Keep voting democrat, they care about you as a Black man. Listen to Candice Owens she tells it like it is.
Trump lost moving on with new year go Biden
- Thread starter Allforthewifey
- Start date
maybe the Dems are not helping a lot....and making promises they don't keep...…...but unlike the right who goes out of their way to help the well to do at the expense of the worker/middle class.....so it's a no brainer for most people
so you pick the lesser of two evils...…..the evil, evil republicans or the democrats
think of it as the givers and the takers.....you figure out which is which
Oh listen to Candice Owens and while i am it i might as well listen to Kayne West as well, you know the black man who said "Slavery was a choice that the enslave people made" yeah no thanks. I think for myself, i noticed you glossed over my question, and i also noticed you glossed over my matter of facts about Trump, but that's okay , i am use to "white" men glossing over inconvenient facts. Its okay, it really is, what more should one expect from a person who will blindly follow Trump off the cliff. Oh how is that huge tax cut working towards lowering the national debt, at least when Obama spent money, it was for a purpose that worked out, Trump not so much.
you laugh because you know its the truth, and you are afraid of the truth, just like your manhood.
You have never been a slave have you? I voted for Obama the first time, I didn't vote for him or Romney in 2012 both lost causes. I follow no one, the issue is that it's Trump or a democrat that has no clue. What makes you think I am afraid of my manhood? I have done just fine with my manhood in my life.
If you trump people don't think P.utin hasn't been watching all this you are sadly mistaken
he knows trump could care less about Ukraine...….and that the republicans are not going to do anything.....he has the Ok to step up the aggression......also knows trump is giving about 1/4 of the money Obama gave....and that will hurt Ukraine
he knows trump could care less about Ukraine...….and that the republicans are not going to do anything.....he has the Ok to step up the aggression......also knows trump is giving about 1/4 of the money Obama gave....and that will hurt Ukraine
Trump’s Impeachment Defense Rests on Narrow Gap in Testimony
Donald Trump’s impeachment defense hangs by a thread after two weeks of hearings, as a parade of witnesses described how his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden extended well beyond the two leaders’ July 25 telephone call.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a decorated Army officer and Ukraine expert, recalled raising concerns to the top lawyer at the National Security Council over what he viewed as Trump’s inappropriate political demand on that call for a Biden probe.
Vindman’s former boss, Fiona Hill, testified she came to understand that Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had been tasked by Trump with a “political errand” in Ukraine outside of regular U.S. foreign policy. And Sondland, a Trump donor, told lawmakers that the president, through his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, ordered him to carry out a “quid pro quo.”
Witnesses warned in grave terms that the pursuit of dirt on Biden was wrong, undermined U.S. foreign policy efforts, and wasn’t rooted in a sincere effort to crack down on corruption or criminal activity in Ukraine. And they criticized the president’s Republican allies for trying to justify his behavior by promoting debunked conspiracy theories they said had no grounding in fact.
And yet one key piece of Trump’s defense remains intact: None of the witnesses, including Sondland, testified that the president himself directly ordered them to make explicit to the Ukrainians that American military aid and a meeting with Trump depended on their president announcing investigations. Indeed, when Sondland confronted Trump on Sept. 9 -- after the administration learned a whistle-blower complaint had been filed -- the president denied wanting anything from Ukraine.
He has forbidden witnesses who might have first-hand knowledge of his Ukraine intentions from testifying. “I think they have to end it now,” Trump said Thursday, quoting his own words to Sondland that he wanted “nothing” from Ukraine.
The President’s Men
The lack of evidence of a direct order from Trump may be all that matters to Republican senators increasingly likely to face the ultimate question of whether to remove the president from office. But it’s a gamble for Trump, who appears to be relying on a quartet of men to hold the line and follow orders not to testify.
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney has already admitted during a White House briefing that the aid was held up in part to get Ukraine to investigate a conspiracy theory that the country interfered with the 2016 U.S. election, only to recant his statements. Mulvaney’s standing in the White House fell over the initial handling of the impeachment crisis, as well as his battles with White House Counsel Pat Cipollone over strategy. But he may now be indispensable to the president.
Giuliani gave several media interviews and wrote tweets pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. Trump told a trio of aides to listen to Giuliani on Ukraine, effectively bringing the pressure campaign inside his administration. And Giuliani’s name came up in the July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Beyond that quartet, the witnesses also provided Democrats with a roadmap for where other potentially devastating documents could exist -- if they can gain access to them.
