Category: Recommended

Republicans make clear they won’t be modifying their aversion to facts in defending Trump

Posted on by Meteor Blades

On Saturday, Donald Trump’s lawyers lifted the corner a bit on what will be the Republican strategy for fighting impeachment come Monday.

First the Republicans will introduce the same five lies they’ve been spouting all along at the impeachment trial and earlier.

Then they will repeat the same five lies they just told us.

Next they will spend another hour telling the same lies again.

At this point they will take a break and hold a few interviews telling Foxaganda reporters the lies they just told on the Senate floor. 

During the afternoon, the Republicans will lay out the lies again, and then for each of the five, they will   

repeat  reiterate recapitulate rehash  reprise  restate 

After a break for food, they’ll return to the Senate chambers to repeat the lies. Five lies. The same ones. Again.

And again.

Forevermore.

This Republican charade might be mildly entertaining if it were a parody episode of “The Apprentice” instead of a constitutional crisis with outright tyranny eagerly waiting in the wings.

‘Right matters and the truth matters’: Read Adam Schiff’s history-making impeachment trial speech

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Thursday evening marked the end of a second long day on the Senate floor in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. Democratic officials presented the evidence to America, detailing how and why Donald Trump must be removed from office. The highlight was lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff's powerful 30-minute argument that closed out the day.

Schiff once again detailed some of the steps Trump and his White House took to obstruct the inquiry into his abuses of power. He underlined how the Trump White House went to his handpicked attorney general, William Barr, and got him to refuse to release evidence to Congress. “I know what the law says and it says you shall, doesn't say you may, doesn't say you might, doesn't say you can if you like to, doesn't say if the president doesn't object—it says you shall.” Just like at every other turn in this saga, it’s only because of the Democratic Party’s insistence that a whistleblower’s warnings be heeded that we even discovered how deep our executive branch’s corruption goes. 

Finally, Rep. Schiff finished with the powerful, already often-quoted conclusion of his argument, where he tied together why Donald Trump must be removed from office with what’s at stake for America. The final nine minutes of Schiff’s speech is transcribed below.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: But even now, our ally can’t get his foot in the door. Even now, our ally can’t get his foot in the door. And this brings me to the last point I want to make tonight, which is, when we’re done, we believe that we will have made the case overwhelmingly of the president’s guilt. That is, he’s done what he’s charged with. He withheld the money. He withheld the meeting. He used it to coerce Ukraine to do these political investigations. He covered it up. He obstructed us. He’s trying to obstruct you and he’s violated the Constitution. But I want to address one other thing tonight. Okay, he’s guilty. Okay, he’s guilty. Does he really need to be removed? Does he really need to be removed? We have an election coming up. Does he really need to be removed? He’s guilty. You know, is there really any doubt about this? Do we really have any doubt about the facts here? Does anybody really question whether the president is capable of what he’s charged with? No one is really making the argument “Donald Trump would never do such a thing,” because of course we know that he would, and of course we know that he did. It’s a somewhat different question though to ask, okay, it’s pretty obvious whether we can say it publicly or we can’t say it publicly. We all know what we’re dealing here with this president, but does he really need to be removed? And this is why he needs to be removed.

Donald Trump chose Rudy Giuliani over his own intelligence agencies. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own FBI director. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own national security advisers. When all of them were telling him this Ukraine 2016 stuff is kooky, crazy Russian propaganda, he chose not to believe them. He chose to believe Rudy Giuliani. That makes him dangerous to us, to our country. That was Donald Trump’s choice. Now, why would Donald Trump believe a man like Rudy Giuliani over a man like Christopher Wray? Okay. Why would anyone in their right mind believe Rudy Giuliani over Christopher Wray? Because he wanted to and because what Rudy was offering him was something that would help him personally. And what Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the truth. What Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the information he needed to protect his country and its elections, but that’s not good enough. What’s in it for him? What’s in it for Donald Trump? This is why he needs to be removed.

