Category: Ukraine

Trump is seriously frightened of man who begged him for a job and tried to start ‘World War VI’

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Technically, pogonophobia is the fear of beards. There doesn’t seem to be a term that applies strictly to the fear of a prickly upper-lip infestation that looks as if it should come with six-guns and a rabbit obsession. So maybe Boltonophobia will have to do. 

This strange affliction has spread almost overnight across the Republican Party, with an incidence rate that appears to approach 100%. But if there’s one person who represents the index case for breaking into sweat at the view of a mustache, it’s Donald Trump. Trump may be more popular than Lincoln in the polls that occur only inside his head, but support for seeing former national security adviser John Bolton spill what he knows about Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine is overwhelmingly popular in the real world. So of course Trump is responding by spraying his fear all over Twitter.

Trump’s renewed assault on John Bolton, that coffee boy who I hardly knew and who was never that smart anyway, began on Tuesday afternoon and was still going on Wednesday morning. According to Trump, Bolton is a guy who “begged” him for a job, which Trump gave him out of pity, despite warnings from others. Then Bolton immediately made a series of mistakes and overstatements that would have led the United States into “World War VI.” Actually, Trump said “World War Six,” though Trump should surely have had sufficient WrestleMania experience to pick up a few Roman numerals by now.

Anyway, Trump immediately fired Bolton for his warmongering and rank incompetence. Where “immediately” is a year and a half later.

Trump also makes a compelling argument that Bolton failed to complain that anything was wrong at the time. Which would be somewhat more convincing had not the newspapers at the time been filled with stories of Bolton-Trump blowouts at the White House. And if half of those who testified in Trump’s House impeachment had not name-dropped the national security adviser. Sure, Bolton described the scheme in Ukraine as a “drug deal,” and, okay, he told more than one of those who reported to him to inform the lawyers about what was going on, and maybe he kicked Trump’s ambassador to the E.U. out of his office for trying to execute on extortion … but that doesn’t mean he complained.

Then Trump makes his ultimate complaint about Bolton: The manuscript that Bolton has submitted to his publisher is “nasty and untrue.” At the same time, it is “all classified and national security.” It might seem like it would be impossible for a book to be both an untrue personal attack and chock-full of classified national security information. But apparently Bolton is supertalented that way.

And very, very scary. Is it too soon for another It remake?

If Dems Get Witnesses, Trump’s Team Should Be Able To Call Their’s Too

Posted on by Wayne Dupree

According to the Wall Street Journal, Sen. Mitch McConnell has told his constituents that he doesn’t have the votes to block witnesses during President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.

He informed them after Trump’s legal team finished with the countermeasures that they want to show the American people how the Democrat-led House pushed the Articles of Impeachment through the system to hurt Trump’s 2020 chances.

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The Democrats will not lose in the respect that they have put out a warning to future presidential candidates and judicial nominees that they will ruin their lives and their families lives for going against them. There is no one but Trump that could have stood up to this kind of punishment and there never will be another.

On the third and final day of presentations by the Trump legal team, lawyers tried to cast doubts on the importance and credibility of allegations by former national security adviser John Bolton about the president’s motives for freezing aid to Ukraine.

But at a meeting of all Republican senators late Tuesday, GOP leaders told their conference that they don’t currently have the votes to prevent witnesses from being called, people familiar with the matter said. Republicans had hoped to wrap up the trial with an acquittal of the president by this week, but Democrats have said he should appear under oath to offer a firsthand account of the president’s motivations for freezing aid to Ukraine—a matter at the heart of the impeachment case.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said the vote total wasn’t where it needed to be on blocking witnesses or documents, these people said. He had a card with “yes,” “no,” and “maybes” marked on it, apparently a whip count, but he didn’t show it to senators.

Using less than half of the 24 hours they were allotted, the president’s lawyers on Tuesday argued that House managers hadn’t established their case that Mr. Trump abused power and obstructed Congress and said the accusations fell short of the threshold needed to remove a president from office, particularly in an election year. [Wall Street Journal]

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The Republican Senators who are stupid enough to vote for witnesses need to lose their seats for their bad decisions. They are merely liberals disguising themselves as Republicans. Time for pressure on them.