Laura Cooper, the Pentagon’s Russia-Ukraine expert, said there were emails that hadn’t been turned over to the committee that undermined the White House’s claim that Ukraine was unaware the military aid had been frozen as diplomats were pressing for the Biden investigation.
David Holmes, a Foreign Service officer who works in Kyiv, testified that Trump, in an overheard phone call with Sondland, asked explicitly whether Zelenskiy would do “the investigations” the day after the July 25 phone call. Moreover, Holmes said, Sondland told him Trump didn’t care about Ukraine, just the investigations that could benefit him politically.
And Hill, who worked in the Trump White House for two-and-a-half years, chastised Republicans for buying into a “fictional narrative” propagated by Russian security services that Ukraine rather than Russia was involved in U.S. election interference. Republicans on the committee denied her claim.
Fast Timeline
The president is also shielded somewhat by Democrats’ desire to move quickly.
Worried that a prolonged impeachment proceeding could drag into the 2020 campaign season -- and that a legal battle might ultimately prove fruitless with a conservative-leaning Supreme Court -- Democrats have decided to largely forgo a court battle over subpoenas that would ******* those officials to testify or produce documents
That means that if a smoking gun exists -- whether in the testimony of the president’s closest aides, or what’s spelled out in White House, State Department, or Pentagon memos on the suspended military assistance -- Democrats might never obtain it.
It’s also unclear that the revelation Trump had directly ordered the quid pro quo would matter, considering the hyperpartisan fever that has gripped Washington.
Trump, in particular, has time and again tested his Republican allies -- with the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape during the campaign, his remarks in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, his performance at the joint press conference last year with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, and his recent withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. In each case, his party has remained loyal.
Trump is trying to shore up support from Republicans in the Senate who will ultimately control his fate if the House votes to impeach him. He has invited more than three dozen senators to the White House in recent weeks, and on Thursday hosted some of the Republican lawmakers most likely to consider voting for his removal: Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine. Both rebuked Trump for publicly encouraging China to investigate the Bidens.
A White House spokesman said Thursday night that a Senate trial is “clearly the only chamber” where the president “can expect fairness and receive due process under the Constitution.”
The meetings with senators -- and Trump’s incessant tweeting -- likely betray a nervousness within the White House that the president is losing the public opinion battle. A survey from FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos released this week found that 56% of Americans now believe the president has committed an impeachable offense.
Donald Trump’s impeachment defense hangs by a thread after two weeks of hearings, as a parade of witnesses described how his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden extended well beyond the two leaders’ July 25 telephone call.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a decorated Army officer and Ukraine expert, recalled raising concerns to the top lawyer at the National Security Council over what he viewed as Trump’s inappropriate political demand on that call for a Biden probe.
Vindman’s former boss, Fiona Hill, testified she came to understand that Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had been tasked by Trump with a “political errand” in Ukraine outside of regular U.S. foreign policy. And Sondland, a Trump donor, told lawmakers that the president, through his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, ordered him to carry out a “quid pro quo.”
Witnesses warned in grave terms that the pursuit of dirt on Biden was wrong, undermined U.S. foreign policy efforts, and wasn’t rooted in a sincere effort to crack down on corruption or criminal activity in Ukraine. And they criticized the president’s Republican allies for trying to justify his behavior by promoting debunked conspiracy theories they said had no grounding in fact.
And yet one key piece of Trump’s defense remains intact: None of the witnesses, including Sondland, testified that the president himself directly ordered them to make explicit to the Ukrainians that American military aid and a meeting with Trump depended on their president announcing investigations. Indeed, when Sondland confronted Trump on Sept. 9 -- after the administration learned a whistle-blower complaint had been filed -- the president denied wanting anything from Ukraine.
He has forbidden witnesses who might have first-hand knowledge of his Ukraine intentions from testifying. “I think they have to end it now,” Trump said Thursday, quoting his own words to Sondland that he wanted “nothing” from Ukraine.
The President’s Men
The lack of evidence of a direct order from Trump may be all that matters to Republican senators increasingly likely to face the ultimate question of whether to remove the president from office. But it’s a gamble for Trump, who appears to be relying on a quartet of men to hold the line and follow orders not to testify.