Now, you may be asking how much damage can he really do in the next several months until the election? A lot. A lot of damage. Now, we just saw last week, a report that Russia tried to hack or maybe did hack Burisma. Okay. I don’t know if they got in. I’m trying to find out. My colleagues on the Intel Committee, House and Senate, we’re trying to find out, did the Russians get in? What are the Russian plans and intentions? Well, let’s say they got in and let’s say they start dumping documents to interfere in the next election.

Let’s say they start dumping some real things they hack from Burisma. Let’s say they start dumping some fake things they didn’t hack from Burisma, but they want you to believe they did. Let’s say they start blatantly interfering in our election again to help Donald Trump. Can you have the least bit of confidence that Donald Trump will stand up to them and protect our national interest over his own personal interest? You know you can’t, which makes him dangerous to this country. You know you can’t. You know you can’t count on him. None of us can. None of us can. What happens if China got the message? Now you can say, he’s just joking of course. He didn’t really mean China should investigate the Bidens. You know that’s no joke.

Now maybe you could have argued three years ago when he said, “Hey Russia, if you’re listening, hack Hillary’s emails.” Maybe you could give him a freebie and say he was joking, but now we know better. Hours after he did that Russia did, in fact, try to hack Hillary’s emails. There’s no Mulligan here when it comes to our national security. So what if China does overtly or covertly start to help the Trump campaign? You think he’s going to call them out on it or you think he’s going to give them a better trade deal on it? Can any of us really have the confidence that Donald Trump will put his personal interests ahead of the national interests? Is there really any evidence in this presidency that should give us the iron-clad confidence that he would do so?

You know you can’t count on him to do that. That’s the sad truth. You know you can’t count on him to do that. The American people deserve a president they can count on to put their interests first, to put their interests first. Colonel Vindman said, “Here, right matters. Here, right matters.” Well, let me tell you something, if right doesn’t matter, if right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. Doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. Doesn’t matter how well-written the Oath of Impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost. Framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves, if right and truth don’t matter. And you know that what he did was not right.

That’s what they do in the old country that Colonel Vindman’s father came from. Or the old country that my great grandfather came from, or the old countries that your ancestors came from, or maybe you came from. But here, right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No Constitution can protect us, right doesn’t matter any more. And you know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to. This is why if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters and the truth matters.

Otherwise, we are lost.

You can watch Rep. Adam Schiff’s closing argument in three parts below.

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Pompeo responds to reports of rage-filled tirade against reporter with lie-filled statement

Posted on by Joan McCarter

The non-impeachment bombshell of the week was NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly's interview with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the interview in which he blustered and lied to the unflappable Kelly; the interview that so enraged him that he followed up with a rage- and expletive-filled rant at Kelly off tape. The State Department did not respond to NPR with a statement after the story broke Friday, but now has released a rage-filled statement from Pompeo on department letterhead, one in which he blusters and lies.

He says in that statement, "NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly lied to me, twice. First, last month in setting up our interview […]." Kelly, in the interview, refutes that. Pompeo tries to filibuster his way out of answering questions about Ukraine by saying "You know, I agreed to come on your show today to talk about Iran." Kelly interjects: "I confirmed with your staff [crosstalk] last night that I would talk about Iran and Ukraine." In discussion following the airing of the full interview, "All Things Considered" hosts Ari Shapiro and Audie Cornish confirm that Kelly has emails with Pompeo's staff confirming that she would discuss Iran and Ukraine (you can listen to the full show here). Not as well that the transcript the State Department posted does not have Pompeo or his aide who is in the room disputing that.

Continuing with the the second part of Pompeo's statement with the next lie: "[…] then again yesterday, in agreeing to have our post-interview conversation off the record." Kelly herself took that straight on Friday in explaining the interaction with ATC co-host Cornish. She said that the aide who was staffing Pompeo, and who escorted her to the room where Pompeo swore and yelled at her did not say that this meeting would be off the record, and said that she never would have agreed to it being off the record. In her words: "the same staffer who had stopped the interview reappeared, asked me to come with her—just me, no recorder, though she did not say we were off the record, nor would I have agreed." Yes, that's "he said, she said" but this is an experienced reporter for a respected national outlet. She's not going to flub something so basic.

