Category: Recommended

‘I am now proudly a registered Democrat standing with the Constitution,’: #ILeftTheGOP goes viral

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Can people change their minds? Of course they can. Will certain cults of personality lose their followers this coming election cycle? Some people have traveled too far down a very dark road and are unwilling to face up to their own fears and faults. But some people have started out one way and went another. My father was a conservative kid from a working-class Queens, New York, family who went from being a conservative who liked late-1950s Nixon into a bleeding heart liberal a few years later. For him, a young woman telling him his ideas were like those in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead made him rethink his values. People change, and for many people, watching the current Republican Party under Donald Trump debase the Constitution and walk back virtually everything they’ve said they stood for, is enough to get #ILeftTheGOP to begin trending on Twitter.

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There are a mixture of serious testimonials as well as some funny digs at the Grand Old Party.

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Many people who showed up at the Kos blog porch over 10 years ago to talk about their feelings and ideas might remember a similar story to this:

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And there are the more modern converts.

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For some it was coming for a long time.

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And these hearings, with such stark hypocrisy on the part of the Republican Party, will hopefully have more people making these moves.

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But, never forget, we do not choose when and where and to whom we are born. We all have to make our ways to the light in different ways.

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And there is a lot of pain involved in changing what might once have been a strongly held belief system.

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And just for some of us, showing our support.

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If you were once conservative, share your story below.

‘Get your facts straight!’ Chris Wallace gets testy with Fox News pundit’s spin on Bolton

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Fox News’ Chris Wallace slammed conservative pundit Katie Pavlich on air, telling her to “Get your facts straight” after she tried to claim all kinds of made-up facts in her defense of Donald Trump. In question was Pavlich’s revisionist retelling of how the Democratic House’s impeachment inquiry was hampered by obstruction. In Pavlich’s imagineering, the Democratic Party is breaking with impeachment tradition by pushing an incomplete case, “and every impeachment beforehand, the witnesses that were called had been called in the House before being brought to the Senate. So there are questions here about the process.”

That’s not true. It’s not even a little bit true, and Wallace cut Pavlich off to tell her as much: “They hadn’t all been called in the House, and in the Clinton impeachment, they’d been called by the general independent counsel. They had not been called by the House.” 

Right-wing pundit Katie Pavlich is just the kind of dumb that Trump’s Republican Party loves: willing to toe any line of misinformation, no matter how many obvious facts and contradictions there are. Appearing on Fox News with conservative luminaries such as Brett Baier, Pavlich was promoting the old conservative trope that the difference between Clinton’s impeachment trial and Trump’s is that the Democratic Party keeps trying to add new things to it, because it’s going so terribly. The basis of this bit of bullshit is that Donald Trump’s White House has refused to allow anyone to testify, while his Department of Justice has done more work trying to cover up his criminal behavior than any of the actual work it’s supposed to do as a department. 

Wallace has been as critical of President Trump as anyone can be on the Fox News network, even admitting to the public that Trump has damaged our freedom of the press. But it’s hard to tell whether Wallace is angry at the lies being spread, or how stupid the spin is. The segment opened with Wallace saying proof that the John Bolton news that broke over the weekend was “big” was how intensely people like Pavlich were trying to spin it. 

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Sen. Martha McSally defends insulting a reporter with rambling, self-satisfied op-ed

Posted on by Hunter

Republican Sen. Martha McSally will never be mistaken for a person of integrity. She is, however, the sort of Trumpian person who likes to invent insults and fundraise off them by selling overpriced T-shirts emblazoned with them. McSally responded to a CNN reporter's question about whether she would consider new evidence in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump by calling the reporter a "liberal hack," saying, "I'm not talking to you," and walking away. Within hours, McSally's website sported a new "You're a liberal hack" T-shirt as fundraising gimmick. Bask, America, in the glow of the world's greatest deliberative body and its assembled merchandise.

All of that looked boorish, unnecessary, and more than a little cowardly; McSally also faced calls to apologize to the reporter who had asked a perfectly legitimate question of a public official. So now McSally's got a long, rambling, extremely whining op-ed out, complaining that she, of course, is the real victim here.

