he may go to prison, but not because of the impeachment. this will be a long weird road, and we can look to italy for the previews
4 Likes
Sadly, kicking the bum out of the White House has always been a tall order. AFAICT, the Democrats’ primary goal with the impeachment is to air Trump’s dirty laundry, and force the Republicans to explicitly defend the indefensible (such as Dershovitz’ insanity about how “abuse of power is not an impeachable offense”), in order to hurt them in the 2020 elections.
5 Likes
I read this installment to my kids. It was so moving, I broke down several times while reading it. We ended up having a 30 minute discussion of Dr. King, slavery, the Confederacy, Reconstruction, Black Wall Street, the Civil Rights movement, the Southern Strategy, the Census, and tied it all back into the modern resurgence of white supremacy in the US.
There was much hugging with the kiddos.
8 Likes
Wow. I’m so glad to hear that.
Reminds me of being at a party on MLK day once, when someone suggested we read his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” together. Some rolled their eyes and headed for the kitchen, but eight or so of us pulled chairs into a circle, then passed around a copy as we each read a paragraph. Powerful stuff, and a very moving experience.
8 Likes
January 21, 2020 (Tuesday)
Today, the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump began. The remarkable thing about it was the astonishment on the part of so many smart lawyers and pundits that the president’s lawyers were just… lying. Both Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow insisted that the Democrats had had a secret process from which Republicans were excluded: you will remember that this was a lie, fabricated for the television cameras. Observers were outraged.
But for Trump and his enablers, this trial is not about the truth; it never has been. It is about dominance and power.
Forcing someone to accept what they know to be untrue reinforces the dominance of the person telling the lies. Perpetrators will start with small, seemingly unimportant lies and cruelties that the victim is unlikely to challenge. But once the lie or cruelty has been accepted, the victim is less likely to challenge another one because it would mean having to confront the original. It snowballs. This is a well-known pattern that J. K. Rowling immortalized in the Harry Potter books with the relationship between Voldemort and his followers. And that pattern has always been Trump’s MO. Now, Trump is demanding we accept that his phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky was A PERFECT PHONE CALL despite reams of evidence to the contrary.
For those of us unconvinced by Trump’s assertions, this reiteration of lies in the face of evidence does something else. It “flood[s] the zone with shit” as Trump’s advisor Steve Bannon put it. By keeping us constantly trying to defend what is real from what is not, they destroy our ability to make sense of our world. Many people turn to a strongman who promises to create order. Others will get so exhausted they simply give up. This is what Vladimir Putin did in post-Soviet Russia, and it is everywhere now in the US. You can even see it in the comment section right here.
What was going on today was a window into the fight between democracy and authoritarianism. The Democrats have made a stellar stand on fact and reality. The Republicans are flooding the zone.
The trial started with the president’s lawyers unprepared. After Chief Justice John Roberts entered the Senate chamber, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone got an hour to make an opening statement. He spoke for only three minutes, apparently expecting that the day would start with arguments about trial rules. He simply said that Trump “has done absolutely nothing wrong.” Then he yielded the floor.
Then it was Adam Schiff’s turn. Schiff is the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee and the leading House manager of impeachment. He launched into a 50-minute recounting of Trump trying to rig the 2020 election by pressuring Ukraine to smear Joe Biden and withholding vital military aid to do so. He reminded the Senators that they were required under oath to be fair and impartial jurors, and noted that if indeed Trump could not be removed under any circumstances, he was not a president but a king. He pointed out that every single impeachment trial in the Senate (remember that this would include federal judges as well as presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton) had testimony from witnesses and required the production of documentation. It was a speech for the ages.
When he finished, Justice Roberts reminded Cipollone that he still had 57 minutes. Cipollone asked Jay Sekulow to respond. But Sekulow was not prepared. While he was loud and angry, he wandered and had no real argument. He also lied in easily disproven ways. He did not engage with Schiff’s argument but instead fell back on the same points GOP leaders in the House kept hitting: that Democrats hated Trump and that the FBI had investigated Trump after the 2016 election. Cipollone then followed, even louder, attacking Schiff. He, too, lied about the Democrats excluding Republicans from hearings.
But Schiff still had time. He methodically rebutted the GOP arguments.
And that has been the pattern of the day. The Republican lawyers are simply reiterating Fox News Channel talking points; the Democrats, led by Schiff, are doing a masterful job of pointing out again and again that the GOP lawyers are lying. More important, the Democratic managers are carefully and methodically laying out the existing evidence concerning the Ukraine Scandal in clear, actually really interesting (surprisingly) ways. There is a reason Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted this to happen in the dead of night.
The GOP opposed every amendment the Democrats proposed to permit testimony or documents, including letting Justice Roberts, who is theoretically impartial, decide whether or not witnesses were relevant. The GOP leaders do not want testimony, despite the fact that a new poll out today says that Americans, including 71% of Republicans, overwhelmingly want to hear witnesses at the Senate trial. Just before 2:00 am, the Senate adopted McConnell’s resolution establishing the rules by a party-line vote, and the Senate adjourned at 1:50. It will reconvene at 1:00 tomorrow.
A note on Trump’s lawyers. Pat Cipollone is White House Counsel, an official position, paid for by the US taxpayers. The White House Counsel is supposed to defend the legal interests of the office of the presidency.
The White House Counsel is not the president’s personal lawyer. That would be Jay Sekulow, and the gang of others lawyers surrounding Trump. Those lawyers are not paid with tax dollars. While we cannot know where their checks come from, it is worth noting that campaign money can be used for legal expenses. Trump is the only president in history to file for reelection on Inauguration Day, and I have always thought that was at least in part about paying for legal bills. In October 2019, we learned that Trump’s campaign was paying 13 law firms, and that the campaign had spent $12 million on legal fees since 2017. As of February 2019, $100,000 of that went to the law firm representing Jared Kushner.
There are two other pieces of big news tonight.
While reports initially said that no Americans were injured in the Iranian attack on the Iraqi bases, we learned a few days ago that 11 soldiers had been medically evacuated to hospitals in Kuwait and Germany. We learned today that there were more than 11, and that the number is apparently climbing.