Then, in his statement, Pompeo offers the usual Trumpian attack: "It is no wonder that the American people distrust many in the media when they so consistently demonstrate their agenda and their absence of integrity." Then he really shows the full force of his ill-informed and vile misogyny: "It is worth noting that Bangladesh is NOT Ukraine." That's his response to this, from Kelly: "He asked if I could find Ukraine on a map; I said yes. He called out for his aides to bring him a map of the world with no writing, no countries marked. I pointed to Ukraine."

Kelly NPR's bio says, was NPR's national security correspondent for NPR News and has had a distinguished reporting career since graduating from Harvard University as an undergrad and her master's degree. That degree is from Cambridge University in England. Her degree is in European studies.

Yes, she knows where Ukraine is on a map. That was just too big of a tell on Pompeo's part, coming up with something as farcical as this.

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Adam Schiff’s perfect shutdown of Trump’s ‘executive privilege’ claims is mandatory viewing

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Rep. Adam Schiff took time away from wiping the floor of the U.S. Senate with Donald Trump’s weak-sauce arguments, to go in front of cameras outside of the Senate to … wipe the floor with the president’s weak-sauce arguments. Speaking alongside the other House Impeachment managers, Rep. Schiff wanted to disabuse the Republican-media narrative that the reason there are zero witnesses being allowed into the Senate’s trial is because of some kind of legitimate claim on Trump’s behalf of executive privilege. Calling it a “camouflage” and explaining that the Chief Justice has already been empowered to make those determinations in the trial, Schiff very adeptly and succinctly debunks what will likely be a large part of the upcoming Trump defense.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: I do want to address one issue that the president's team has been pushing out, not in the senate chamber but evidently everywhere else. And that is their last refuge. The last refuge of the Republican—not the Republican—of the president's team’s effort to conceal the evidence from the American people, and that is this claim of executive privilege. Now, we urged at the beginning of the trial that any witness issues be resolved at the beginning of the trial. The president's team wished to push that off, as did Senator McConnell, so that later in the process they could say, “well, if we were to entertain those questions now that would simply take too long.” That's nonsense. This is not a trial for a speeding ticket or shoplifting.

This is an impeachment trial involving the president of the United States. These witnesses have important firsthand testimony to offer. The House wishes to call them in the name of the American people and the American people overwhelmingly want to hear what they have to say. Now unlike in the House where the president could play rope-a-dope in the courts for years—that is not an option for the president's team here—and it gives no refuge to people who want to hide behind executive privilege to avoid the truth coming out. We have a very capable justice sitting in that Senate chamber empowered by the Senate rules to decide issues of evidence and privilege. And so if any of these witnesses have a colorful claim that they wish to make, or the president on their behalf, we have a justice who is able to make those determinations, and we trust that the chief justice can do so.

The Senate will always have the opportunity to overrule the justice, but what they fear, what the president’s team fears, is that the justice will, in fact, apply executive privilege to that very narrow category where it may apply. And here that category may be nowhere at all. Because you cannot use executive privilege to hide wrongdoing or criminality or impeachable misconduct. And that is exactly the purpose for which they seek to use it.

And finally, they have withheld hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of documents for which there is no colorable claim of privilege. Several of the witnesses that we seek to call have no even colorable claim of privilege. This is merely the latest camouflage and merely the latest effort to obstruct the Congress in its investigation and now to obstruct the Senate in the trial.

That’s a fact. Rep. Schiff continues to just land devastating body blow after body blow.

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Mike Pompeo got backed into a corner about Marie Yovanovitch during NPR interview

Posted on by Jen Hayden

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was backed into a rather uncomfortable corner during an interview with Mary Louise Kelly on NPR’s Morning Edition. Although Pompeo wanted to stick to the topic of Iran, Kelly pivoted to the Ukraine scandal and specifically wanted to know how he responded to criticism from State Department personnel who resigned after Pompeo failed to back U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch while she was being targeted by nefarious characters outside the U.S. government while she was doing her assigned work combatting corruption in Ukraine. Time and time again, Pompeo insisted he’d defended all State Department personnel. A blatant lie, one he struggled to defend.