Again, let's keep in mind that the chief justice of the United States recently called the Senate by its preferred porn name, World's Greatest Deliberative Body, as we try to glean any meaningful content from this piece other than self-satisfied grunting noises.

McSally writes, "Predictably, his entire industry melted down. How dare someone – a woman, perhaps? – ‘lash out’ at a reporter like that! In a hallway, no less! The pearl-clutching was more over-the-top than I could have ever imagined."

All right, that is about enough of that. There's also quite a bit of McSally reminding the world that she is a veteran, saying that, "as a combat veteran who survived situations where foggy communications could get people killed, I don't have time for the language games they expect you to play in Washington."

Right, because insulting reporters and refusing to answer the most fundamental questions about the single biggest issue and story in the country today is saving people from "getting killed." So brave. So, so very brave.

The rest of piece seems to be an entirely contentless stream-of-consciousness bashing of the "liberal media" and "DNC talking points," and by God I flew 325 combat hours so I should be able to insult all the reporters I want to because they are "liars" and this is, yes, pretty much what Donald Trump himself would write if he did not have bone spurs and if he allowed ANYONE AROUND HIM to edit his burping thoughts into complete sentences.

But the central message is unmistakable: The press is "liberal"; therefore the free press is an enemy, and attacks on it are therefore not only justified but required of all Good Republicans as we trundle toward the great Republican future in which no reporters will ask questions that our lawmakers do not like. And you can support this new Republican future by buying our favorite insults printed on T-shirts.

Watch Fox host contort himself as new damaging info emerges in Trump impeachment trial

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

The Republican Party continues forward with its oblique defense of Donald Trump’s impeachable crimes. This on the heels of bombshell news that former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his soon-to-be-published memoir that Trump froze the congressionally earmarked financial aid to Ukraine subject to them opening up a public corruption investigation into the Biden family. By any measure this would be a smoking gun. In fact, back in September, even Fox & friends’ Steve Doocy could agree to that. In a clip you can watch below from Sept. 24, 2019, Doocy explains how the whistleblower complaint only means something if someone could truly point to Donald Trump withholding aid because he wanted an investigation into a campaign rival—Joe Biden.

STEVE DOOCY: If the president said, you know, “I’ll give you the money but you’ve got to investigate Joe Biden,” that is really off-the-rails wrong.

Ainsley Earhardt agreed.

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Steve Doocy spent Monday pushing back those goal posts, while Fox News brought on corrupt politician after corrupt politician to pooh-pooh these bombshell revelations. Speaking with alleged sexual molestation accessory after the fact Rep. Jim Jordan, Doocy asked this of the new Bolton allegations. Calling these allegations something that “we have heard before,” Doocy went on to both illustrate exactly why the news is damning, while also saying it didn’t matter now, for no reason.

DOOCY: This is something we have heard before but now, because it’s John Bolton, and he was in the room, what does this change?

Media Matters put together this clip showing Doocy in September and Doocy on Monday.

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Listen, everybody has the right to change their minds about things. In fact, as more and more evidence is revealed, one should be able to change their mind as they now have new information to work with. And yet, somehow, Steve Doocy is so filled with the poison of cynicism, he is able to seamlessly change the parameters of the argument in such a way that it makes me wonder if Steve Doocy’s mind is simply filled with a gaseous sulfur-smelling void.

Mike Pompeo lied about NPR interview with Mary Louise Kelly—and there’s proof

Posted on by Hunter

It's hard to keep track of every detail of Republican corruption, but Trump-appointed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo got himself into a new scandal when he cut an NPR interview short after journalist Mary Louise Kelly asked him about ousted ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, screamed at Kelly afterward, and dared her to find Ukraine on a "blank" map he keeps in his office, for some reason (which she did, as Kelly has a master's degree in European studies). He capped off this tour de force by sending out a crass official State Department statement claiming she was lying about all of it.

Among his claims: Kelly had agreed to limit questions only to Iran and was not supposed to ask about anything Ukraine-related. It turns out, because we've heard this song before, that Mike Pompeo was lying through his teeth on that one and The Washington Post was quickly given proof. Once again, Pompeo has used his State Department to lie to the American people.