Second, do you remember the scandal about Amazon founder Jeff Bezos having an extramarital affair and going public about it after the National Enquirer tried to blackmail him about it? At the time, the National Enquirer said they had gotten the tip about the affair from Bezos’s affair partner’s brother, but his spokespeople made some cryptic comments about being hacked. The UN is going to release a report tomorrow saying that Bezos’s phone was hacked by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, MBS, during a “friendly chat” (which raises the question of what other phones might have been compromised during friendly chats). Several months later, Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi, who had been deeply critical of MBS, was murdered at MBS’s command, but Trump refused to acknowledge that connection. Trump has sharply criticized Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, and Jared Kushner is friendly with MBS. How this will shake out is unclear, but my sense is that it is not going to be a little story.
9 Likes
This one was especially beautiful. Thank you so much for posting.
4 Likes
You’re welcome.
I don’t know how she does it, every single day, but I sure do appreciate it.
4 Likes
January 22, 2020 (Wednesday)
The large theme of today, for me, was just how freaking prepared House impeachment managers, led by Adam Schiff (D-CA) are for this moment. Today they began to lay out the case that Donald Trump abused the power of the presidency and obstructed Congress. They did so in such a way that they told a coherent, compelling story, with testimony from the House impeachment hearings and evidence from relevant documents inserted into the correct places.
For folks who don’t do this sort of presentation frequently, I cannot impress enough on you how masterful this presentation was. It looks easy to turn to clips as they did, but it takes hours and hours of work to find those, cut them, and clip them in as they did, so that they flow easily. And they have created a long, complicated, thoroughly sourced narrative that they are laying out in easy clarity, in about a month. Indeed, I came to suspect today that some of Pelosi’s withholding of the impeachment articles was to buy Schiff and his team time to put together something this impressive.
And it was impressive, impressive enough that a number of reporters noted that Republicans were taken aback at hearing the timeline, as full as it now is with the evidence that the Democrats have compiled even with the president’s stonewalling. But it was not simply clear and compelling. Schiff turned again and again to the principles on which America is founded, and urged Republicans to defend those principles.
“We have, for generations, been the shining city upon a hill that President Reagan described,” Schiff reminded his colleagues. “America’s not just a country, but also an idea. But what worth is that idea when tried we do not affirm the values that underpin it? What will those nascent democracies conclude? That democracy is not only difficult, but maybe that it’s too difficult? Maybe that it’s impossible? And who will come to fill the void that we leave when the light from that shining city upon a hill is extinguished? The autocrats with whom we compete. Who value not freedom and fair elections, but the unending rule of a repressive executive. Autocrats that value, not freedom of the press and open debate, but disinformation, propaganda and state sanctioned lies. Vladimir Putin would like nothing better.”
Schiff and the other impeachment managers repeatedly reminded the GOP senators that more information was going to come out. Wouldn’t they prefer for it to come out before they had acquitted the president? They pointed out that every previous Senate impeachment trial has had evidence—a point Lincoln Project founder George Conway also made quite effectively on television with CNN’s Jake Tapper this morning-- and tied the GOP to Trump, warning senators they will be seen as part of a coverup if they continue to protect him. They are not exaggerating; today’s poll numbers show that 72% of Americans want to hear witnesses, including 69% of Republicans.
The trial, conservative columnist for the Washington Post Jennifer Rubin wrote, is “making clear to the entire country that Trump did exactly what he is accused of, but that his own party, suffering from political cowardice and intellectual corruption, do not have the nerve to stop him.” Reporter Elie Mystal signed off Twitter tonight saying: “Goodnight, Twitter. My wish for all you people I like is that you never commit a crime Adam Schiff has reason to prosecute you for.”
At Davos, Switzerland, today, Trump continued to try to flood the zone, repeatedly insisting that “the transcript” cleared him of wrongdoing (remember, there is no transcript, and even what he released as a readout of the July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky shows him talking about the Bidens and Burisma but not “corruption”). But he also said something new and unfortunate. He defended his team for doing a good job and then said: “But honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material.” Um… yeah. The fact he stonewalled the House is kind of the point.
Tonight, at the end of the day’s events, Schiff transmitted to the Senate a classified document written by Jennifer Williams, assistant to Vice President Mike Pence, who was on some of the key phone calls between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. There appears to be no reason for the document to be classified except to protect Pence. Last night, the Senate rejected an amendment to the resolution McConnell had written to establish the rules of the trial; that amendment would have allowed the Senate to receive classified information into evidence. But Chief Justice John Roberts permitted the letter into the record under the Standing Rules of the Senate. The Senators can all now see this document under a classified setting… if they choose to.
And there’s the rub. Republican senators are not paying particularly close attention to the proceedings. Senators are all supposed to be in attendance and listening, but a few, mainly on the Republican side, are openly refusing. Today Rand Paul (R-KY) displayed handwritten message pretending to be a hostage victim, openly worked a crossword puzzle, and then just got up and left. Other Republicans openly chatted, despite the admonishment that “all persons are commanded to keep silence, on pain of imprisonment.” South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham left. (On the Democratic side, 86-year-old Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) left for at least a half hour, and Corey Booker (D-NJ) went to the cloak room to make phone calls.)
The open disdain of GOP congress people for our democratic process speaks volumes. If Trump is acquitted—as many of us expect—he will consider himself justified in continuing to concentrate our nation’s power into his own hands, and there seems little reason to think his party will stop him. Indeed, a very smart lawyer I follow on Twitter (but whose account is locked and he had not given permission to name him, so for now let’s leave him anonymous) observed this morning that perhaps even the few GOP Senators who would like to hear witnesses and see documents don’t dare to demand them because they are afraid Trump will refuse even them, thus illustrating that they are powerless.
