Moscow Mitch: Master of covering up Trump’s election cheating

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Moscow Mitch McConnell, so well-known for, among other things, his efforts to cover up Russia's interference on behalf of Donald Trump in the 2016 election, is now scorching the political ground of the Senate over the idea that an impeached Trump should be convicted and removed from office for trying to extort and bribe Ukraine into interfering on his behalf in 2020.

In a particularly loathsome and vile performance Tuesday, McConnell said, "It insults the intelligence of the American people to pretend this was a solemn process reluctantly begun because of withheld foreign aid." Which is really a leap, since the majority of the American people support Trump's impeachment and at least pluralities support his removal from office. If the intelligence of the American people is being insulted here, it's by the travesty he and fellow Republicans are inflicting on the republic.

It's time to end McConnell's destructive stranglehold on the republic. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as Senate majority leader.

"We must vote to reject the House's abuse of power," McConnell said, and "vote to keep factional fever from boiling over and scorching our Republic." Yes, this is the same McConnell who has been coordinating with Trump's lawyers—including Pat Cipollone, who turned out to be a material witness to Trump's attempted extortion of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—at every step of the way in this process.

The man who says partisan fever "led to the most rushed, least fair and least thorough presidential impeachment inquiry in American history" is trying to keep "factional fever" from "scorching our Republic." That's really rich. There's only one answer from a smart American public: We end his Senate majority.

Trump, ‘deeply gifted orator’ his staff says, delivers the State of the Union address Tuesday night

Posted on by Joan McCarter

So this is happening as scheduled, even though this is already the worst week of the century and the last thing anyone needs. Impeached president Donald Trump will deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday, Feb. 4, at 9 PM ET. It will be on every network as well as the regular cable news outlets and C-SPAN. You can watch and mock along with your friends here at Daily Kos, as well.

The White House is setting expectations insanely high as totalitarian regimes do, for this coming tour de force penned by dear leader himself. "The president is a best-selling author and deeply gifted orator who packs arenas and has a meticulous and carefully honed method for writing his speeches," Hogan Gidley, a White House lackey, said in a statement, "whether it be at a rally, a manufacturing plant opening or the State of the Union. What the American people hear is 100 percent President Trump's own words." That last sentence is possibly true.

Those "carefully honed" words will probably be about the economy, maybe about the coronavirus, probably about the new trade agreement, the United States Mexico Canada Agreement replacing NAFTA, and possibly the trade deal just signed with China. He may stay on script and ignore impeachment. He may do anything because when you're a celebrity, you can do anything.

The Democratic responses will come from rising-star Democratic women. Michigan's first-term Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will deliver the English-language response. Rep. Veronica Escobar, a freshman representing El Paso, Texas, will deliver the Spanish-language response.

Collins’ legacy: To be ‘remembered not for her courage, but for her capitulation’

Posted on by Joan McCarter

The convention wisdom, for some unknown reason (laziness? lack of imagination?), that Sen. Susan Collins is a "moderate" still persists. Here's a headline in Sunday evening's Washington Post: "Republican Sen. Susan Collins finds it's lonely in the middle."

"Here in Maine," the story says, "where the famously independent Collins is locked in a tight reelection campaign, the choice elicited a wintry mix of cold shoulders and icy glares." The choice meaning her vote for witnesses in impeached president Donald Trump's trial, a vote that was carefully choreographed in Mitch McConnell's conference. That's because her "famous independence" is a sham, and people like Bill Nemitz, Maine's leading political observer, know it. In Sunday's Portland Press Herald, he laid out the whole con job.

Collins has chosen her side, and Maine knows it. Please give $1 to help Democrats in each of these crucial Senate races, but especially the one in Maine!

"She will say she tried her best. She'll note that she voted for witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Trump, but that vote fell short," he writes. "Then, when the final impeachment vote comes on Wednesday afternoon, expect Maine Sen. Susan Collins to fall back into the Republican line and vote to acquit." She has "pages upon pages of detailed notes" to justify her vote, but since they just could hear from those witnesses she really wanted to hear from, the case just hasn't been proven so she, sadly, has no choice. She has to stand with Trump. But Nemitz remembers when Collins "demonstrated integrity," when she wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post explaining "Why I Cannot Support Trump."