Whatever Trump told Bolton in a conversation should not matter one bit, it is a private conversation, and it is nobody’s business. What matters is that aid was released and that Ukraine’s president said he never was pressured to announce anything. The issue is those weak Republican Senators, just man up or woman up and support the President. All witnesses should have been called in the House, we have seen enough of those idiots Schiff and Nadler, enough already.

IF there were no impeachment hearings, what would the Senate be doing right now? Looking into Biden’s corruption in Burisma? Who are the loudest voices for impeachment? The same people that are caught up in these corrupt foreign deals that begin with Burisma.

The impeachment exists to distract and prevent the prosecution of corrupt politicians like Pelosi, Romney, Schiff, etc. They can’t let the distraction end or it’s the beginning of the end for them. Those that think they have something to fear don’t want the impeachment hearings to end.

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You know, when they conduct these polls and tell you that the American people overwhelmingly want witnesses because they want to see a fair trial, what they don’t tell you is the makeup of the people who answered that poll. I bet if they told you the questions (and responses) behind the poll, you would see a lot of Republicans who want witnesses—-witnesses that they believe will fully exonerate Trump.

That’s why I don’t really care if they call witnesses, as long as Trump gets to call all his witnesses and it isn’t all one-sided in favor of the Dems. Of course, if it does turn out to be one-sided, some Republicans are going to have a LOT to answer for…but the bright side is that this will NOT go down as the “fair trial” that the American people wanted.

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The post If Dems Get Witnesses, Trump’s Team Should Be Able To Call Their’s Too appeared first on The Political Insider.

The numbers keep adding up against McConnell’s cover-up trial: 75% of voters want witnesses

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Senate Republicans are skating on pretty darned thin political ice, and Moscow Mitch McConnell is whipping them into the danger area in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. Here’s the latest from Quinnipiac which finds that 75% of voters want the Senate to hear witnesses. "There may be heated debate among lawmakers about whether witnesses should testify at the impeachment trial of President Trump, but it's a different story outside the Beltway. Three-quarters of American voters say witnesses should be allowed to testify, and that includes nearly half of Republican voters," said Quinnipiac University Poll Analyst Mary Snow in the polling memo.

That includes includes 49% of Republicans, 95% of Democrats, and 75% of independents. What’s more, 53% of voters say Trump is lying about his actions in Ukraine, compared to 40% who say he’s being truthful (the cult remains). For those “independent” senators like Susan Collins, here’s a number: 53% of independents say Trump is lying. Among all voters, 54% say he abused his power, 52% say he obstructed Congress, and 47% say he should be removed. Oh, and 57% say they are paying a lot of attention to the proceedings. That’s got to be shaking up some Senate Republican offices right now.

Let's add to the pressure. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as majority leader.  

New poll: 82% of voters say Bolton must testify in impeachment trial

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Donald Trump's lawyers and Senate enablers are doing their damnedest to pretend that former national security adviser John Bolton is just some guy making stuff up in "An unpublished manuscript, that some reporters, maybe, have some idea what it said. If you want to call that evidence." They might want to rethink that considering new polling from Navigator research showing that a whopping 82% of registered voters think Bolton should testify at the impeachment hearing.

What's more, and this is something, that question was included in a poll in the field last week, before the report from Bolton's leaked manuscript which says flat-out that Trump withheld aid to Ukraine for his own political gain. From the toplines of the poll, respondents were asked "If John Bolton has firsthand knowledge of Donald Trump's actions relating to Ukraine and investigating Joe Biden, how important is it for John Bolton to testify in the Senate impeachment trial?" A total of 82% say yes—56% say it's very important and 26% say it's somewhat important to hear from him. That includes 70% of Republicans, with 33% saying it's very important and 37% somewhat important.

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Trump’s latest anti-corruption move: PR event alongside world leader charged with corruption

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Donald Trump really cares about fighting corruption, his impeachment defense lawyers keep telling us. He cares so much that he held up nearly $400 in military aid to Ukraine to ensure that it would crack down on corruption (in a way that would just so happen to benefit him personally). And now Trump has showed how strongly opposed he is to corruption by … unveiling a major (deeply problematic) Middle East plan alongside a world leader who was indicted just today for corruption.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. In one of the three cases, he steered hundreds of millions of dollars in regulatory benefits to a media company owned by a friend, and in exchange got favorable news coverage. Netanyahu tried to argue he was immune to prosecution and has called the prosecution an “attempted coup.” So actually, he’s the perfect person for Trump to be standing with on the last day of the defense’s opening arguments in Trump’s impeachment trial.