And he is making it clear that he is moving toward the sort of leadership he sees among the oligarchs he so admires. Yesterday, the Commerce Department said it would not follow a law (!) saying it had to release the report of a controversial investigation it conducted that concluded certain auto imports pose a national security threat. It refuses on the grounds that releasing it “would interfere with the president’s ability to protect confidential executive branch communications and could interfere with ongoing negotiations.” And today in Davos, Ivanka Trump took precedence over our cabinet officers, acting as her father’s second. She was the only person he called out for praise in his 30 minute speech. (Do you recall shortly after Trump’s inauguration when she moved into the White House, and there was such a hue and cry about it she vowed she would never have an official position? In three years, this unprecedented nepotism has become normalized.)
For all this, though, Trump appears angry and nervous, tweeting or retweeting 132 times before 5:00 pm, a new record for him. The White House also announced that Trump will be appearing personally at this Friday’s anti-abortion March for Life, a move that would seem to indicate his desperate need to reassure his base, except that it runs the risk of alienating pro-life Democrats. Trump will be the first president ever to speak at the event in person, and my read on it is that he feels the need to be before a cheering crowd. Any crowd.
6 Likes
The GOP senators interviewed after the day’s arguments were all up in arms about how the House managers said mean things - about them, and about Trump’s lawyers (and the White House lawyers) - without touching that both Schiff and Nadler were speaking the truth. The senators in question are openly participating in a coverup. Trumps lawyers did in fact lie. Which is worse - lying or calling out the lie?
4 Likes
Right? That’s a lot like racism now. In the eyes of wingnuts, it’s now worse to call out racism than it is to do something racist.
7 Likes
January 23, 2020 (Thursday)
“If right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is.
It doesn’t matter how brilliant the Framers were.
It doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is.
It 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.
The 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 Col. 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 if right doesn’t matter anymore.
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. Right matters. And the truth matters.
Otherwise we are lost.”
So ended Impeachment manager Adam Schiff’s closing argument today in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Within minutes, #RightMatters was trending on Twitter.
Schiff (D-CA) leads a group of Democratic House managers who are shining in this moment as they weave televised testimony before the House, available documents, and public television interviews into a coherent narrative despite the Senate’s current refusal to admit testimony or documents.
Yesterday, New York’s Hakeem Jeffries’s (D-NY) encapsulation of “why we are here” was a masterful synopsis of the case against Donald Trump; today, it fell to Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) to weave the recently released messages between Lev Parnas and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani into a timeline that utterly debunked the idea that any American involved in the Ukraine Scandal cared about corruption, showing that Trump’s concern over the Bidens was that Joe Biden was the frontrunner for the 2020 election. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) took the lead today as he explained the legal basis for impeachment, and while his speaking style was more subdued and mechanical than Schiff’s, he was clear and convincing. Taken together, the Democrats’ case has been overwhelming. Even Andrew Napolitano, the Fox News Channel senior judicial analyst, said the evidence was “ample and uncontradicted.”
But all I could think of was Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning book To Kill A Mockingbird, and lawyer Atticus Finch’s masterful defense of the moral, kind, hardworking African American man Tom Robinson, whom everyone in Macomb knew had not committed the rape poor white girl Mayella Ewell had accused him of. Atticus proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mayella’s own no-good father Bob had raped her, and that she had flirted with Tom out of a desperate need for affection, then accused Tom to save herself from her father’s violent wrath. Atticus hammered the facts home, proving that Tom, with his withered arm, could not possibly have assaulted Mayella, and that she and Bob were lying. But in the end, nothing mattered but power. Not facts, not truth, not right. An all-white jury, wedded to white supremacy, pretended to believe the white Bob Ewell, and convicted Tom of the crime.
Tonight, as if on cue, CBS reported that a confidante of the president told CBS News that GOP senators were warned “vote against the president & your head will be on a pike.” Republican senators, who have previously suggested they would entertain the idea of witnesses—a proxy for the idea they might actually listen to evidence—began to coalesce around the idea that they cannot subpoena witnesses because Trump is threatening to invoke executive privilege, the right of the president to keep certain communications private. (For all the chatter about executive privilege, he has not invoked it yet; his people have simply said they would not answer certain questions in case it might intrude on his future invocation of the privilege.) That, they say, would drag out the trial unnecessarily. And so, it looks as if the hope that a few of the Republican senators would break ranks will not play out.
The jury convicted Tom Robinson.
This letter is late tonight because I couldn’t imagine what I could say in it. “Schiff and Co are off the charts brilliant,” I wrote to a colleague, “and it doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does matter,” the answer came back. “Not necessarily to whether Trump will be convicted but to the social, cultural, and political meaning of this public ritual and to the ripples and waves it makes in the river of history.”
Another friend made the point in a more round-about way: “Have you been to the African American History and Culture Museum in DC?” she asked. “It is designed to be experienced in a particular way. You go down, down, down in an elevator, through time, to 1465 or something. Earlier than I expected, definitely 15th century. Three floors of history: Europe and Africa colliding into America. Trade. Capitalism. New World. Opportunity. Slavery.
"Three floors. It would take days to see it properly. So many artifacts. Even an amazing story about a Tuskegee airman. You end with video and still images of American from 9-11 through Obama. I found that part really emotional. Then you eat. Big cafeteria, with regional food. I had the kind of food that my grandmother cooked. She was raised eating soul food, and that is what she always cooked. Fried chicken. Corn bread. Collard greens. But she was a better cook than a cafeteria. Banana pudding with vanilla wafers. In a glass bowl.
"After you eat, you keep going up. Three floors above the entry level. Floor 2 is the research center floor, and the escalators generally direct you past that. Floor 3 is all about building and maintaining community. Education. Churches. Publications. Clubs and civil groups. Civil rights organizing. The top floor is sublime, in a way. All about expressions of the spirit. Culture. Athletes. Dance. Theater. TV. Movies. And MUSIC. Popular American music. Poetry and literature. Pure joy and expression and life.”
And then she made her point: “White people who believe in justice and democracy may have to learn resilience and patience.”
Indeed.
No matter what happens, Schiff nailed it. “Right matters. And the truth matters. Otherwise we are lost.”