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney has already admitted during a White House briefing that the aid was held up in part to get Ukraine to investigate a conspiracy theory that the country interfered with the 2016 U.S. election, only to recant his statements. Mulvaney’s standing in the White House fell over the initial handling of the impeachment crisis, as well as his battles with White House Counsel Pat Cipollone over strategy. But he may now be indispensable to the president.
Giuliani gave several media interviews and wrote tweets pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. Trump told a trio of aides to listen to Giuliani on Ukraine, effectively bringing the pressure campaign inside his administration. And Giuliani’s name came up in the July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
- Secretary of State Michael Pompeo listened in on that call. Sondland testified Pompeo gave him the green light in emails detailing an effort to seek Zelenskiy’s backing for investigations sought by Trump in hopes of breaking a “logjam” that was preventing them from obtaining diplomatic concessions.
- John Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser, is perhaps the most dangerous potential witness for Trump. Bolton’s aides testified that he referred to Giuliani as a “hand grenade” and disdainfully labeled the Ukraine intrigues a “******* deal.” Bolton has also split with the president on several key foreign policy areas, including North Korea.
Beyond that quartet, the witnesses also provided Democrats with a roadmap for where other potentially devastating documents could exist -- if they can gain access to them.
Laura Cooper, the Pentagon’s Russia-Ukraine expert, said there were emails that hadn’t been turned over to the committee that undermined the White House’s claim that Ukraine was unaware the military aid had been frozen as diplomats were pressing for the Biden investigation.
David Holmes, a Foreign Service officer who works in Kyiv, testified that Trump, in an overheard phone call with Sondland, asked explicitly whether Zelenskiy would do “the investigations” the day after the July 25 phone call. Moreover, Holmes said, Sondland told him Trump didn’t care about Ukraine, just the investigations that could benefit him politically.
And Hill, who worked in the Trump White House for two-and-a-half years, chastised Republicans for buying into a “fictional narrative” propagated by Russian security services that Ukraine rather than Russia was involved in U.S. election interference. Republicans on the committee denied her claim.
Fast Timeline
The president is also shielded somewhat by Democrats’ desire to move quickly.
Worried that a prolonged impeachment proceeding could drag into the 2020 campaign season -- and that a legal battle might ultimately prove fruitless with a conservative-leaning Supreme Court -- Democrats have decided to largely forgo a court battle over subpoenas that would ******* those officials to testify or produce documents
That means that if a smoking gun exists -- whether in the testimony of the president’s closest aides, or what’s spelled out in White House, State Department, or Pentagon memos on the suspended military assistance -- Democrats might never obtain it.
It’s also unclear that the revelation Trump had directly ordered the quid pro quo would matter, considering the hyperpartisan fever that has gripped Washington.
Trump, in particular, has time and again tested his Republican allies -- with the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape during the campaign, his remarks in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, his performance at the joint press conference last year with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, and his recent withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. In each case, his party has remained loyal.
Trump is trying to shore up support from Republicans in the Senate who will ultimately control his fate if the House votes to impeach him. He has invited more than three dozen senators to the White House in recent weeks, and on Thursday hosted some of the Republican lawmakers most likely to consider voting for his removal: Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine. Both rebuked Trump for publicly encouraging China to investigate the Bidens.
A White House spokesman said Thursday night that a Senate trial is “clearly the only chamber” where the president “can expect fairness and receive due process under the Constitution.”
The meetings with senators -- and Trump’s incessant tweeting -- likely betray a nervousness within the White House that the president is losing the public opinion battle. A survey from FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos released this week found that 56% of Americans now believe the president has committed an impeachable offense.
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
www.bloomberg.com
how odd...….all the republicans that have spoke out against the pres in all this.....have had a dinner at the white house this week....any bets on what was brought up
guessing it is party over country.....the right has a habit of that clear back to bush
guessing it is party over country.....the right has a habit of that clear back to bush
Read again slowly.
What should the Obama administration have done regarding the Russian election interference, seeing as you claim they did nothing?
Your posts are funny.
yeah sure you did and i voted for Santa Clause, i also voted for the Loch Ness monster for my Senator.
uhm he appraised the house and the senate of it and asked for bot leaders to issue a joint statement about it and they both refused to do so. sighting that a election was coming, so he did do something. Oh and both leaders were republicans so they knew all the details or the details that were known at the time.