Listen to or read the exchange below and keep in mind that Mike Pompeo has never uttered one word in support of Ambassador Yovanovitch or any of the other dedicated, career diplomats who refused to participate in the corrupt plans of Donald Trump and his enablers, like Mike Pompeo. 

MARY LOUISE KELLY: People who work for you in your department, people who have resigned from this department under your leadership, saying you should stand up for the diplomats who work here.”

MIKE POMPEO: I...I...I don’t know— I don’t know who these unnamed sources are you’re referring to. I can tell you this—

MARY LOUISE KELLY: These are not unnamed sources. This is your senior advisor Michael McKinley, a career foreign service officer with four decades experience who testified under oath that he resigned in part due to the failure of the State Department to offer support for foreign service employees caught up in the impeachment inquiry on Ukraine.

MIKE POMPEO: I’m not going to comment on things that Mr. McKinley may have said. I’ll say only this. I have defended every State Department official. We’ve built a great team. The team that works here is doing amazing work around the world—

MARY LOUISE KELLY: Sir, respectfully, where have you defended Marie Yovanovitch?

MIKE POMPEO: I’ve defended every single person on this team. I’ve done what’s right for every single person on this team.

MARY LOUISE KELLY: Can you point me toward your remarks where you have defended Marie Yovanovitch?

MIKE POMPEO: I’ve said all I’m going to say today. Thank you.

The audio of the Pompeo NPR interview is available below, but there is ample new evidence today about the Ukraine scandal and Mike Pompeo’s involvement. ABC News obtained a taped conversation reportedly of Donald Trump with Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, Rudy Giuliani, and others. The conversation took place on April 30, 2018, in a suite at Trump’s D.C. hotel, where the gang was having a private dinner where they discussed the Ukraine scheme. Trump can be heard demanding Yovanovitch’s ouster, saying "Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it."

Lev Parnas recalled this dinner conversation during an interview with MSNBC. After all, dining with a U.S. president in a private suite in his private hotel would be rather memorable, no?

"We all, there was a silence in the room. He responded to him, said Mr. President, we can't do that right now because [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo hasn't been confirmed yet, that Pompeo is not confirmed yet and we don't have -- this is when [former Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson was gone, but Pompeo was confirmed, so they go, wait until -- so several conversations he mentioned it again."

This new recording, which backs up what Parnas claimed, is all the more reason Mike Pompeo should testify before the Senate during the impeachment trial. The conversation took place the very same week Mike Pompeo was sworn in, which means he was aware of and/or participated in the scheme from the minute he walked through the doors of the State Department. 

Either way you slice it, Mike Pompeo has been earning a reputation as a liar, which is a rather untenable position for the secretary of state to be in while they are representing the United States around the world. The American people, and most especially our foreign service officers, deserve someone of the highest ethical and moral standards in the role. 

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House attorneys are using arguments Trump’s legal team made in Senate to fight Trump’s own DOJ

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Yes, you can. No, you can’t. Yes, you can! Those are not just the lyrics to an old show tune; they’re also the refrain in a disconnect between the case Donald Trump’s attorneys are pressing in Trump’s Senate impeachment trial and positions that Trump’s Department of Justice is taking in multiple courtrooms. In particular, the motley crew of con man lawyers undertaking Trump’s defense before the Senate has shouted that the place to obtain cooperation from subpoenaed witnesses is the courts. At the same time, the DOJ is continuing a case that claims that Congress can’t go to court to enforce subpoenas of Trump’s advisers.

Under Attorney General William Barr, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has argued that Trump isn’t subject to indictment. It’s argued that Trump can’t be mentioned as a suspect in legal proceedings. It’s argued that Trump can’t even be investigated. And now it’s arguing that when Trump says no to a subpoena, Congress has no recourse at all.

And now the House is using the Trump lawyers’ argument in the Senate to battle Barr’s argument in court.