9 Likes
January 24, 2020 (Friday)
First things first: The number of US soldiers injured in the Iranian attack on the Iraqi airbase was not zero, as the president told us. The numbered of injured has been confirmed today to be 34. Seventeen of them have returned to duty. Eight have been returned to the US for medical care; nine others remain in Germany for medical care. All of those still receiving medical treatment are currently outpatients.
Now, the rest: this morning, news dropped that there are tapes. Reporters for ABC News have reviewed a recording, apparently made by Lev Parnas’s partner Igor Fruman at a private dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. on April 30, 2018, that has Trump saying about US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, a prominent anti-corruption leader, “Get rid of her!.. Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it.”
The snippets of the tape that have been made public say little else, but even that much belies both the idea that Trump was not involved in the corruption around Yovanovitch’s firing and that he did not know Parnas and Fruman, who attended this private dinner. They also raise the very real question of why the president was making an order to “take out” a senior ambassador at a private dinner. He had every right to recall her, but if so, why not do it through normal State Department channels? The answer is likely that she was a very highly regarded senior official, and he would not be able to give a good reason to remove her. So he went to other channels. But what, exactly, did that imply about this plan… and thus about what they meant with regard to Yovanovitch?
Tonight, Lev Parnas’s lawyer went on the Rachel Maddow Show to say the entire tape is 1:24 minutes long and has been given to the House intelligence Committee.
This tape is important to the present moment even if there is nothing else on it. The tape matters because it exists. If Fruman and Parnas recorded this conversation at a private dinner—apparently on a cell phone left on a table, for almost an hour and a half—what else did they record? And if they recorded things, who else did? What we have seen and heard so far about the Ukraine Scandal has been breathtaking, and it has been pretty low-hanging fruit. When the harder-to-reach stuff comes out, as it will, Republicans defending Trump will be forced to defend more and more unthinkable actions.
For their part, Republicans are trying to pretend that the impeachment trial is so boring and unimportant that no one should bother watching. They are reading, chatting, playing with Fidget spinners. On Fox News Channel, Sean Hannity is assuring viewers he will protect them from the boring proceedings.
But it does not appear to be working. Americans are glued to the House managers’ telling of the Ukraine Scandal, which they have made a compelling story of intrigue and corruption at the highest levels of our government, calling Americans back to the higher meaning of American democracy. As of tonight, more than 6 million people had watched a single clip of Adam Schiff’s closing at last night’s session. Further, the Republicans’ strategy makes them seem disdainful not simply of the impeachment process, but of our government itself. It’s not playing well.
Today, the House impeachment managers wrapped up their case before the Senate. In his closing, Schiff appealed to senators to buck their party and call for witnesses and documents, giving America a fair trial in the case against Trump. Having made their story clear over the past two days, today the House managers focused on preempting what we can presume Trump’s defenders will say over the next several days. The House managers undercut the argument that aid to Ukraine was held up for policy reasons—it has been made abundantly clear that is false—and undercut the Republican argument that the process was rigged against Trump. They also warned that Republicans’ attempts to drag the Bidens into their defense of Trump will simply do what the Ukraine Scandal was designed to do in the first place: smear a Democratic leader for advantage in the 2020 election.
The Republicans will start their defense of Trump tomorrow, but will present for only three hours, from 10:00 to 1:00. This is a poor time for viewership, which is frustrating the president, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell set the schedule and undoubtedly wants to make Trump’s defense as quietly as possible. If the behavior of Trump’s team so far is any indication, they are badly underprepared and aiming mostly for Fox News Channel video clips. This will not play well to the public compared to the masterful presentation by the House managers.
McConnell still appears to have the votes to quash witnesses and documents, but senators are clearly feeling pressure, as 72% of Americans want those witnesses and documents. Senators have been starting to say they cannot ask for witnesses because the president would assert executive privilege. Schiff is keeping up the pressure. He undercut that argument today by noting to reporters that Chief Justice John Roberts was empowered by the Senate rules to decide issues of evidence and privilege immediately, and the Democrats were fine with that. “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,” he said. Schiff has called their bluff. Executive privilege cannot be used to hide criminal activity, so it is a wild card what Roberts would actually permit the president to protect.
The White House is definitely feeling the heat. Today a BBC News story revealed that Rinaldo Nazzaro, the American founder of the neo-Nazi group The Base, which wants to destroy the US government, incite a race war, and create a white ethnostate, has been running the organization from Russia, a country with whom the president has been far too cozy and whose propaganda Giuliani and Trump supporters are echoing.
This evening, Trump read a statement in which he claimed he had always highly regarded the US Intelligence Community (this is not true; he has often attacked it and deferred to the intelligence agencies of Russia or Saudi Arabia), and said he accepted that Russia meddled in the 2016 election (although he claimed it did not affect his win). He then went off script to say other countries might have interfered, too, so the moment wasn’t perfect, but this was clearly an attempt to make it look as if the White House was backing off from the Russia-backed propaganda that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 election rather than Russia. It was not a convincing performance on his part, I thought, and the fact he ended off script: “There was no collusion!” didn’t help.
Also today, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo melted down at NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly, insisting that he had defended Yovanovitch (he has not), and then after the interview cursing her, asking “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?,” and challenging her to find Ukraine on a map, going so far as actually getting aides to bring in an unlabeled map (on which she successfully identified Ukraine). “People will hear about this,” he told her.
And that’s the mounting problem for Trump’s GOP. Over the coming months, people will definitely hear about many, many things.
6 Likes
From here on out, it’s all about the 2020 election.
Today Trump’s lawyers began their defense of the president in the Senate trial of the House of Representatives’ articles of impeachment. Those two articles are quite tightly focused on the Ukraine Scandal.
The first charges Trump with abuse of power when he “corruptly solicited the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations into… a political opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden… and a discredited theory promoted by Russian alleging that Ukraine—rather than Russia—interfered in the 2016 United States Presidential Election. With the same corrupt motives, President Trump—acting both directly and through his agents within and outside the United States Government… [withheld]… $391 million of United States taxpayer funds that Congress had appropriated on a bipartisan basis for the purpose of providing vital military and security assistance to Ukraine to oppose Russian aggression… and… a head of state meeting at the White House, which the President of Ukraine sought to demonstrate continued United States support for the Government of Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.” Trump did release the funds, but only after the hold had been revealed. Nonetheless, Trump “persisted in openly and corruptly urging and soliciting Ukraine to undertake investigations for his personal political benefit.” The article notes: “These actions were consistent with… Trump’s previous invitations of foreign interference in United States elections."
