Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/25/white-house-releases-call-su.html
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Why does this sound like poorly written Trump fan fiction?
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Holy shit balls…
if that is what they willingly released to clear his name, just imagine what is left out.
It must be really really bad!
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It seems that impeachment is inevitable, so here’s the question that matters most, I think: how do Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, and Joe Manchin spin this to justify voting against conviction in the Senate hearing?
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It feels like a lot of US foreign policy could be partially explained by the fact that it was Kissinger in the back room the 70s and 80s, and today it’s Rudy Giuliani.
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Fair, but unfortunately you’re going to have to find a lot more persuadable Republicans (and DINOs) than that to get to the required 67.
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Why does this sound like poorly written Trump fan fiction?
Everything Trump says sounds like poorly written fan fiction.
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You’re totally right. I do think that the core group I rattled off (plus/minus a few others) will be interesting to watch over the next couple months. We know that McConnell and Inhofe et al wouldn’t convict if there were videos accompanied by notarized confessions of Trump selling our nuclear codes to the Taliban in exchange for a bulk order of Ivanka’s bags, but the knots these other dicks are willing to twist themselves into to run away from their (purported) principles, and condemnations of what Trump did in theory, will be a hell of a thing I bet.
ETA:
Aaaannnd the feckless piece of shit Graham has already re-affirmed his status as Trump’s gimp:
Fuck, Graham even adopts Don Jr.'s phrasing as an extra sop to Trump to make sure daddy knows he’s being good and doesn’t deserve the hose
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He’s exacerbated that trump could be impeached for just a phone call. Conveniently leaving out the other calls AND the whistleblower complaint.
His constituents are stupid.
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What the fuck, this is insane. It directly contradicts what they said the other day, they insisted that there was no ask to investigate Biden’s son, then they release this.
Sadly, I’ll be surprised if anything comes of it, but god damn. If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is. He’s literally asking a foreign leader to run a smear campaign against a political opponent for his own gain. What. the. fuck.
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It needs to be put in bold type in the headline:
“in keeping with White House practice, is a memorandum of a telephone conversation and is not a verbatim account of the conversation. The text reflects the notes and memories of officials in the Situation Room. A disclaimer in the transcript warns that a number of factors “can affect the accuracy of the record, including poor telecommunications connections and variations in accent.”
So - no stenographer reliable transcription here - move along.
Which means it’s actually much worse than this.
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(edit: replaced earlier broken link) skip to about 1:30 in this video if you’re not familiar with it. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x75bt6
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Too bad conservative “news” orgs will run it as “fact”.
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I was fully prepared for this to be a grey conversation that wasn’t clearly black or white. Sketchy sounding, but hard to say claim it is definitive. Something that everyone who already has an opinion of Trump could interpret the way they wanted.
But holy crap, this is a bombshell! They only angle Trump can argue is that it wasn’t an explicit quid pro quo. That’s some awfully thin ice.
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How will the impeachment affect 2020?
Also discussed is William Barr, who’s always happy to bend the law in favour of the GOP. What a bunch of rats – let’s hope this drowns them all.
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He thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes.
He is a tad more careful than outright asking for a smear campaign. You can expect the white house over the next week to characterize this conversation as Trump simply requesting that Ukraine investigate the truth of alleged accusations against Biden (or perhaps his own admissions if he is bragging). That’s a little different than conceiving a smear campaign, which would sound more like, “hey man, would you find some dirt on Biden and then publicly share it, without determining if it was truthful or accurate?”
But the real kicker (which the administration seems to not care about) is whether Trump is directly requesting that a foreign power perform an action that would contribute something of value to Trump’s campaign for reelection. Though not monetary, this reeks of a potential leveraging of $400 million of funds in exchange for an indirect campaign contribution.
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I imagine that the upcoming testimony by the whistleblower to the House Intelligence Committee will clarify that a bit.
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