;)
The Commentariat -- November 22, 2019
Afternoon Update:
Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump unleashed a series of falsehoods on Friday in an effort to invalidate the impeachment inquiry and counter sworn testimony from officials in his own administration, after a week of damaging public hearings. In a 53-minute phone interview with 'Fox & Friends,' Mr. Trump accused David Holmes, a political counselor to the American ambassador in Ukraine, of fabricating a phone call between Mr. Trump and the American ambassador to the European Union. Mr. Holmes told impeachment investigators that he had overheard the president ask the ambassador, Gordon D. Sondland, about Ukrainian investigations into his political rivals, a consequential detail in the Democrats' impeachment inquiry. 'I guarantee you that never took place,' Mr. Trump said. He added that he barely knew Mr. Sondland.... In his own testimony, Mr. Sondland corroborated Mr. Holmes's account.... Mr. Trump also said he knows the identity of the anonymous whistle-blower whose complaint prompted the impeachment inquiry -- and asserted that the details in the complaint were 'fake.'... He also said Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election with the goal of helping Hillary Clinton, an unsubstantiated theory." Trump also seemed to say that he had no idea how Sondland got involved in the Ukraine scandal. ~~~
~~~ Quint Forgey of Politico: "One day after the wrap of the first phase of public impeachment hearings..., Donald Trump unloaded to Fox News, declaring he wants a Senate trial, pushing a debunked theory that Ukraine has a DNC server, and deeming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi 'crazy as a bedbug.'" ~~~
~~~ Abbey Marshall & Kyle Cheney of Politico: "... Donald Trump unleashed fresh attacks on Marie Yovanovitch Friday, the former U.S. ambassador he ousted in May..., accusing her of refusing to hang a photo of himself in the Ukrainian Embassy and saying she 'was not an angel.' 'This ambassador that, you know, everybody says is so wonderful, she wouldn't hang my picture in the embassy,' Trump said in a phone interview on 'Fox & Friends,' without offering any evidence of his claim.... The claim ... echoes similar complaints from earlier in his tenure when Trump's official portrait was reportedly missing from thousands of government offices -- until the White House released portraits of the president nine months after he was sworn in.... 'She said bad things about me,' he continued.... 'She wouldn't defend me. I have the right to change an ambassador.'... Trump ... decr[ied]Yovanovitch as an 'Obama person,' and saying his staff instructed him to 'be nice' because she's a woman. 'This was not an angel, this woman, OK?' he said. 'There are a lot of things that she did that I didn't like and we will talk about that at some time, but I just want to let you know, this was not a baby that we're dealing with.'... [He went on.] Yovanovitch responded in real time to the president's broadside, saying, 'It's very intimidating.' House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff quickly scolded Trump, telling Yovanovitch that lawmakers take 'witness intimidation' very seriously." ~~~
~~~ Jonathan Chait: "Yesterday, Fiona Hill testified that President Trump and his allies have circulated 'a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,' absolving Vladimir Putin of interference in the election by claiming Ukrainians, not Russian hackers, actually stole Democratic emails in 2016. Republicans indignantly denied the charge.... This morning, Trump gave an interview to Fox & Friends repeating the very theory Republicans so angrily denied he has ever promoted. As the friendly hosts looked on apprehensively, Trump began unspooling a wild theory he has mentioned before, and invoked on his phone call to Ukrainian president Zelensky. The theory posits that Ukrainians hacked Democratic emails, framed Russia, and kept the server they hacked to hide their crime." Chait points out a couple of other glaring inconsistencies in Trump's morning rant.
~~~ Gabby Orr of Politico: "As White House aides and senior administration officials scramble to keep his administration afloat, Trump has become monomaniacally focused on impeachment.... 'His top priority right now is making sure voters know this is the single greatest scam in the history of politics,' said a Republican close to the White House.... Even when Trump has been at work in the West Wing, aides say his preoccupation with impeachment creeps into every discussion.... On the policy front, Trump has delegated issues that are critical to his reelection to high-ranking officials, acting agency heads and members of his family -- freeing up his schedule to allow for more campaign events and less time dealing with the technicalities and complications of the policy-making process.... '... He cares about his grievances and his reelection, and that's it,' said Chris Whipple, an expert on presidential schedules...."