The second article charges him with obstruction of Congress by directing “the unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives” as it sought to undertake an impeachment investigation, which the Constitution gives the House full and sole power to do. “In response, without lawful cause or excuse,… Trump directed Executive Branch agencies, offices, and officials not to comply with those subpoenas,” thus taking over functions and judgments the Constitution lodges in the House.
That’s it. Just the Ukraine Scandal and Trump’s attempt to hide what happened in that scandal by stonewalling the House’s oversight of it (which the House has a Constitutional requirement to do).
In past impeachment trials, the president’s defense has stuck to defending the president against the articles of impeachment, either arguing that the facts disprove the alleged behavior, or that the law allows the president to act as he did, or that the president’s behavior did not rise to the required level of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Not today. The day began with a tweet from Trump himself: “Our case against lyin’, cheatin’, liddle’ Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, nervous Nancy Pelosi, their leader, dumb as a rock AOC, & the entire Radical Left, Do Nothing Democratic Party, starts today at 10:00 A.M. on @FoxNews, @OANN or Fake News @CNN or Fake News MSDNC!”
Then, rather than sticking to the issues at hand, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Michael Purpurea, the deputy White House counsel, not only rehashed the complaints of Trump supporters about the alleged misdeeds of the Democrats, they also went on the offensive, accusing the Democrats of hiding facts, and of impeaching the president only to weaken him before the 2020 election.
On the one hand, we have the House’s carefully limited articles of impeachment, and the House managers’ masterfully prepared and delivered case for the prosecution. On the other hand, we have a series of accusations designed to rile up the emotions of Trump’s base. The argument is not based in fact, but in outrage, and in a classic twist of gaslighting, the president’s lawyers are either lying or blaming the Democrats for what they, themselves are doing.
Cipollone and Purpura started today essentially by echoing Trump’s frequent refrain: “Read the transcript.” They argue that the infamous July 25 call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky does not mention withholding money or a meeting in exchange for the announcement of the investigation into the Bidens and Burisma and of the role of Ukraine in the 2016 election that Trump mentions in it.
This is not a reflection of reality. First of all, there is no transcript; there is a rough readout that we know is incomplete. Further, the articles of impeachment do not center on that call; they show it as part of a larger pattern. While Trump didn’t mention the exchange in the call, we know that Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and former Ukraine special envoy Kurt Volker relayed the message to Ukraine officials that day. We have their text messages.
And so it goes down each of the points Trump’s lawyers are making. Those points present a version of the truth which sounds entirely reasonable… until you look at the evidence that proves they are misdirecting your attention. So, for example, they insist that the Democrats are withholding facts, when the reality is that the president has blocked witnesses and documents and Republicans have so far refused to subpoena them. And they have accused the Democrats of trying to rig the 2020 election… when we have proof that the person trying to rig the election is Trump.
At this point, it seems fair to say that both the House impeachment managers and the Republicans have their eye on voters in the 2020 election. Adam Schiff and his team are trying to appeal to voters by demonstrating that they care about the principles of democracy and the fact-based world on which those principles are based.
Republicans are doubling down on gaslighting American voters, using the impeachment trial to do what Trump wanted Ukraine to do for him: attacking Biden and arguing that it was Ukraine rather than Russia that attacked our elections in 2016. Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow once again suggested that Ukraine rather than Russia attacked us, and Trump’s sometime lawyer Rudy Giuliani is back on the Fox News Channel insisting that he has proven that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that attacked us. (We now know, of course, that this argument is Russian propaganda.)
Will it work? I have heard people say that Trump’s lawyers were brilliant today in their rebuttal to the House managers, but their support seems to lie in their comfort that their familiar narrative has been reiterated in the face of facts that disprove it. (Even Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who has been a huge Trump supporter, told Politico that the defense looked like “an eighth-grade book report,” except that they didn’t seem to know how to use PowerPoint and iPads.)
But the media, at least, seems to be becoming aware of this technique. Today Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continued his attacks on NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly, issuing a statement that claims she lied to him twice, and claiming the media has become “unhinged… in its quest to hurt President Trump and this Administration.” He went on “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, though, he added something else: “It is worth noting that Bangladesh is NOT Ukraine.”
This classic gaslighting illuminates the techniques the president’s lawyers are using. Of course, Bangladesh is not Ukraine. The statement is true. But taken in context—that Pompeo swore at Kelly and insisted she could not identify Ukraine on a map, and then she did—it is clear he was implying, without actually lying directly, that she had misidentified Ukraine for Bangladesh. That mistake is impossible for a well-trained long-time foreign reporter to make, but the word “Bangladesh” will be memorable to Trump supporters.
Media pushed back instantly on this contrived story, calling it out for what it was, rather than both-sides-ing the issue by exploring how, indeed, Bangladesh is not Ukraine. Similarly, when Giuliani tried to convince Fox News Channel personality Jeanine Pirro on her show tonight that he had proven the Ukraine story, she pushed back, insisting on evidence.
And while the Senate has not yet decided whether or not it will permit witnesses and the submission of documents, there will undoubtedly be more evidence whether GOP senators want it or not. Today, Lev Parnas’s attorney said there are more private recordings of Trump like the one they released yesterday, and that they have been transmitted to the House Intelligence Committee.
7 Likes
January 26, 2020 (Sunday)
Some days, it’s hard to write these letters because there are so many stories out there it’s difficult to wrestle them into a clear narrative. Last night was like that—you’ll note I posted at 4:00 am. And some days are easy because it all falls into place. Today is one of those days.
It started with Trump attacking House Impeachment manager Adam Schiff on Twitter, saying that “Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!” Interviewed on NBC News’s Meet the Press, Schiff responded that he thought Trump’s words were intended to be a threat. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Schiff’s interpretation was “ridiculous” although she admitted she hadn’t talked to Trump about the tweet.