The Washington Post obtained the email exchanges between NPR and Mike Pompeo's staff. They show that Kelly specifically did not agree to Pompeo's conditions, and specifically said she would also be asking questions about "Ukraine." "I never agree to take anything off the table," Kelly wrote in one email.

Pompeo's office pushed back, asking at least that Iran be the topic for "a healthy portion of the interview," once again signaling Pompeo's months-long aversion to answering any questions whatsoever about the impeachment-causing scandal he is buried in up to his ex-House Republican eyebrows. But Kelly gave only the assurance that her "plan" was to spend a "healthy portion" on Iran, with no promise that other subjects wouldn't come up.

So the secretary of state lied to the American people in an official State Department statement, which is many times worse than the Benghazi scandal House Republican Pompeo attempted to manufacture out of thin air. This is not surprising: He is crooked. He has repeatedly lied. He has been identified as a key figure in Trump's scheme to withhold military aid to Ukraine until a "Biden" investigation was announced.

Former national security adviser John Bolton's unreleased book manuscript alleges that Pompeo personally knew of the smear effort against Ambassador Yovanovitch, and knew that Rudolph Giuliani's claims about her were false, The book says Pompeo expressed a supposition that Giuliani was working to undermine Yovanovitch on behalf of other, unspecified clients. Pompeo is corrupt. He must be removed from office.

How desperate are Senate Republicans to silence Bolton? Desperate enough to throw away the republic

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Republicans don't give a damn about how dangerous Donald Trump is, or about the fact that he's selling our democracy to whichever foreign governments will help him get reelected. They are absolutely desperate not to hear directly from former national security adviser John Bolton. In fact, nothing could be worse than simply calling Bolton to testify under oath about what he knew and what he heard directly from Trump about withholding aid to Ukraine in exchange for investigations into Trump’s domestic political opponents, the basis for Trump’s impeachment.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said that the Bolton account wasn't worth exploring because it was just a marketing stunt: “This looks like a marketing tactic to sell books is what it looks like to me.” Gee, John, why not find out by calling Bolton in and asking him?

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Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska prefers a statement to actual testimony: “It doesn’t take a subpoena to put out a statement. I think if Ambassador Bolton has something to say he could  do that.” Also, Fischer is pretty sick of being asked about the biggest news of the day and likely even the entire impeachment trial so far: “Do you guys have memos on the same question to ask all the time? Just curious.”

Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri doesn't really care what the facts are—he's in Trump's camp no matter what: "I can’t imagine that anything he would have to say would change the outcome of the final vote."

Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming applied his blindfold to the "so-called blockbuster" Bolton report: "To me, the facts of the case remain the same."

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota echoed Barrasso’s nothing-to-see-here take: “I don’t think it changes the facts. ... I don’t personally see it as a game changer.”

And—wait for it—Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri is confused about what constitutes a first-hand witness: “Well, I don’t know. Is he a firsthand witness? I’m not sure.” LOL. Man, what a complete joker, unworthy of holding elected office—a proud moment for Missouri, no doubt. 

And Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst—who's already declared her undying fealty to Trump and the White House’s distorted version of events—is waiting to hear White House lawyers declare the earth is flat once again so she can agree with them wholeheartedly: “I’m sure they will address this now, and we go from there.”

Yep, that may be the one truthful thing uttered so far by Republicans on Monday morning. The White House counsel will absolutely try to twist the Bolton revelations one way or the other. Asked by a chorus of reporters about the Bolton report Monday morning, Trump was unusually short on words. "False" was all he offered. 

Senate Republicans were heading into an all-caucus meeting just before the impeachment trial resumes, and they will likely come out with a more tailored set of talking points intended to blunt the damage of the bomb that just dropped on them. They will also surely apply immense pressure on Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the only GOP senator to signal any interest whatsoever in hearing from Bolton. Romney called it “increasingly apparent that it would be important to hear from John Bolton.” That’s what counts for courage these days in the Republican Party.