"Collins’ statement of conscience bears revisiting," Nemitz writes, "if only to show that while Trump hasn't changed, the senior senator from Maine most certainly has." She's no longer a moderate, an independent voice for Maine, and Maine knows that. This is what Maine is expecting to see this week: "So, come Wednesday and the final impeachment vote, look for Collins to express her deep concern at how nasty everyone has become, wring her hands over how difficult her life has grown and then, ever loyal to a party that now devours those who dissent, vote to let Trump off the hook." Yes, Nemitz knows her very well. "And long after this national trauma passes into history, Maine's Susan Collins will be forever remembered not for her courage, but for her capitulation."

Pelosi serves well-deserved shade on McConnell, Chief Justice Roberts over sham impeachment

Posted on by Joan McCarter

No one can twist a political knife quite like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Think of the now-legendary clapback at impeached president Donald Trump at last year's State of the Union address. She's the queen of shade, and you just knew that Mitch McConnell was going to be on the receiving end of some of that. It hit Saturday morning in a brutal tweet that cast a wide penumbra, taking in the potted plant who presided over last week's sham impeachment trial.

"It is a sad day for America to see Senator McConnell humiliate the Chief Justice of the United States into presiding over a vote which rejected our nation's judicial norms, precedents and institutions which uphold the Constitution and the rule of law," she wrote. Ouch. That's all she said. That's all she needed to say. Chief Justice John Roberts is going to come out of this thing looking like a tool, and it's because of McConnell's machinations. It's because there was no way McConnell was going to let this impeachment trial be anything but a travesty.

History is not going to look kindly on either of those men.

It's time to end McConnell's destructive stranglehold on the republic. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as Senate majority leader.

Senate Republicans officially vote five more times for a cover up

Posted on by Joan McCarter

After a parliamentary inquiry from Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to Chief Justice John Roberts as to whether he was aware that presiding judge Salmon Chase broke ties in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, and Roberts said yes he was but he wasn't going to be doing that, the Senate Republicans killed the last-ditch efforts by Democrats to stop this cover-up of an impeachment trial.

The first was an amendment to subpoena Mick Mulvaney, John Bolton, Michael Duffey and Robert Blair as well as documents from White House, OMB and the Defense and State Departments, the Senate Republicans voted to table it unanimously and it failed 53-47. On the second amendment, to subpoena John Bolton, Republicans Susan Collins and Mitt Romney voted with Democrats, but it was still killed, 51-49. The third amendment was to both subpoena Bolton and further that he be deposed in a session presided over by Roberts, then requiring one day for live testimony before the Senate within the next five days. Again Collins and Romney voted with Democrats, but this amendment was also killed 51-49. The final amendment was Sen. Chris Van Hollen's amendment to require that Roberts rule on motions to subpoena witnesses and documents, and to rule on any assertions from Trump of privilege. Chief Snowflake Roberts was defended unanimously by Republicans, and they killed that one 53-47. The underlying resolution governing the remainder of the trial passed again on a party-line vote of 53-47.

We have to end their stranglehold on the republic. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as majority leader.

Senate Republicans vary from tortured to triumphant in abetting the Trump/McConnell cover-up

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Senate Republicans are taking various approaches in rationalizing their decision to cover up impeached president Donald Trump's crimes, depending on how much they care about their reputations. Sen. Marco Rubio, the Bible-verse-touting Republican from Florida, pretends to be thoughtful and statesmanlike in his statement. "For purposes of answering my threshold question I assumed what is alleged is true," he wrote. "And then I sought to answer the question of whether under these assumptions it would be in the interest of the nation to remove the president." Essentially, "Yeah, he did it. He tried to cheat in the 2020 election, but so what?"

That's taking a page from Sens. Lamar Alexander and Lisa Murkowski, bemoaning that they can't find the awful impeachable behavior of Trump impeachable because of the nasty, nasty partisan House forcing them to destroy the republic. Add into that pile the guy who loves to position himself as very troubled by Trump, Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska. He can only offer up, "Let me be clear; Lamar speaks for lots and lots of us." Brave Sasse can't even use his own words.

Please give $3 to our nominee fund to bury them. The Democrats must take the Senate back.

Collins earns a new nickname in Moscow Mitch’s impeachment game: Sidekick Sue

Posted on by Joan McCarter

There's a new nickname for Maine Sen. Susan Collins floating around the internet: It’s #SidekickSue, in recognition that she's Moscow Mitch McConnell’s most valuable player when he's trying to fix a Senate vote. That the fix was in (and that she had a key role in it) was glaringly apparently Thursday night in the choreographed release of statements from Collins and Sen. Lamar Alexander regarding whether they wanted to compel additional witnesses and testimony in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. (Collins said yea, while Alexander said nay.)

