, we are witnessing the tragic fact that political power can grow out of a fusillade of lies.
© Copyright Gannett 2019
I don’t believe the founding fathers of this country anticipated the polarity required of party affiliation.
What’s up with truth? And the media is squarely behind one side or the other. Where is our “independent” media?