This is what's going out to local newspapers across the U.S.: ~~~
~~~ Julie Pace of the AP: "After two weeks of riveting public hearings in the House impeachment inquiry into ... Donald Trump, there is a mountain of evidence that is now beyond dispute. Trump explicitly ordered U.S. government officials to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani on matters related to Ukraine, a country deeply dependent on Washington's help to fend off Russian aggression. The Republican president pushed Ukraine to launch investigations into political rivals, leaning on a discredited conspiracy theory his own advisers disputed. And both American and Ukrainian officials feared that Trump froze a much-needed package of military aid until Kyiv announced it was launching those probes. Those facts were confirmed by a dozen witnesses, mostly staid career government officials who served both Democratic and Republican administrations. They relied on emails, text messages and contemporaneous notes to back up their recollections from the past year. Stitched together, their hours of televised testimony paint a portrait of an American president willing to leverage his powerful office to push a foreign government for personal political help."
Josh Marshall received an e-mail from a former DOJ attorney explaining why s/he (the e-mail writer) thinks Pelosi & team are not pursuing subpoenas for Bolton, Mulvaney, et al. Thanks to Anonymous for the link. Mrs. McC: Without having any knowledge of how this worked, I have been thinking along the lines the e-mail writer -- who does know how it works -- suggests. The downside of this approach, which neither Marshall nor the e-mailer addresses, is that the House managers would have to interrogate Trumpist officials cold during the Senate trial; that is, without knowing what their answers would be. And of course Trump's defense team will be able to cross-examine the witnesses, which they would be able to do in any event.
Trump's Lost Peggy Noonan. Sky Palma of the Raw Story: "In a column for The Wall Street Journal today..., Peggy Noonan argued that when it comes to the charges against President Trump that he pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals in exchange for military aid, 'the case has been made.'... She wrote that ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland 'was both weirdly jolly and enormously effective in doing Mr. Trump damage' and was 'completely believable.' But it was former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill who really impressed Noonan -- she was 'all business, a serious woman you don't want to mess with.'"
Gaslighter-in-Chief. Michael Calderone of Politico: "CNN's Jake Tapper thinks fact-checking Donald Trump is no longer enough -- and he's created an hourlong special exploring the effects on foreign policy, business and the national culture of the president's compulsive lying.... Tapper thinks the media is well past the point of giving Trump the benefit of the doubt. His special, therefore represents a new benchmark in the mainstream media's adjustment to Trump's norm-shattering presidency." Tapper's special will be on CNN at 9 pm ET Sunday.
As a follow-up to some of the commentary in today's thread: ~~~
~~~ Michelle Castillo of CNBC (Sept. 2018): "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's love for ancient Roman emperor Augustus Caesar offers some insights into how he views being a leader.... Zuckerberg's interest in ancient Rome began in high school and has continued throughout his life, he said. In addition to naming his second daughter August, he spent his 2012 honeymoon in Rome. 'My wife was making fun of me, saying she thought there were three people on the honeymoon: me, her, and Augustus,' he said. 'All the photos were different sculptures of Augustus.'" Zuckerberg elaborated on his admiration for Augustus during an interview with The New Yorker.
~~~~~~~~~~
This Was the Week You Could Be Proud of House Democrats.