‘I want a Senate impeachment trial’, Trump says in live TV phone call
22 Nov, 2019 13:40
Get short URL
President Donald Trump has said that he wants to be tried by the Senate if the House votes to impeach him. Trump told Fox & Friends that he would like to see impeachment democrats like “nut job” Adam Schiff testify.
While the Republican-controlled Senate could shoot down any articles of impeachment presented by the House, Trump told the Fox show by phone on Friday that he would like to see the inquiry against him go to a Senate trial.
“I want a trial,”the president said. “I want to see Adam Schiff testify about the whistleblower – who’s a fake whistleblower,” he continued, referring to the intelligence community whistleblower whose report on a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky kickstarted the impeachment drive against him.
ALSO ON RT.COMDesperate Democrats impeaching Trump to avoid defeat in 2020 – as well as possible jail time
Calling House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff a “nut job,” Trump added “the one I want to testify most is Shifty Schiff … and what I want to know most is, why did he make up my statement?”
Schiff’s dramatic interpretation before Congress of Trump’s phone call, which the California Democrat later said was a “parody,” is just one bone of contention between him and Trump. Trump has also slammed Schiff for conducting impeachment hearings with second- and third-hand witnesses who have thus far failed to provide concrete evidence that the president arranged a quid-pro-quo deal with Zelensky. Democrats allege that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for Kiev reopening a corruption investigation against the family of 2020 candidate Joe Biden.
ALSO ON RT.COMSchiff brings lip-reading witnesses and angry bureaucrats into impeachment theater
Trump also said he’d like to hear Hunter Biden, former VP Joe Biden’s *******, testify before the Senate. Hunter sat on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma from 2015 to 2019, a position he was unqualified for, and one Trump maintains was gifted to him as part of a corrupt deal between his ******* and Kiev.
The president also said he wants the mysterious whistleblower to testify, and claimed to know his identity.
DETAILS TO FOLLOW
https://www.rt.com/usa/474106-trump-senate-impeachment-trial/
22 Nov, 2019 13:40
Get short URL
- 38
President Donald Trump has said that he wants to be tried by the Senate if the House votes to impeach him. Trump told Fox & Friends that he would like to see impeachment democrats like “nut job” Adam Schiff testify.
While the Republican-controlled Senate could shoot down any articles of impeachment presented by the House, Trump told the Fox show by phone on Friday that he would like to see the inquiry against him go to a Senate trial.
“I want a trial,”the president said. “I want to see Adam Schiff testify about the whistleblower – who’s a fake whistleblower,” he continued, referring to the intelligence community whistleblower whose report on a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky kickstarted the impeachment drive against him.
ALSO ON RT.COMDesperate Democrats impeaching Trump to avoid defeat in 2020 – as well as possible jail time
Calling House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff a “nut job,” Trump added “the one I want to testify most is Shifty Schiff … and what I want to know most is, why did he make up my statement?”
Schiff’s dramatic interpretation before Congress of Trump’s phone call, which the California Democrat later said was a “parody,” is just one bone of contention between him and Trump. Trump has also slammed Schiff for conducting impeachment hearings with second- and third-hand witnesses who have thus far failed to provide concrete evidence that the president arranged a quid-pro-quo deal with Zelensky. Democrats allege that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for Kiev reopening a corruption investigation against the family of 2020 candidate Joe Biden.
ALSO ON RT.COMSchiff brings lip-reading witnesses and angry bureaucrats into impeachment theater
Trump also said he’d like to hear Hunter Biden, former VP Joe Biden’s *******, testify before the Senate. Hunter sat on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma from 2015 to 2019, a position he was unqualified for, and one Trump maintains was gifted to him as part of a corrupt deal between his ******* and Kiev.
The president also said he wants the mysterious whistleblower to testify, and claimed to know his identity.
DETAILS TO FOLLOW
https://www.rt.com/usa/474106-trump-senate-impeachment-trial/
Why would I say that I voted for Obama if I didn't ? I supported him when almost everyone around me was for McCain, even in the primaries against Hillary. I have never voted for the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny either. I am not a democrat or a republican.
I am glad you enjoy them, hope i keep you entertained.
Lindsey Graham Begins Biden Smear Probe Trump Couldn’t Get From Ukraine
republicans can't even keep up the pretense that trump's goal was something other than discrediting his opponet
Just a few years ago, Lindsey Graham said of Joe Biden, “He’s as good a man as God created.” Now he is launching a probe of Biden, absurdly charging that the former vice-president called for the firing of a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor in order to benefit his *******.