Trump’s impeachment defense resumes Monday amid fallout from Bolton bombshell

Posted on by Laura Clawson

What is Donald Trump’s defense team going to do during their impeachment trial arguments now that former national security adviser John Bolton has blown up one of their key contentions? They’ve insisted again and again that no witnesses had heard directly from Trump that Ukraine aid was held up to get investigations of Trump’s political opponents. But now we learn that Bolton’s book says that he had exactly that conversation with Trump—and Bolton has said he would testify under subpoena. 

The impeachment trial will resume at 1 PM ET with Trump’s defense team continuing the opening arguments it briefly launched on Saturday, at the time strongly centering that “there are no eyewitness accounts” claim. The Sunday evening report of Bolton’s claim should pose a problem to any defense team. But does this one care enough? 

Pat Cipollone, Jay Sekulow, and the rest of Trump’s lawyers have been content to lie and attack. They’re unlikely to change that basic strategy now, whether they continue on as if there was no new information, or acknowledge the reports in order to attack Bolton. But it will be interesting to see if they appear at least a little flustered. If they seem to have had a late night trying to reformulate their case even the slightest bit. If there’s visible flop sweat.

The other question is how Senate Republicans will respond. They’ve been okay with the whole lie-and-attack defense because they want to cover up what Trump did and move on, Republican political power intact. They’ve swallowed the Trump arguments whole, no matter how ridiculous, while feigning deep outrage every time Democrats have suggested that there’s a problem with covering up a president’s efforts to solicit foreign interference to benefit him in an election. Thanks to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s tight restrictions on cameras, we don’t get to see the senators’ reactions. But it sure is going to be interesting to hear from reporters how the atmosphere in the Senate chamber and the demeanor of key senators compare with previous days.

This one on John Bolton was a big, stupid lie even by Trump standards

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Donald Trump responded in the most Donald Trump way to news that former national security adviser John Bolton wrote that Donald Trump personally told him that military aid to Ukraine was held up until Ukraine investigated Trump’s political opponents: He lied. And Trump didn’t just lie about whether he held up the aid to get help in the 2020 elections. He lied about something that can easily, publicly be proven as a lie.

According to an early morning Trump rage-tweet, “The Democrat controlled House never even asked John Bolton to testify. It is up to them, not up to the Senate!” This is so ridiculously false it's embarrassing even by Trump’s standards.

The House Intelligence Committee scheduled a deposition with Bolton in early November, then waited to see if he’d show up. Bolton instead said he would go to court to get a ruling on whether the White House could block him from testifying. “We would welcome John Bolton’s deposition and he did not appear as he was requested today,” the Intelligence Committee said in a statement at the time. “His counsel has informed us that unlike three other dedicated public servants who worked for him on the NSC and have complied with lawful subpoenas, Mr. Bolton would take us to court if we subpoenaed him.” Instead, the committee marked Bolton’s refusal, under White House pressure, as another piece of Trump’s obstruction of Congress.

Trump needs the world to believe him over Bolton, to believe that he did not tell Bolton that the Ukraine aid was on hold for his own political benefit. But he can’t even tell the truth about the House having called Bolton to testify in the impeachment inquiry. That’s how much Donald Trump’s word is worth, and how much contempt he has for people who remember things that happened all the way back in November. John Bolton is warmongering scum, but there’s just no contest here.

On the Sunday shows, Trump’s Senate bootlickers show how low they can go

Posted on by Hunter

Before this evening’s blockbuster John Bolton news, we’d already seen that the level to which Republicans will sink to defend Donald Trump on anything and, literally, everything has no bottom. There seems no cutoff point beyond which now thoroughly-corrupted lawmakers will abandon him; he could sacrifice Mitch McConnell's family to Satan on the steps of the Capitol and senators like Lankford and Cotton would applaud madly at his boldness and explain that this is indeed What Middle America Wanted.

Sen. Tom Cotton went pretty damn low on Face The Nation this morning when asked about Trump’s dismissal of soldiers being flown back to the United States for medical treatment after suffering TBIs, or traumatic brain injuries, in the Iranian strikes responding to Trump’s targeted assassination of a top Iranian military leader. Trump said “they had headaches,” and “but it is not very serious.”