And I did say to him, "Ambassador Sondland, Gordon, I think this is all going to blow up." And here we are. -- Fiona Hill, part of a response to Stephen Castor, counsel for GOP ~~~
Nicholas Fandos & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Testifying on the final day of the week's public impeachment hearings, [the White House's former top Europe and Russia] expert, Fiona Hill, tied Mr. Trump's pressure campaign on Ukraine to a dangerous effort by Russia to sow political divisions in the United States and undercut American diplomacy. Her testimony before the House Intelligence Committee was an implicit rebuke to the president, suggesting that when he pressed Ukraine to investigate the theory that Kyiv rather than Moscow undertook a concerted campaign to meddle in the 2016 campaign, he was playing into Russia's hands for his own political gain. Dr. Hill's account of how Mr. Trump's team carried out what she called a 'domestic political errand' that diverged from his own administration's foreign policy amounted to sharp -- albeit indirect -- criticism of the president she served, and it brought home the grave national security consequences of the effort."
Aaron Blake of the Washington Post's five takeaways from Hill's & Holmes' testimony are pretty helpful. Best parts: where Blake recounts how confidently the witnesses pushed back on Republican questions based on false assumptions. ~~~
~~~ "A Domestic Political Errand." Kevin Liptak of CNN: "Fiona Hill's extraordinary answer about her relationship with the American ambassador to the European Union was ultimately a finely distilled description of what the impeachment hearings are all about: ... Donald Trump's pursuit of a 'domestic political errand' that came at the expense of American foreign policy. It was stunning in its clarity, but also that it came during the Republicans' turn for questioning." ~~~
~~~ Greg Sargent of the Washington Post: "On Wednesday, Gordon Sondland..., deeply implicated [Mike] Pompeo in the whole saga, testifying that Pompeo fully understood the dimensions of the scheme that Sondland was implementing to pressure Ukraine into carrying out President Trump's political bidding.... Pompeo appears to have assented to the use of the machinery of the State Department to help Trump solicit foreign interference in a U.S. election.... This point was underscored with great force on Thursday by Fiona Hill..., who bluntly said that the nation's foreign policy had been subsumed into what she called a 'domestic political errand.'... The struggle to get our heads around the magnitude of this scandal requires us to grapple with the degree to which large swaths of the government have been placed at the disposal of Trump's corrupt political ends." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Of course the corruption is hardly limited to Trump & his gang of lackeys in the administration. ~~~
~~~ "Fanatical, Corrupt, or Both." Paul Krugman: "... what we're actually witnessing is a test of the depths to which the Republican Party will sink. How much corruption, how much collusion with foreign powers and betrayal of the national interest will that party's elected representatives stand for? And the result of that test seems increasingly clear: There is no bottom.... Trump is a symptom, not the disease, and our democracy will remain under dire threat even if and when he's gone.... The modern G.O.P. as a whole is overwhelmingly fanatical, corrupt, or both. Anyone imagining that the mountainous evidence of Trump's malfeasance will lead to a moral awakening, or that Republicans will return to democratic political norms once Trump is gone, is living in a fantasy world.... The big question is whether America as we know it can long endure when one of its two major parties has effectively rejected the principles on which our nation was built." Krugman argues that even Republicans who are retiring can't be swayed to do the right thing because they're looking forward to their post-Congressional career as corrupt lobbyists. ~~~
~~~ Frank Rich: "... Republicans [don't care] about the facts or the gravity of the crime being investigated..., and they will continue to defend Trump even if those testifying under oath include an eyewitness to a criminal conspiracy hatched in the White House like Sondland, or patriots like Fiona Hill, Alexander Vindman, and Marie Yovanovitch, who not only provided irrefutable evidence of the crime but detailed the existential threat that crime poses to America."
Witness Explains Impeachment Proceedings to Dummies. Axios: "In a stunning moment at Thursday's impeachment hearing, former top White House Russia adviser Fiona Hill asked whether she may respond to Republican attacks, after three GOP congressmen in a row used their five-minute question allotments to criticize the impeachment inquiry and its witnesses. 'I don't believe there should be any interference of any kind in our election. ... That's actually why as a nonpartisan person and as an expert on Russia and an expert on Vladimir Putin and on the Russian security services, I wanted to come in to serve the country to try to see if I could help.... We're here to relate to you what we heard, what we saw and what we did.& And to be of some help to all of you in really making a very momentous decision here. We are not the people who make that decision.'"