What Graham is revealing through this probe is how guilty Trump is, and how complicit he and fellow Republicans are in his ongoing scheme.
The merits of this allegation are nil. Biden successfully demanded Ukraine fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, whose unwillingness to bring criminal cases against the country’s most powerful oligarchs had stopped the country’s reform efforts. Biden’s intervention is one of his most successful diplomatic efforts, celebrated by reformers both inside Ukraine and elsewhere, which is why he has boasted about it publicly.
The fired Shokin and other Ukrainian oligarchs, many of whom had close ties to Russia (a source of intrigue and deep corruption in the country) worked with Rudy Giuliani to circulate an alternative story. According to their narrative, Shokin was on the verge of prosecuting Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm that employed Biden’s *******, when Biden ****** him out. Graham’s letter announcing his probe claims that he needs to get to the bottom of these “allegations that Vice President Biden played a role in the termination of Prosecutor General Shokin in an effort to end the investigation of the company employing his *******.”
Last May, Giuliani got the New York Times to publish a bizarre news story simultaneously raising his allegations (without backing up any of the insinuations) while noting, as a side point, the impropriety of Trump’s lawyer using foreign influence to smear his domestic enemies. In fact, one of the key dates in the timeline of the Times account was wrong. Numerous reporters have found that the investigation into Burisma was dormant when Biden pushed to fire Shokin — indeed, because Shokin was so reluctant to prosecute oligarchs, replacing him could only increase the risk to Burisma.
The Washington Post, L.A. Times, and Bloomberg News all thoroughly reported the case and found that Burisma was not facing investigation when Shokin was fired.
Indeed, the charge that Biden called for Shokin’s firing “in an effort to end the investigation of the company employing his *******” is laughable on its face because the entire Western world was calling for Shokin’s firing. The U.S. foreign-policy Establishment, Western allies, nongovernmental organizations, and Ukrainian democrats all wanted Shokin gone, and none of those organizations had sons on the board of Burisma.
Several Republicans at the time signed a letter also calling for Shokin to be fired. It would have been genuinely suspicious if Biden did not want to fire Shokin.
That Graham, from his position nestled at Trump’s feet, would launch this investigation also happens to blow up one of the favorite defenses his supporters have devised. They have tried to claim that Trump was not ordering up investigations designed to smear his enemies, but was somehow — contrary to the thrust of his entire business career and general political orientation — concerned with corruption in Ukraine. Just corruption in general.
Jim Jordan spent the impeachment hearings doggedly repeating a story, apparently concocted by Jordan, according to which Trump was skeptical of giving foreign aid to a corrupt state like Ukraine. He wanted to see if the country’s new president was the real deal. So he temporarily held up aid to ensure Ukraine was serious about taking on the oligarchs.
One tent of this absurd fantasy involves pretending that when Trump invokes “corruption,” he is not merely using an insult for his political opponents. Diplomats who worked for Trump have piously insisted that they had no idea until the end that Trump and Giuliani’s obsession with investigating Burisma had something to do with Joe Biden. Maybe the president just had some idiosyncratic fixation with a random Ukrainian energy firm. Pretending investigations of Burisma followed some sincere concern with cleaning up the Ukrainian energy sector, though, is a key tenet of Trump’s defense.
Yet here is Graham spelling out the subtext. Their concern with Burisma is Biden. The point is alleging that Trump’s leading rival somehow acted improperly. Rather than denying the purpose was to smear a Trump enemy, Graham is helping to confirm it.
Trump’s election in 2016 relied on an ongoing investigation into his opponent, which conservative media hyped relentlessly, goading the mainstream media to cover the allegations. All he needs is a pretext to generate the cable-news chyrons that will make confused voters believe there must be some smoke to the fire when his crowds chant to lock up his next opponent.
That was the purpose of his Ukraine extortion scheme. And that is the purpose Graham is carrying out for him now, right before our eyes.
nymag.com
republicans can't even keep up the pretense that trump's goal was something other than discrediting his opponet
Just a few years ago, Lindsey Graham said of Joe Biden, “He’s as good a man as God created.” Now he is launching a probe of Biden, absurdly charging that the former vice-president called for the firing of a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor in order to benefit his *******.
What Graham is revealing through this probe is how guilty Trump is, and how complicit he and fellow Republicans are in his ongoing scheme.