The final cynical fillip came Friday morning from Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the other reliable player in McConnell's game, with her duplicitous embrace of the cover-up with crocodile tears: "It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed." But she did her job for McConnell, and she's providing the cover Collins needs. It's not going to work this time.

The jig has been up for Collins since she betrayed every principle she previously touted and voted in favor of Brett Kavanaugh’s conformation to the Supreme Court. "Just as we've known she would, Collins announced her support for witnesses only when the votes were fixed to block witnesses and rig the trial to cover-up the corruption of Donald Trump," Marie Follayttar, co-director of Mainers for Accountable Leadership, told Common Dreams. "We see Collins for who she is—Sidekick Sue to Moscow Mitch and a corrupt and despotic Trump."

Collins has chosen her side, and Maine knows it. Please give $1 to help Democrats in each of these crucial Senate races, but especially the one in Maine!

Let’s make sure there’s hell to pay for Moscow Mitch’s impeachment evil

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Thursday night's highly choreographed dance between Sens. Susan Collins and Lamar Alexander in impeached president Donald Trump's trial demonstrated one thing: It is as critical to take away Mitch McConnell's Senate majority as it is to defeat Trump in November.

Collins didn't decide to vote for witnesses after hearing all the facts. She negotiated her opportunity to feign independence from Trump on a vote Maine is watching. The fact that she had a three-paragraph statement ready to tweet out mere moments after Thursday night's session was gaveled out proves it. Moments after that, Alexander was cued to announce his decision in a series of 15 tweets, clearly not written on the fly and admitting that, yeah, the entire Republican conference admits that he did it but they don't give a damn. And no, Lisa Murkowski is not going to save the day—this was all too carefully engineered to leave that as a possibility. So the cover-up McConnell promised from day one is complete, as will be Trump's acquittal.

What does that mean for us now? Payback in November. Moscow Mitch's majority gone. It won't be easy. We'll be fighting against everything an emboldened Trump—and Putin—throw at us. It means we unify behind the Democratic candidate for president and we don't get distracted for one second from giving the new president a Senate that will help her save the republic. It starts today.

It's time to end McConnell's destructive stranglehold on the republic. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as Senate majority leader.

Collins, Alexander prove that fix has been in all along on Trump’s impeachment trial

Posted on by Joan McCarter

There will almost certainly not be a 50-50 tie in the Senate impeachment trial on whether to have additional witnesses and documents. Sen. Susan Collins, almost immediately following the closing of Thursday night's session, showed that she'd been given the "hall pass" from McConnell to vote "yes" on witnesses. In a three-paragraph statement that was probably written before the trial even began.

Moments after Collins’ statement, as if it were totally choreographed to try to make her look like the hero, Sen. Lamar Alexander announced that he is a "no" because "there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the U.S. Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense." He goes on to say essentially, yes Trump definitely did it, but we don't need to impeach him over it.

If, as expected, Sen. Mitt Romney votes for witnesses, that leaves just Sen. Lisa Murkowski as an unknown. She’s said she's thinking on it. That's most likely false, because the main thing has been trying to give Collins cover, and McConnell is not going to allow Chief Justice Roberts being in the position of having to decide whether or not to break a tie.

We have to end their hold on the Senate. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as majority leader.

Schiff: Trump team’s claim Giuliani wasn’t conducting policy a ‘breathtaking’ admission

Posted on by Joan McCarter

In response to a question from Democrat Joe Manchin and Kristin Sinema, and Republicans Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins about whether the White House would assure the Senate that it would not allow private citizens to conduct foreign policy, White House lawyer Patrick Philbin stepped in it, and Rep. Adam Schiff pounced. Philbin answered "I just want to make clear that there was no conduct of foreign policy being carried on here by a private person."

That was all the opening Schiff needed. "We have just heard a breathtaking admission by the President's lawyer," he said. "What the President's counsel said was that no foreign policy was being conducted by a private person here. That is Rudy Giuliani was not conducting U.S. foreign policy. Rudy Giuliani was not conducting policy. That is a remarkable admission," Schiff continued. They have suggested, he said, that "this is a policy issue," about burden-sharing or corruption, but "they have no acknowledged that this was not about policy. […] This was not policy conducted by Mr. Giuliani."

"They have just undermined their entire argument," he added. "If Giuliani wasn't there conducting foreign policy, it must have been a "personal political errand."

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