Zachary Basu of Axios: "Former White House top Russia adviser Fiona Hill testified Thursday that it is 'not credible' that EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland did not understand that the investigation President Trump was pushing for into Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma was equivalent to an investigation of the Bidens.... Sondland and former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker both testified that they did not understand the Burisma investigation to be related to the Bidens until September, when the White House released the transcript of a phone call showing Trump discussed the Bidens with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This is in spite of the fact that Rudy Giuliani was frequently tweeted and appearing on Fox News to push allegations about the Bidens and Burisma. Sondland and Volker both said that if they had known Trump was pushing for an investigation of his domestic political rival, they would have objected." Mrs. McC: Uh-huh.
Michael Shear of the New York Times live-updated Thursday's hearing. "In her opening statement, [Fiona] Hill takes a veiled swipe at [John] Bolton's refusal to testify in the impeachment inquiry, saying that she plans to answer questions about 'what I saw, what I did, what I knew, and what I know' about the Ukraine situation before she left the National Security Council last summer. 'I believe that those who have information that the Congress deems relevant have a legal and moral obligation to provide it,' she plans to say in a likely reference to Mr. Bolton." (An earlier version was linked yesterday.)
The New York Times' snark section is here. (Also linked yesterday.)
The Washington Post's liveblog is here. John Wagner: "President Trump lashed out at Democrats, calling them 'human scum,' as two more key witnesses testified before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday as part of an escalating impeachment inquiry." (Also linked yesterday.)
Here are Politico's live updates of the hearing.
Kyle Cheney & Andrew Desiderio of Politico: "... Donald Trump's former top Russia aide plans to go after Republican lawmakers on Thursday for pushing what she dubs a 'fictional narrative' about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election. In her opening statement before House impeachment investigators..., Fiona Hill plans to say that such claims embolden Moscow and are being weaponized to distract from Russia's malign global influence at the behest of its president, Vladimir Putin. 'These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes,' she will say, calling out 'some of you on the committee' and asking them to 'not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.'... Hill, a longtime Russia hawk, plans to sound the alarm more broadly about Russia's aggression in the region, in addition to its ongoing efforts to interfere in U.S. elections and weaken America's global influence.... 'The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today,' she plans to say. 'Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.'" (Also linked yesterday.)
NPR has both Hill's & Holmes' opening statements here. (Also linked yesterday.)
Mrs. McCrabbie: One thing we have found out in listening to the impeachment hearings is that the career diplomats are w-a-a-a-y smarter than the political employees. The career officials are, not surprisingly, better informed, but they're also more insightful & more intellectually nimble. This could help explain why Trump's appointees so mistrust the "deep state." They don't like it when the help is sharper than they are. I got the impression when career diplomats spoke highly of political employees they were being, well, diplomatic.
Mrs. McCrabbie: In case you find yourself in Kiev, and don't mind dropping $70 on an appetizer (it's an appetizer! you can share!), you might want to dine at SHO, where Sondland stops for lunch. Adam Taylor of the Washington Post reports. (Also linked yesterday.)
Either This ... Marianne Levine, et al., of Politico: "Top White House officials and Senate Republicans on Thursday agreed that a full trial should be conducted if the House impeaches ... Donald Trump, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. A group of Republican senators met Thursday morning with White House counsel Pat Cipollone, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to discuss impeachment strategy.... Senators also informed the White House that there simply aren't the votes to approve a motion to dismiss the trial; it would take just three Republicans to block any impeachment vote on the Senate floor.... [Mrs. McC: That is, Senate Republicans don't have 51 votes to dismiss the impeachment referral & avert a trial.] A White House official said the meeting 'wasn't so much about the details, it was about the Democrats' weak case and we want to show just how weak it is.'" ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: How weak the case is? Apparently they watch only Fox "News." ~~~
~~~ OR This ... Seung Min Kim & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "A group of Republican senators and senior White House officials met privately Thursday to map out a strategy for a potential impeachment trial of President Trump, including rapid proceedings in the Senate that could be limited to about two weeks, according to multiple officials familiar with the talks. The prospect of an abbreviated trial is viewed by several Senate Republicans as a favorable middle ground -- substantial enough to give the proceedings credence without risking greater damage to Trump by dragging on too long.... Other options, including a longer trial, were also discussed and still could happen, officials said.... The president is 'miserable' about the ongoing impeachment inquiry and has pushed to dismiss the proceedings right away, according to people familiar with Trump's sentiments, who requested anonymity to discuss the president's views."