That seemingly glib dismissal of brain injuries as “headaches” caused anger among numerous veteran’s groups, who have demanded Trump apologize. To Sen. Cotton, though, Trump is still-and-always in the right. “He’s not dismissing their injuries, he’s describing their injuries,” he told Face the Nation.

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The Veterans of Foreign Wars, for example, disagrees. “TBI is known to cause depression, memory loss, severe headaches, dizziness & fatigue—all injuries that come w/ both short- and long-term effects” said VFW National Commander William Schmitz in a statement.

Cotton had thoughts about impeachment as well. Asked about the release of a new recording in which Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman got a Trump instruction to “take her out” after the trio falsely claimed that anti-corruption U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was “badmouthing” him,  Cotton’s only take away from the extended recording was that “badmouthing” sounded like “a pretty sound reason to move an ambassador.” That Trump was getting that advice from Rudy Giuliani and two now-indicted foreign agents, he claimed, was not a problem. See the bar getting lower? Do you think a similar tape coming out featuring, say, any Democrat that Tom Cotton could name would be similarly uninteresting to Tom Cotton?

So there you go. That’s the kind of person the Republican base puts in the Senate these days.

As for Sen. James ‘Young Lindsey’ Lankford, he has been throwing himself in front of whatever cameras he can find to defend Trump, during the trial. He made forays onto multiple networks to hail Our Dear Glorious Tweeting Leader; it’s not clear what administration job he’s angling for, as Trump already has more shoe-shiners than the Trump family has shoes. On MSNBC he got slapped around for lying repeatedly to the viewing audience. On CNN he pivoted to defending Dear Leader’s tweet-grouse complaining that impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff “has not paid the price, yet,” for challenging Dear Leader. 

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If you need a measure of just how intensively the Lankfords of Republicanism are willing to grovel, this might be a good one: Well I don’t personally interpret Dear Leader’s latest remarks as an actual “death threat” against a sitting congressman, so everything remains fine. All Hail Twitterburp.

The standards of the presidency have fallen very far, in the last three years, and Sen. Lankford would like you to buckle in because, at least according to him, the new lower bound is openly calling for the death of his opponents. Is he there yet? No? Then all praise Dear Leader, who will be vindicated after we vote to conceal all remaining evidence. And if Dear Leader does cross that last line, Sen. James Lankford will defend him still.

House impeachment managers: Bolton ‘directly contradicts the heart’ of Trump’s defense

Posted on by Hunter

The team of House managers presenting the case for impeachment in the Senate trial of Donald Trump have released their first statement responding to the news that John Bolton asserts Trump personally told him he was freezing congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine until Ukraine agreed to assist in investigations of Democrats and his potential challenger Joe Biden:

“Today’s explosive revelation that President Trump personally told former National Security Advisor John Bolton that he would continue the freeze on military aid to Ukraine until that country agreed to his political investigations confirms what we already know. There can be no doubt now that Mr. Bolton directly contradicts the heart of the President’s defense and therefore must be called as a witness at the impeachment trial of President Trump.

“Senators should insist that Mr. Bolton be called as a witness, and provide his notes and other relevant documents. The Senate trial must seek the full truth and Mr. Bolton has vital information to provide. There is no defensible reason to wait until his book is published, when the information he has to offer is critical to the most important decision Senators must now make—whether to convict the President of impeachable offenses.

“During our impeachment inquiry, the President blocked our request for Mr. Bolton’s testimony. Now we see why. The President knows how devastating his testimony would be, and, according to the report, the White House has had a draft of his manuscript for review. President Trump’s cover-up must come to an end.

“Americans know that a fair trial must include both the documents and witnesses blocked by the President—that starts with Mr. Bolton.”

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Nancy Pelosi also weighs in:

Amb. Bolton reportedly heard directly from Trump that aid for Ukraine was tied to political investigations.The refusal of the Senate to call for him, other relevant witnesses, and documents is now even more indefensible.The choice is clear: our Constitution, or a cover-up.