As The Washington Post reports, attorneys representing the House of Representatives brought the position argued by Trump’s impeachment team into federal court with them on Thursday in the ongoing fight with the Justice Department. In a case that’s already been mentioned several times on both sides of the impeachment proceedings, House attorneys have been seeking testimony from former White House counsel Donald McGahn. When the House dropped cases against other Trump advisers who had resisted subpoenas, it was because its legal team was concentrating on the McGahn case in the hope of making it a model that could force quick obedience to any other subpoena. 

The House already won its case in federal court, with a decisive ruling that was highly dismissive of the case presented by White House attorneys. However, the McGahn case was immediately appealed, and the DOJ argument to the appeals court is that … the appeals court has no business even hearing arguments. Incredibly, the DOJ has argued that the appeals court is “barred from considering subpoena-enforcement suits brought by the House.”

The argument is that the judicial branch was to withdraw from any dispute between the executive and legislative branches. Which is convenient for Trump, since he has no intention of cooperating with congressional oversight in any way. In past cases, courts have been reluctant to engage in this kind of dispute, and have frequently backed away while ordering the other branches of government to work out their differences. But there’s a very big difference between that reluctance to get involved and the idea that the judiciary is barred from making a ruling—especially when the White House has made it clear that it has no interest in negotiating.

Now the House attorneys are back with fresh evidence in the form of the claims that Trump’s attorneys have made in the Senate. Trump’s team has repeatedly claimed that if the House wanted to see witnesses cooperate, it would take them to court. With Trump’s own attorneys arguing a case contradictory to the DOJ position, the House has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to make a quick ruling on the basis that the ruling could affect the Senate outcome.

If the court rules that it really is barred from intervening in such cases, then claims that the House should have taken witnesses to court are moot … and Trump apparently has unlimited authority to obstruct. On the other hand, if the court rules that McGahn must testify, it’s very likely that subpoenas will then go out to John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney. If the Senate does not issue such subpoenas, the House will.

The most likely outcome is that the court will come down where it has in the past: The other branches of government should work out their differences without coming to court. But if they have to come to court, the court will give them a ruling.

The only way that Trump comes out a winner is a ruling that his privilege cannot be challenged. In which case the losers are everyone in America.

McConnell’s second impeachment cover-up is hiding how Republicans are blowing off their jobs

Posted on by Laura Clawson

As you watch the impeachment trial, with its unrelenting single camera angle, remember that this is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s other cover-up. McConnell has most famously rigged the rules of the trial so that it’s extremely unlikely to include witnesses or new evidence. But he’s also responsible for the limited view of the Senate during the trial, and it’s not just an aesthetic issue.

Sign the petition: We need fair media access to the Senate impeachment trial.

C-SPAN, CNN, and other networks asked to have more cameras recording the historic event, but McConnell wasn’t having it—he kept the video feed limited to a government-controlled camera that shows basically nothing but the person speaking, with the occasional shot of the entire room. Combined with a prohibition on still cameras and sharp restrictions on press access to senators during the trial, this means that viewers can’t see senators’ reactions. Or senators napping. Or—and this is where it especially matters—when senators leave the room rather than honoring their duty as jurors.

As political historian Julian Zelizer told CNN, “The last thing Republicans want right now is for a camera to pan the chamber to show a bunch of the senators aren't there. That would be problematic and politically embarrassing.” But that's exactly what's happening, and what McConnell’s restrictions on cameras are keeping from public view.

We don't have a view of how many senators are playing hooky or reading books at any given time, and we don’t know what else we’re missing. ”With the Senate in control of what images are broadcast and disseminated, the public loses that right to independent access and are left reliant on what the government wishes them to see and hear,” said the general counsel of the National Press Photographers Association.

As Mitch McConnell wants it.

Tennessee senator tries to burn Adam Schiff, but Twitter roasts her almost instantly

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Sen. Marsha Blackburn is well-known around these here parts for being a pretty detestable human being. Then again, detestability seems to be the only qualification for being a Republican senator these days. And Blackburn has indeed been doing her job as a Republican senator: groveling at the feet of Donald Trump while dismantling our democratic processes. 