Colby Itkowitz of the Washington Post: "Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday requesting documents related to former vice president Joe Biden and his communications with Ukrainian officials, a step seen as a GOP effort to counter the House impeachment investigation of President Trump. The inquiry by Graham (R-S.C.) is focused on any calls Biden may have had with Petro Poroshenko, then the Ukrainian president, regarding the firing of the country's top prosecutor, as well as any that referenced an investigation of Burisma the Ukrainian natural-gas company that employed Biden's son Hunter Biden. Graham's document request suggests he is seeking to legitimize Trump's accusations that Biden ... put pressure on Ukraine to fire its lead prosecutor to protect his son, a claim without evidence that has been disputed by officials familiar with the investigation." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Gee, Mike, you stonewalled the House; are you gonna stonewall the Senate, too? No? Also too, let's not forget that Uncle Joe keeps telling us that once he is elected president, comity will be restored in our capital city and all will be right in the land. I'm sure Joe was very nice to Lindsey when they were in the Senate together. Lindsey just showed us how much reciprocity Joe's generous old boys' backslapping generates among his Republican "friends."
Follow the Money. Kate Scannell & Vicky Ward of CNN: "Federal prosecutors in New York have subpoenaed several individuals active in ... Donald Trump's fundraising machinery as part of their investigation into the associates of Rudy Giuliani, the President's personal attorney, according to people familiar with the investigation. Prosecutors sent subpoenas in recent weeks to Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm run by Brian Ballard, a top Trump fundraiser, and FBI agents have knocked on the doors of others involved with Republican campaigns, the sources said. One of the subpoenas asked for communications and documents relating to Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman -- the two Giuliani associates arrested last month on campaign finance charges -- along with a fundraiser at America First Action, a super PAC supporting Trump, and Giuliani himself." --s
Lev Had a Seat at the Table. Betsy Swan of the Daily Beast: "When Rudy Giuliani met with a senior Ukrainian official in Madrid earlier this year and urged him to investigate the Bidens, Lev Parnas was at the table, according to Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian official. Parnas' presence at the meeting, which has not been previously reported, indicates that he may have significant visibility into Giuliani's efforts to pressure Kyiv to investigate a company linked to one of ... Donald Trump's political rivals.... About a week [after Trump's July 25 phone call with President Zelensky], Giuliani traveled to Madrid. On the trip he and Parnas met with Yermak, the Zelensky aide. Giuliani told Yermak that the Ukrainian government needed to investigate Burisma and the allegations about 2016. 'I talked to him about the whole package,' Giuliani told The Washington Post in September.... Afterward, Yermak began working on a statement Zelensky could release saying the government was investigating corruption. Giuliani said the statement needed to specifically mention Burisma and 2016, according to [House testimony of Kurt] Volker. And he made it clear that Ukraine's president would not be welcome at the White House until such a statement was released, Gordon Sondland ... said in his testimony to the House Intelligence Committee this week."
Mrs. McCrabbie: I was not the only person who thought Trump's script should be set to music:
somebody on twitter today: trump's weird hand-scrawled denial today sounds like a ramones song.
— Alex Kliment (@SaoSasha) November 21, 2019
me: pic.twitter.com/mynZjx0E0M
... More here.