But the spat showed that Trump is angry and anxious, lashing out, while GOP leaders continued to cover for him. You will recall that GOP Senators expressed outrage the other day over Schiff quoting an official close to that White House who said that key senators had been warned “Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.” Despite their outrage over that quotation, they did not object to this language from the president against a leading Democrat.
Not a good dynamic.
Trump’s anger might have been prompted by a new Fox News poll (and btw, this is a reputable polling team, despite the name) that says 50% of Americans think the Senate should vote to convict and remove President Trump from office.
But that story paled alongside the bombshell that dropped tonight. The New York Times dropped the story that John Bolton’s forthcoming book will say that Trump told Bolton, at the time Trump’s National Security advisor, that he wanted to continue to hold up military assistance to Ukraine until officials there announced investigations into the Bidens.
This is the direct evidence of a deliberate exchange of aid for investigations, concocted by Trump himself, that GOP senators have said did not exist.
Bolton’s book allegedly also says that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo knew that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s claims about U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch were unfounded and that Giuliani wanted her out because she was making life difficult for his clients as she fought corruption.
But it’s worse than that. Bolton’s lawyer also released his letter to the White House concerning the manuscript. Bolton’s lawyer transmitted the manuscript to the White House on December 30 for review to make sure it did not reveal any classified information (this is standard procedure) and emphasized that they expected the manuscript would only go through normal channels, and not be shared with anyone who would not normally see a manuscript being vetted for classified information. But it is impossible to believe that Trump and his people did not see the manuscript and what it contained.
So it appears that, when the president’s lawyers have argued to the Senate there is no evidence of a quid pro quo and the House’s whole case was second-hand, they knew full well that a primary witness was available—no, eager—to prove first-hand evidence. This is the testimony the White House has been blocking. So they have been lying to the Senate. At the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin wonders if senators will be offended that the president’s lawyers lied to their faces.
But who else was involved? Bolton’s lawyer gave the White House thirty working days to respond. That time period would’ve ended on February 13, meaning the White House could squelch the manuscript that long. Is this why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been so eager to get the trial over quickly? To get a vote before Bolton’s story became public? Clearly, if the material in the book exonerated Trump, the White House would’ve cleared it quickly rather than sitting on it for so long.
In the letter from Bolton’s lawyer, there’s an Interesting reference to a nondisclosure agreement, which says something about the conflict at hand between Trump and the American people. Apparently Trump made senior officials sign a nondisclosure agreement before working in the White House. These agreements forbade them from disclosing any confidential information about their work not only while in office but after they left the White House. The one that Ruth Marcus, of the Washington Post, saw last year imposed a penalty of $10 million for every violation (this was likely reduced in final versions). But legal experts say these are unenforceable because White House officials don’t work for Trump; they work for us.
And therein lies a fascinating question. Who leaked the details of the manuscript to the New York Times? Bolton’s people insist the leak came from the White House; but Bolton stands to gain more from the leak than anyone else. The leak released the information the nation needs right now (so gets him media time) and it undercuts the growing anger that he was trying to save the material in his book to sell copies of it when it comes out in March (and the link to it went live on Amazon tonight).
Regardless of who leaked the information, though, the timing literally couldn’t be worse for Trump’s defense team. New York lawyer Jim McCarrick, whom I follow on Twitter, pointed out that it came out just after the defense has committed to their theory that Trump did nothing wrong and there was no quid pro quo, but before they finish their case. So it demolished their argument just after they locked into it. A litigator’s nightmare.
And here is a final note that I hesitate to write because it’s just so awful. The White House learned about the contents of John Bolton’s book on December 30. Bolton is a hawk for war with Iran. On January 3, 2020, the United States attacked and killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, nearly sparking a war with Iran. Horrific to think that there might be a connection.
Immediately the House impeachment managers noted that Bolton’s new information meant the Senate simply must call him as a witness, and tonight, at least, GOP senators were wavering on admitting witnesses. (Remember, McConnell’s resolution means that even if they subpoena witnesses, those witnesses will be deposed in private and their testimony might never be public. Many people thought this provision was designed precisely to silence Bolton.) We’ll see.
Even the Fox News Channel felt obliged to note this bombshell news, although host Steve Hilton assured viewers he had “read the full report”—I have no clue to what he is referring—and that it did not change anything of substance, but “you can be sure that the impeachment fanatics on establishment state TV will be obsessed with this tomorrow.”
The administration is clearly under stress and doubling down on gaslighting. Yesterday, Pompeo claimed that NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly lied to him twice and lambasted her and the media for their bad faith; today emails show that she did not lie, that Pompeo’s press aide knew that she would ask him the questions he did. So he, not she, was lying. Shortly after the emails came out, Trump retweeted a tweet from a right-wing commentator asking why NPR even exists.
But the implications of the destruction of our government might well soon become terrifyingly clear. I actually wrote about the new coronavirus the day it was announced because it hit a number of issues that, as a historian, I thought were important. But I deleted the paragraph, afraid that readers who are already on edge would become unnecessarily worried (I did leave it in the notes for that day as a record for future scholars). For the purposes of this political record, though, we should note that the GOP project of dismantling the government means that we have not had anyone in charge of leading the U.S. response to a pandemic since May 2018, when Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer from the National Security Council was pushed out during a shake up by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, who broke up the team designed to focus on global health security.
Strap in, folks. All signs suggest this is going to be quite a week.
7 Likes
January 27, 2020 (Monday)
Last night, news dropped that in his forthcoming book, Trump’s former National Security advisor John Bolton alleges that Trump told him directly that he was withholding congressionally appropriated funds to help Ukraine fight off Russian incursions until Ukraine agreed to announce an investigation into the Bidens.
Republicans have insisted that there was no direct evidence that Trump himself directed the hold, and that, therefore, there was no evidence that the president had abused his power, as the first article of impeachment charges. The leaks from Bolton’s book, cheekily named The Room Where It Happened (this is a reference to a song from the wildly popular musical, Hamilton), demolish that argument. A key player is willing to testify to direct conversations about the issue that place it firmly in Trump’s lap.