As Donald Trump’s impeachment trial goes into another day, Republicans in the Senate are spending their time not paying attention with the deck already loaded, the fix already in. But having all of this obdurate criminality in place does not stop Republicans like Marsha Blackburn from being dumb as dirt. The senator from Tennessee decided to go and give her two cents, in a classic Republican attempt at gotcha-style politics:

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Sorry! I should have warned you that your mind might be blown clear from your skull by Blackburn’s wit and wisdom. The Twitterverse very quickly realized that Marsha Blackburn had said something—something too stupid and unbelievably hubristic to let lie.

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But people were also pissed.

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Damn. “Guttersnipe” sounds awful.

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And it didn’t stop. In fact, the ratio just took off on Sen. Blackburn

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Some literature for Blackburn to read while she doesn’t fulfill her sworn oath on the Senate floor:

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And some more reminders:

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Before you knew it, #Marsha was trending. And not because The Brady Bunch is getting a reboot.

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That Tweet is to remind people that Sen. Marsha Blackburn is trash.

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And finally:

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Lindsey Graham goes into hiding just before Jerry Nadler calls him out—with receipts

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Rep. Jerry Nadler spoke today during the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump. At one point during his statement, Nadler wanted to make it clear to everyone that the top Republicans in the room were full of shit, especially by their very own standards. Nadler played a clip of Sen. Lindsey Graham recorded during the 1999 Senate impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton giving his opinion of what a “high crime” is.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: What is a high crime? How about if an important person hurt somebody of low means. That’s not very scholarly, but I think it’s the truth. I think that’s what they meant by high crimes. Doesn’t even have to be a crime. It’s just using your office and you’re acting in a way that hurts people. You’ve committed a high crime.

Rough stuff. Graham seems to have known this would be coming, and, according to The New York Times, Graham slipped out a few minutes before Nadler played the clip. Because there is at least one constant in the universe: Republican cowardice.

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‘With me, there’s no lying,’ Trump says as he lies and lies and lies and lies about impeachment

Posted on by Laura Clawson

“Now, with me, there's no lying,” Donald Trump said Wednesday about impeachment. You know what happened next, right? Yup, Trump unleashed a barrage of lies about impeachment. Trump made 14 false claims Wednesday spread out between the press conference in which he said “Now, with me, there's no lying” and interviews with CNBC and Fox Business.

CNN’s invaluable Daniel Dale has the tally: Trump repeatedly claimed, in different ways, that House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff misled Democrats about what Trump said in his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and that once the White House released the call summary, “all hell broke out with the Democrats, because they say, 'Wait a minute. This is much different than Shifty Schiff told us.’” In reality, Schiff’s comments on the call came after the White House released the summary, and the only way Democrats were taken aback by the contents of the call is that it was kind of unbelievable how blatantly Trump worked to extort Zelensky.

Trump also claimed that “I never see them talking about the transcription. I never see them talking about the call, because there's nothing to say.” This is false. He has been impeached as a direct result of the call, and it is still being discussed constantly. Sections of the call were read out on Wednesday as part of the impeachment trial.

Trump suggested that two whistleblowers “disappeared,” when really what happened was that one filed a complaint which kicked off an investigation that corroborated the complaint, and a second whistleblower spoke to the intelligence community’s inspector general but did not make a separate complaint. And, Trump said, “when [Democrats] saw this transcript, they said, ‘We got problems,’” which is, once again, false. Or rather, the problems “they” said “we got” are the problems you get with a corrupt president trying to rig an election.

Other Trump lies included basically anything you can think of about funding to Ukraine: he said “They got their money long before schedule,” which they did not on account of how he held it up illegally. He lied about the type of aid that former President Obama extended to Ukraine. He lied about how much funding Ukraine has gotten from Europe.

Donald Trump lies about everything, big and small, but when it’s about impeachment, it’s almost always big. Usually very big, with the biggest being the fundamental claim that the July 25 call that showed firsthand that he was trying to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political opponents is somehow exonerating. He did what Democrats say he did, and we have it in his own words, released on his authority. No matter how often he lies about it, he can’t change it.