Darren Samuelsohn of Politico: "Now that House Democrats have wrapped up public hearings on ... Donald Trump's pressure campaign to get Ukraine to launch politically advantageous investigations, there are plans to hold at least one public impeachment hearing on Trump's misdeeds as alleged in the special counsel's report. House leadership signaled the plans in court filings and oral arguments this week, as the Democrats' attorneys fought to get [former White House attorney Don] McGahn's testimony, as well as access to more of the evidence [Robert] Mueller used to write his final report."
Katelyn Polantz & Evan Perez of CNN: "A former FBI lawyer is under criminal investigation after allegedly altering a document related to 2016 surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser, several people briefed on the matter told CNN. The possibility of a substantive change to an investigative document is likely to fuel accusations from ... Donald Trump and his allies that the FBI committed wrongdoing in its investigation of connections between Russian election meddling and the Trump campaign. The finding is expected to be part of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's review of the FBI's effort to obtain warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide. Horowitz will release the report next month.Horowitz turned over evidence on the allegedly altered document to John Durham, the federal prosecutor appointed early this year by Attorney General William Barr to conduct a broad investigation of intelligence gathered for the Russia probe by the CIA and other agencies, including the FBI. The altered document is also at least one focus of Durham's criminal probe."
Erica Werner of the Washington Post: "President Trump signed a short-term spending bill Thursday to keep the government open through late December, staving off a shutdown that would have begun at midnight. Trump's signature on the stopgap spending bill came following Senate passage of the legislation on a bipartisan 74-to-20 vote. The House passed it earlier in the week in the midst of public impeachment hearings. Without the legislation, government funding would have expired Thursday at midnight, forcing multiple agencies to begin to close down operations and send federal workers home. The bill extends government funding through Dec. 20, setting up a fight over money for Trump's border wall that could happen around the same time the House is voting on articles of impeachment against the president. It is the second stopgap spending bill Congress has been forced to pass to keep the lights on in government for the 2020 budget year that began Oct. 1."
Emily Stewart of Vox: "Remember Tim Apple -- the alter ego Trump created for the Apple CEO [Tim Cook] earlier this year? Well, he's struck again. And he's letting the president blatantly lie about the goings-on at his company in order to use Apple as a marketing tool for his presidency. On Wednesday, Cook accompanied Trump, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin..., and ... Ivanka Trump, on a tour of a manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas. Both at the plant and after, the president suggested that the plant had just opened and that it was the result of his presidency. No one at Apple corrected him, even though it's not at all the case: The plant, which is run by a company called Flex, has been making Mac Pro computers there since 2013." --s
Good Grief! Dave Philipps of the New York Times: "President Trump on Thursday reversed a decision by the Navy seeking to oust Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher from the elite commando force. Chief Gallagher has been at the center of a high-profile war crime case and was granted clemency by the president on Friday. He was notified on Wednesday that the Navy planned to start the process to remove the Trident pin that symbolizes membership in the SEALs. Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Trump announced on Twitter it would not happen, saying 'The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher's Trident Pin. This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!' The whipsaw reversal, after the Navy believed it had official approval, is just the latest twist in the unusually public melee over Chief Gallagher's court-martial, which at times has pitted the commander-in-chief directly against senior Navy leaders." Mrs. McC: Turns out Trump knows more than the generals AND the admirals; also he is is good with war crimes. ~~~
~~~ Update. Idrees Ali & Steve Gorman of Reuters: "A short time [after Trump issued his Twitter Command], Gallagher was told face-to-face by a representative of Green's special warfare command at Naval Base Coronado, near San Diego, that the review would proceed as planned, according to Gallagher's lead defense attorney, Timothy Parlatore.... Rear Admiral Charlie Brown, a Navy spokesman in Washington, issued a statement Thursday evening indicating the Navy was looking for a formal directive, as opposed to a presidential tweet." ~~~
~~~ Dan Lamothe & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "How Trump came to believe that the Pentagon could not handle the cases [three U.S. service members accused of war crimes] fairly, and ultimately issue the pardons, reflects his tendency to accept the advice of people outside his administration [like Pete Hegseth, a Fox News personality]. The president mostly left defense officials out of his discussions about the issue until a few weeks ago and told his top advisers that his supporters would back the move, according to five officials familiar with the situation." Here's who begged Trump not to pardon the Army criminals: Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, both Army veterans & Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Mrs. McC: Bear in mind that Trump doesn't care any more about these guys than he does about the people they (allegedly) murdered. He just thinks pardoning military criminals will play well with his base of miscreants.