Shortly after midnight Sunday, in the wee hours of Monday morning, Trump tweeted: “I NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens. In fact, he never complained about this at the time of his very public termination. If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book.” The tweet was unfortunate, since if Bolton is lying, Trump should want him to testify under oath. Also, tweeting about the issue likely destroys Trump’s chances to protect the conversation under executive privilege. (Instead, the White House has floated the idea of going to court to get a restraining order against Bolton to stop him from speaking. This would tie the issue up in legal fights until the Senate finishes the trial.)
The media chewed over the issue all day today, with New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who broke the story, saying that Republican Senators felt blindsided by the news and wanted to know who had had access to the manuscript. Fox News Channel personality Lou Dobbs called staunch Republican John Bolton “A Tool For The Left,” (which is hilarious, despite the deadly seriousness of all this). Trump supporters, including Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC), one of Trump’s closest allies, warned that Republicans breaking with Trump over impeachment could face “political repercussions.” But while senators do not want to buck Trump, they also don’t want to acquit the president only to have more damning information appear. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Senator James Langford (R-OK) tried to avoid asking for witnesses but still get some security, saying that the Senate should be allowed to see the manuscript.
But the lawyers charged with defending Trump in the Senate today didn’t mention the new information at all until Alan Dershowitz mentioned it tonight only to say that even if Bolton’s accusations were true, they are not an impeachable offense. (Dershowitz is virtually the only constitutional scholar trying to make this argument.) Indeed, Jay Sekulow went so far as to say that “not a single witness” testified that they heard from Trump himself that the aid was linked to investigations… even as a direct witness has offered to testify, but is being blocked.
Clearly Trump’s defenders are not trying to defend him against the charges brought by the House. So what are they doing?
Today was a constant stream of attacks on Joe and Hunter Biden, in which Trump’s lawyers insisted that Trump’s focus on the announcement of an investigation into Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden sat, was because he cared so deeply about corruption in Ukraine.
(A quick recap of the actual facts, established in the impeachment hearings, among other places, might be in order:
In 2006, George W. Bush named Hunter Biden to the board of directors of Amtrak; he resigned in 2009 to start an international consulting firm. In 2014, Biden joined the board of Burisma to lend credibility to the idea it was leaving behind its corrupt past—US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified that putting Americans on boards to suggest they are clean is a common practice in Ukraine. Burisma is owned by an oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky; Hunter Biden had just been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine. In 2015, Viktor Shokin became Ukraine’s prosecutor general. He vowed to investigate Burisma but did not follow through. Shokin was widely perceived as corrupt, and in fall 2015, Vice President Joe Biden, who was overseeing American policy toward Ukraine, led a number of western officials—including Republican politicians-- in calling for Shokin’s removal. He was fired in March 2016, and a new prosecutor cleared Zlochevsky.)
Focusing so tightly on the Bidens actually weakens their argument that Trump cared more generally about corruption, so what are they up to? They are doing precisely what Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky refused to do: they are smearing the Bidens to help Trump in 2020.
Tonight, Iowa Senator Joni Ernst laid it out: “Okay, Iowa caucuses, folks, Iowa caucuses are this next Monday evening. And I’m really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters. Those Democratic caucus-goers. Will they be supporting Vice President Biden at this point? Not so certain about that.”
The Trump team is also deliberately gas lighting Americans. To Pam Bondi they gave the argument about corruption and the improper use of political connections. As Florida’s attorney general, Bondi declined to pursue fraud charges against Trump University after Trump wrote her a campaign committee a $25,000 check (for which he was later fined). Until recently Bondi was a lobbyist for Ballard Partners, a firm boasting of its ties to the Trump administration to represent Qatar and Kuwait. Lev Parnas’s notes suggested hiring Ballard to lobby for indicted Ukraine oligarch Dmitry Firtash.
To Ken Starr they gave the argument about lowering the standards of impeachment and using it as a political tool. Ken Starr, of course, was the man who pursued President Bill Clinton for years through a number of investigations that turned up nothing, only to corner him finally on charges that he had lied under oath about an extramarital affair. The House, controlled by Republicans, impeached Clinton, although many of the people insisting that it was a “character issue” that required his removal from office were themselves having extramarital affairs, including Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA).
Even Josh Marshall, the editor of Talking Points Memo, said it was so exhausting to watch the perpetrators bemoan the crimes that he had to stop listening. That is, of course, the plan.
Still, news continues to drop.
Today, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continued his attacks on NPR. After accusing NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly of lying only to be exposed by emails as the liar himself, Pompeo had another NPR correspondent, who on this trip was the representative for all radio reporters, banned from his plane on his upcoming trip to London and Kyiv. This means that the State Department— the government—is retaliating against the media for coverage the Secretary of State didn’t like.
Tonight Rachel Maddow reported that Bolton’s lawyer delivered a single copy of the manuscript to the White House, but that the White House made copies. Standard procedure—to which Bolton’s lawyer specifically called the attention of the White House lawyers—meant that the only people who should’ve seen the manuscript were those whose job was to make sure it did not reveal classified information. It seems that the White House ignored that rule and distributed the manuscript more widely.
Also tonight, the New York Times ran more information from Bolton’s manuscript, saying that Bolton privately told Attorney General William Barr last year that he was concerned that Trump was granting personal favors to the autocratic leaders of Turkey and China. (Back in October, Rolling Stone’s Ryan Bort did a good story on Trump’s attempts to help Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan which likely covers some of the same territory Bolton’s book will. It’s linked in the notes.)
At the Washington Post, Michael Gerson notes that Trump might finally have met his match in John Bolton. While the other people on whom Trump has turned beg for forgiveness and return to the fold, Bolton is taking the fight back to Trump.
7 Likes
Not really but I am good with him having a hate on for Trump.
6 Likes
Let’s hope that’s the case, and it’s not some kind of reach-around gangster shenanagins that they’re all in cahoots about. Nor, if Bolton does testify, that it’s something Trump can just wriggle free from once again. Anything seems possible with these maniacal bastards.