The plan Trump and Netanyahu are unveiling “is overwhelmingly expected to be skewed in Israel's favor and is largely viewed as dead on arrival in the region,” CNN reports. Former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman charged that Netanyahu is using the event and the plan to boost his own political strength, saying that “Netanyahu is taking a political plan and turning it into a survival plan for him personally.”

With Israel set for an unprecedented third election in early March after the last two resulted in deadlocks, Lieberman explained, “Everyone understands that, 34 days before an election, it is impossible to start a deep, meaningful, fundamental discussion.” Cynically using sham policy for personal political benefit? Another way the Trump-Netanyahu partnership on this plan, on this day is a perfect meeting of minds.

But an hour after Trump was side by side with Netanyahu, his impeachment defense team will be back to argue that he really, really cares about corruption. Tell us another one, guys.

More leaks show Bolton’s book skewers Trump on his fondness for dictators

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Even as Alan Dershowitz was wrapping up a day in which Trump’s legal team operated on the pretense that contents from John Bolton’s upcoming book had not been leaked over the weekend, The New York Times released more material from the manuscript. The primary subject of the new material was not Trump’s efforts to extort Ukraine, but some of his connections to other foreign governments, including those of Turkey and China, where Trump appeared to be placing a personal relationship—or personal benefits—above national concerns.

The most interesting point from the just-reported pages might not be so much what as who. Because it was not only John Bolton who expressed concern about Trump’s willingness to nod along with dictators. Also worried by Trump’s actions was the man who has been Trump’s primary enabler: Attorney General William Barr.

While Bolton was fretting that Trump was weakening national security policies toward Turkey and China to maintain his personal relationships with Tayyip Erdoğan and cake-buddy Xi Jinping, Barr had other concerns. The issues with both Turkey and China were the subjects of independent investigations by the FBI and the Department of Justice. But Trump was directly putting his fingers all over the issues involved in those investigations. That appears to include having had conversations with both Erdoğan and Xi in which he may have passed along information on the status of the investigations.

Even before his election, Trump had a fondness for dictators. Since he has occupied the White House, that unbridled power has become the model for how he does business, and for what he looks for in a “peer.” Erdoğan, Xi, Mohammed bin Salman, Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, and Rodrigo Duterte come in for almost unlimited praise for their “toughness,” even when that toughness is expressed in mass murder. On the other hand, more democratic leaders of traditional allies—from Canada to European countries—have come in for constant attacks by Trump. Apparently even senior officials in Trump’s White House are less than thrilled with his willingness to embrace dictators and swoon over those whose policies are far from democratic ideals. Trump’s actions have also interfered in investigations targeting financial institutions involved in money laundering and evading international sanctions.

As The Washington Post reports, each release of information from Bolton’s book is turning up the heat in D.C. While this certainly isn’t the first book in which a former member of the Trump White House details the deep dysfunction and struggle to patch over Trump’s latest disasters, Bolton’s long history within the Republican Party is giving this manuscript extra impact. That impact is multiplied a thousandfold by the timing of the leak during Trump’s impeachment.

According to the Post, the connection between Ukraine funds and the desired investigation into a political rival isn’t a quick hit in the manuscript, but part of over a dozen pages devoted to Bolton’s involvement in the Ukraine scheme. The Post also notes a lot of friction that existed between Trump’s staff of personally loyal toadies and Bolton as a representative of old-school Republican conservatives. Bolton was looked on from the beginning not as an agent of the deep state, but as an agent of the traditional right—and there was no love lost between Bolton and Trump, or Bolton and Trump’s closest supporters.

What both the manuscript and White House reports indicate is that Bolton “was regularly appalled” by Trump’s actions and statements. So appalled that he was willing to tell anyone—after he left the administration and signed a seven-figure contract.