The merits of this allegation are nil. Biden successfully demanded Ukraine fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, whose unwillingness to bring criminal cases against the country’s most powerful oligarchs had stopped the country’s reform efforts. Biden’s intervention is one of his most successful diplomatic efforts, celebrated by reformers both inside Ukraine and elsewhere, which is why he has boasted about it publicly.
The fired Shokin and other Ukrainian oligarchs, many of whom had close ties to Russia (a source of intrigue and deep corruption in the country) worked with Rudy Giuliani to circulate an alternative story. According to their narrative, Shokin was on the verge of prosecuting Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm that employed Biden’s *******, when Biden ****** him out. Graham’s letter announcing his probe claims that he needs to get to the bottom of these “allegations that Vice President Biden played a role in the termination of Prosecutor General Shokin in an effort to end the investigation of the company employing his *******.”
Last May, Giuliani got the New York Times to publish a bizarre news story simultaneously raising his allegations (without backing up any of the insinuations) while noting, as a side point, the impropriety of Trump’s lawyer using foreign influence to smear his domestic enemies. In fact, one of the key dates in the timeline of the Times account was wrong. Numerous reporters have found that the investigation into Burisma was dormant when Biden pushed to fire Shokin — indeed, because Shokin was so reluctant to prosecute oligarchs, replacing him could only increase the risk to Burisma.
The Washington Post, L.A. Times, and Bloomberg News all thoroughly reported the case and found that Burisma was not facing investigation when Shokin was fired.
Indeed, the charge that Biden called for Shokin’s firing “in an effort to end the investigation of the company employing his *******” is laughable on its face because the entire Western world was calling for Shokin’s firing. The U.S. foreign-policy Establishment, Western allies, nongovernmental organizations, and Ukrainian democrats all wanted Shokin gone, and none of those organizations had sons on the board of Burisma.
Several Republicans at the time signed a letter also calling for Shokin to be fired. It would have been genuinely suspicious if Biden did not want to fire Shokin.
That Graham, from his position nestled at Trump’s feet, would launch this investigation also happens to blow up one of the favorite defenses his supporters have devised. They have tried to claim that Trump was not ordering up investigations designed to smear his enemies, but was somehow — contrary to the thrust of his entire business career and general political orientation — concerned with corruption in Ukraine. Just corruption in general.
Jim Jordan spent the impeachment hearings doggedly repeating a story, apparently concocted by Jordan, according to which Trump was skeptical of giving foreign aid to a corrupt state like Ukraine. He wanted to see if the country’s new president was the real deal. So he temporarily held up aid to ensure Ukraine was serious about taking on the oligarchs.
One tent of this absurd fantasy involves pretending that when Trump invokes “corruption,” he is not merely using an insult for his political opponents. Diplomats who worked for Trump have piously insisted that they had no idea until the end that Trump and Giuliani’s obsession with investigating Burisma had something to do with Joe Biden. Maybe the president just had some idiosyncratic fixation with a random Ukrainian energy firm. Pretending investigations of Burisma followed some sincere concern with cleaning up the Ukrainian energy sector, though, is a key tenet of Trump’s defense.
Yet here is Graham spelling out the subtext. Their concern with Burisma is Biden. The point is alleging that Trump’s leading rival somehow acted improperly. Rather than denying the purpose was to smear a Trump enemy, Graham is helping to confirm it.
Trump’s election in 2016 relied on an ongoing investigation into his opponent, which conservative media hyped relentlessly, goading the mainstream media to cover the allegations. All he needs is a pretext to generate the cable-news chyrons that will make confused voters believe there must be some smoke to the fire when his crowds chant to lock up his next opponent.
That was the purpose of his Ukraine extortion scheme. And that is the purpose Graham is carrying out for him now, right before our eyes.
Lindsey Graham Begins Biden Smear Probe Trump Couldn’t Get From Ukraine
Republicans can’t even keep up the pretense that Trump’s goal was something other than discrediting his opponent.
nymag.com
this guy has already proven he was/is willing to let our allies be killed (the Kurds) and is now willing to let Russia have a country trying to remain free....just to benefit himself and friends (Russia and others)
Diplomats describe all-time low in morale at State under Trump
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/466538-diplomats-describe-all-time-low-in...
The Trump administration's perennial push for steep budget cuts, an exodus of senior staffers with decades of experience and constant allegations that agency employees represent a deep state has ...