I do find it reassuring that McConnell seemed stunned yesterday by news of Bolton’s manuscript and what it apparently says.
5 Likes
January 28, 2020 (Tuesday)
Today felt very unsettled. There were a lot of stories, but two of the key ones seemed to have a subtext that we don’t know, so the meaning of the stories is not clear.
Before that, though, the Pentagon now says at least 50 U.S. troops suffered traumatic brain injuries in the Iranian strike on the Iraqi bases.
Today the lawyers defending Trump against the House’s charges in the articles of impeachment ended their case. Their defense echoed the past several days: they largely ignored the charges against Trump and instead attacked the Bidens and Trump’s other political enemies, including former President Barack Obama, former FBI Director James Comey, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, former FBI employees Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, none of whom have anything to do with this impeachment process, but all of whom are people Trump blames for his troubles. In Politico, Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney called Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow’s final speech “a sort of grand finale of Trump’s grievances, a speech that appeared geared toward his client as opposed to the audience of Senate Republicans looking for reasons to vote to acquit. Some senators left the chamber seemingly bewildered by the performance and tone.”
Overshadowing the trial, though, was the lingering question of what to do about the bombshell dropped Sunday night by Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton. Bolton has offered to testify, under oath, to the Senate, and leaks about his forthcoming book say that in it he has recounted a direct conversation in which Trump links military aid to Ukraine to a smear campaign against Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden. If true, this provides the piece of impeachment evidence Republicans have insisted did not exist (although Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland also testified to it, and the July 25 call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky mentions it as well). They said there was no direct evidence that Trump was involved in the scheme. Bolton seems to be able and willing to provide that evidence.
This puts Republican senators in a bad position. They do not want to upset Trump’s base—their firm voters—by voting to convict the president. But they also don’t want to rubber stamp illegal activity. Not only will that infuriate the now 75% of Americans who want to hear witnesses, it will also implicate them in a coverup, opening the door to investigations of their own behavior. The pressure was great for witnesses even before Bolton’s bombshell, but since Sunday the pressure to hear from at least Bolton has ratcheted up. Today, the right-slanting National Review magazine ran the news that Trump’s former chief of staff, retired General John Kelly told a crowd that “If John Bolton says that in the book I believe John Bolton.” On the Fox News Channel, Laura Ingraham tried to make fun of Kelly’s stand, but it rang hollow. Trump supporters are worried.
Oklahoma Senator James Lankford and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham have floated the idea of being able to read Bolton’s manuscript in a secure location; other Republicans have backed into the idea that perhaps they will have to let Bolton testify, but if so, they will insist on hearing from Hunter Biden. This will be problematic to defend, though, since there has been no testimony about what Trump knew or believed about Hunter Biden, so there is no way to tie Trump’s alleged concerns about Biden to the case at hand. At this point, Republicans seem largely to be testing options to figure out how to get out from under the Bolton bombshell.
After Trump’s lawyers finished, Republican senators conferenced about what to do about Bolton and other witnesses, and tonight the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the senators that he did not have the votes to prevent testimony. (Remember that while the Senate needs two-thirds of all the senators present to convict Trump, it only needs a simple majority—51 votes—to change the rules. That means four Republicans need to join the Democrats to demand witnesses. McConnell seems to be saying that those four votes have switched.)
That does not mean there will actually be witnesses. It only means that the Senate might vote to allow them, but then might vote against hearing any of the witnesses proposed. Even if it does allow witnesses, the rules require that they be deposed in a secure setting first, to determine that nothing they say will compromise national security. We know that this administration’s definition of national security is exceedingly expansive (and we suspected this rule was designed with Bolton’s testimony in mind—now that we know the White House had his manuscript, that only seems more likely).
But I am suspicious even with all those caveats. I am very skeptical of anything McConnell says or does; he is one of the slyest politicians in our history. I am sitting here wondering what or who he is trying to signal by letting this information leak. If McConnell really were on the losing end of a vote, he would never let that information be public. So what’s he up to?
That subtext has bothered me this evening, and so has Trump’s announcement tonight of his new Middle East peace plan. I know no more about the Middle East than any reasonably informed American, but this plan jumps out in me in two ways that reflect my own training as an American political historian who studies how leaders leverage power. First of all, the terms of the plan are eerily reminiscent of the “peace plans” nineteenth-century American politicians promised voters who wanted lands belonging to America’s native peoples. The settlers would get the land and sovereignty, with strong defense of their own safety, and in exchange the lucky natives—who were not invited to participate in the writing of the deal-- would get a reservation, an injection of cash, and then capital investment from settlers on their newly opened lands. We all know how that worked out. I have no idea if this is an apt comparison here, but boy, howdy, is the language virtually identical.
In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison made this very promise to his voters before a key midterm election… and that is the other thing that jumps out to me. The plan is essentially a checklist of everything Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has wanted, and it is being widely interpreted as Trump’s attempt to help the indicted Israeli politician in his upcoming elections. But it is also designed to appeal to American evangelical voters, whom Trump has been courting desperately since the Christianity Today article urged evangelicals to abandon him.
As I say, I cannot speak to the Middle East side of this deal (although I did see that Jordan, next to Israel, rejected it out of hand tonight because the Palestinians were not consulted), but the American side looks to me as if we are, once again, arranging our foreign policy to reelect Donald Trump. So, like the story that McConnell doesn’t have the votes he needs to prevent testimony, the Middle East peace plan story, too, seems to me to have a subtext very different than what shows on the surface.
I guess it feels a bit as if the script that we all knew had been written—that McConnell would run the Senate trial however he wished to exonerate Trump and the Democrats would make the best of a bad hand—has suddenly been challenged by regular Americans demanding testimony, but it is not yet clear who will be doing the rewrite.
8 Likes
McConnell’s declaration that he doesn’t have the votes seems to be sending the signal to the White House to show the “disloyal” senators the contents of the Arc of the Covenant (again). I wonder if it’s face-melting properties lose potency with repeat doses.
7 Likes