Amanda Holpuch of the Guardian: "The under-fire [racist bigot] White House adviser Stephen Miller said in a 2016 radio interview [with Steve Bannon] that immigration could see America lose its sovereignty and be 'decimated', echoing racist and white nationalist themes at the heart of a current scandal that has seen growing demands for him to resign. In the 17-minute radio interview with Breitbart in February of that year, Miller claimed that Obama-era trade and immigration policies, which had bipartisan support, would 'decimate' the US, give amnesty to dangerous immigrants, and end US sovereignty." --s
Charles Pierce of Esquire: "Somewhere out there in our politics, there are Democratic politicians who believe this all will break when and if we are rid of the current president*. These Democratic politicians are wrong and should not be taken seriously." Pierce provides lotsa rightwing whacko examples. --s
Presidential Race 2020
Burgess Everett & Marianne Levine of Politico: "Tulsi Gabbard trashed the Democratic Party as 'not the party that is of, by and for the people,' accused Kamala Harris of trafficking in 'lies and smears and innuendo' and attacked Pete Buttigieg as naive. Her performance at Wednesday's debate earned an attaboy from the Trump War Room. And some rank-and-file Democrats are at wit's end with the congresswoman who Hillary Clinton called 'the favorite of the Russians.' 'The question is whether she seriously hopes to be the nominee or if she has another agenda ... her attacks on other candidates and her positions on issues seem very personal, not so much about a set of policies or worldview,' said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).... Given Gabbard's obvious play to appear at war with the party establishment, several senators declined to discuss her candidacy -- before panning her privately.:
Bryan Anderson of the Sacramento Bee: "... Donald Trump won't have to release his tax returns to get on California's 2020 primary ballot following a unanimous ruling from the state Supreme Court on Thursday that invalidated a new state law. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 27 into law in July to compel presidential and gubernatorial candidates to release five years of tax returns to get on California's primary ballot. Jessica Patterson, chairwoman of the Republican Party then sued the state. The court ruled the added requirement for tax returns 'is in conflict with the (state) constitution's specification of an inclusive open presidential primary ballot.'"
Way Beyond the Beltway
Israel. David Halbfinger of the New York Times: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was indicted Thursday on bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges in a set of long-running corruption cases, immediately throwing his political future into doubt and heightening the uncertainty and chaos surrounding Israel's fitful, yearlong struggle to choose its next leader.... The cases against Mr. Netanyahu involve allegations of giving or offering lucrative official favors to several media tycoons in exchange for either favorable coverage in news outlets or gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. He has rejected the charges as false and politically motivated. Mr. Netanyahu is not legally required to step down. But with Israel's political system already in uncharted territory, having failed to settle upon a new prime minister despite two elections and three attempts at forming a government since April, the criminal case against him could make it far more difficult for him to retain power." The NBC News story is here. The Haaretz story is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: See safari's comment on this in today's thread. Can't be sure, but I think safari is being sarcastic.
Spain. Óscar López-Fonseca & Fernando Peréz of El País: "Spain's High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, has opened an investigation into the alleged activities of a group linked with the Russian intelligence service during the 2017 Catalan breakaway bid, three sources have confirmed to EL PAÍS...The case centers on an elite military group called Unit 29155, which intelligence services from several countries have linked to alleged attempts to destabilize Europe." --s
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