Diplomats describe all-time low in morale at State under Trump
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/466538-diplomats-describe-all-time-low-in...
The Trump administration's perennial push for steep budget cuts, an exodus of senior staffers with decades of experience and constant allegations that agency employees represent a deep state has ...
‘They see the cracks’: Reporter reveals Trump allies are ...
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/they-see-the-cracks-reporter-reveals-trump-allies-are...
Oct 24, 2019 · ‘They see the cracks’: Reporter reveals Trump allies are struggling to keep Republicans united against impeachment ... Mark Meadows, and other Trump allies, trying to just keep the House ...
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/10/they-see-the-cracks-reporter-reveals-trump-allies-are...
Oct 24, 2019 · ‘They see the cracks’: Reporter reveals Trump allies are struggling to keep Republicans united against impeachment ... Mark Meadows, and other Trump allies, trying to just keep the House ...
BTW....my new avatar since Most of these right wingers but into anything someone says that has a female pic.....nice boobs huh!
and you know he buys anything P.utin tells him
Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says
WASHINGTON — Republicans have sought for weeks amid the impeachment inquiry to shift attention to President Trump’s demands that Ukraine investigate any 2016 election meddling, defending it as a legitimate concern while Democrats accuse Mr. Trump of pursuing fringe theories for his benefit.
The Republican defense of Mr. Trump became central to the impeachment proceedings when Fiona Hill, a respected Russia scholar and former senior White House official, added a harsh critique during testimony on Thursday. She told some of Mr. Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress that they were repeating “a fictional narrative” — and that it likely came from a disinformation campaign by Russian security services, which themselves propagated it.
In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill’s testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair.
The revelations demonstrate Russia’s persistence in trying to sow discord among its adversaries — and show that the Kremlin apparently succeeded, as unfounded claims about Ukrainian interference seeped into Republican talking points. American intelligence agencies believe Moscow is likely to redouble its efforts as the 2020 presidential campaign intensifies. The classified briefing for senators also focused on Russia’s evolving influence tactics, including its growing ability to better disguise operations.
Russia has engaged in a “long pattern of deflection” to pin blame for its malevolent acts on other countries, Dr. Hill said, not least Ukraine, a former Soviet republic. Since Ukraine won independence in 1991, Russia has tried to reassert influence there, meddling in its politics, maligning pro-Western leaders and accusing Ukrainian critics of Moscow of fascist leanings.
“The Russians have a particular vested interest in putting Ukraine, Ukrainian leaders in a very bad light,” she told lawmakers.
But the campaign by Russian intelligence in recent years has been even more complex as Moscow tries not only to undermine the government in Kyiv but also to use a disinformation campaign there to influence the American political debate.
Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says
WASHINGTON — Republicans have sought for weeks amid the impeachment inquiry to shift attention to President Trump’s demands that Ukraine investigate any 2016 election meddling, defending it as a legitimate concern while Democrats accuse Mr. Trump of pursuing fringe theories for his benefit.
The Republican defense of Mr. Trump became central to the impeachment proceedings when Fiona Hill, a respected Russia scholar and former senior White House official, added a harsh critique during testimony on Thursday. She told some of Mr. Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress that they were repeating “a fictional narrative” — and that it likely came from a disinformation campaign by Russian security services, which themselves propagated it.
In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill’s testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair.
The revelations demonstrate Russia’s persistence in trying to sow discord among its adversaries — and show that the Kremlin apparently succeeded, as unfounded claims about Ukrainian interference seeped into Republican talking points. American intelligence agencies believe Moscow is likely to redouble its efforts as the 2020 presidential campaign intensifies. The classified briefing for senators also focused on Russia’s evolving influence tactics, including its growing ability to better disguise operations.
Russia has engaged in a “long pattern of deflection” to pin blame for its malevolent acts on other countries, Dr. Hill said, not least Ukraine, a former Soviet republic. Since Ukraine won independence in 1991, Russia has tried to reassert influence there, meddling in its politics, maligning pro-Western leaders and accusing Ukrainian critics of Moscow of fascist leanings.
“The Russians have a particular vested interest in putting Ukraine, Ukrainian leaders in a very bad light,” she told lawmakers.
But the campaign by Russian intelligence in recent years has been even more complex as Moscow tries not only to undermine the government in Kyiv but also to use a disinformation campaign there to influence the American political debate.
MSN
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