Today's News (2020/1/28)
Jan. 28th, 2020 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdBolton Was Concerned That Trump Did Favors for Autocratic Leaders, Book Says
The former national security adviser shared his unease with the attorney general, who cited his own worries about the president’s conversations with the leaders of Turkey and China.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/us/politics/john-bolton-trump-book-barr.html
WASHINGTON - John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, privately told Attorney General William P. Barr last year that he had concerns that President Trump was effectively granting personal favors to the autocratic leaders of Turkey and China, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.
Mr. Barr responded by pointing to a pair of Justice Department investigations of companies in those countries and said he was worried that Mr. Trump had created the appearance that he had undue influence over what would typically be independent inquiries, according to the manuscript. Backing up his point, Mr. Barr mentioned conversations Mr. Trump had with the leaders, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Xi Jinping of China.
Mr. Bolton's account underscores the fact that the unease about Mr. Trump's seeming embrace of authoritarian leaders, long expressed by experts and his opponents, also existed among some of the senior cabinet officers entrusted by the president to carry out his foreign policy and national security agendas.
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Alexandra Erin
twitter.com/AlexandraErin
"You know how nothing sticks to Trump when there is a scandal? Do you see any candidate, on the dems side, with that same strength to brush off controversy?"
Big question, so I'm making a new thread.
I do not, and I don't think it's possible, short-term.
And part of that effect is Trump and part of it is his base and part of it is the way the media and electorate have been tuned by the GOP for decades.
https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1222190088572014593
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Former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly tells Sarasota crowd ‘I believe John Bolton’
https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20200128/former-trump-chief-of-staff-john-kelly-tells-sarasota-crowd-rsquoi-believe-john-boltonrsquo
Asked if Bolton - Trump’s former national security adviser - should testify at Trump’s impeachment trial, Kelly said he supports calling witnesses.
President Donald Trump is denying that he told former National Security Advisor John Bolton he wanted to withhold military aid from Ukraine until the country launched investigations into Joe Biden and his son, allegations that Bolton levies in his new book, according to news reports.
But one of Trump’s former top aides told a Sarasota audience Monday evening that if the reporting on what Bolton wrote is accurate, he believes Bolton.
“If John Bolton says that in the book, I believe John Bolton,” said retired Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff for 18 months.
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Andrew Wortman
twitter.com/AmoneyResists
https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1222028005918330882
twitter.com/chrislhayes is fucking brilliant. He COMPLETELY DESTROYS the entire argument that Hunter Biden has any relevance to Donald Trump whatsoever in less than 3 minutes. I couldn’t state this better if I tried.
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And the war criminal runs wild
https://digbysblog.net/2020/01/and-the-war-criminal-runs-wild/
I’ve been watching the right’s media machine for a long time. And there have always been shady characters lifted to the top of the wingnut food chain — Oliver North and G. Gordan Liddy come to mind. But actual war criminals, accused of killing civilians including kids and knifing prisoners, becoming right-wing media heroes even surprises me, even if they were acquitted by a last-minute, very dubious, witness testimony. Of course, this would not be happening if Trump hadn’t been glued to Fox news and heard from their resident psycho, Pete Hegseth, who represents the racist murderer wing of the military, saying this guy was “tough warfighter.”
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Panicked Trump Hits Back at John Bolton Book With Blizzard of Lies
The White House is reportedly considering taking out a restraining order to silence the former national security adviser.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/01/john-bolton-book-impeachment
Last fall, as one witness after another testified to House lawmakers about Donald Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine for personal gain, spineless Republicans insisted that none of the incredibly damning evidence meant anything because the individuals providing the information supposedly only came by it secondhand. That argument was ridiculous from the start, considering that the various testimonies were from diplomats and government officials who most certainly knew a thing or two about the president’s abuse of power, including the E.U. ambassador with whom he had a loud phone conversation re: pressuring Ukraine to announce an investigation into Joe Biden, and the former Ukraine ambassador who was personally taken out of the equation by the president’s goons in order to make the corruption run more smoothly. Also: The White House, from which Republicans took their cues, had stonewalled any and all attempts to hear testimony from people with the kind of firsthand accounts that would apparently pass muster, like acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and, in particular, former national security adviser John Bolton. But as the old saying goes, wait around long enough and an account by someone who definitely has firsthand information will show up in the form of a tell-all leaked the same week that Senate Republicans try to silence witnesses and acquit the president.
...
This account quite clearly undercuts one of the major elements of Trump’s impeachment defense, which is that the freeze on the aid had nothing to do with his desire to hurt his domestic rivals and everything to do with a not-at-all-believable wish to root out corruption in Ukraine. (The president’s allies have long tried to make this defense stick, adding that the holdup in delivering the aid is a moot point anyway because it was eventually released, and not mentioning that it was conveniently unfrozen just days after the White House learned of the whistle-blower complaint, or the minor matter of Trump being told the freeze was illegal and pushing for it anyway.)
The revelations in Bolton’s book have obviously come at a rather inopportune time for both the White House and Republicans, who are trying to wrap up this impeachment business by Friday. Unsurprisingly, Trump has responded to what is effectively a smoking gun with a series of angry tweets painting Bolton as a disgruntled ex-employee, doubling down on his allegedly perfect phone call, and sprinkling in some easily debunked lies to boot:
The former national security adviser shared his unease with the attorney general, who cited his own worries about the president’s conversations with the leaders of Turkey and China.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/us/politics/john-bolton-trump-book-barr.html
WASHINGTON - John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, privately told Attorney General William P. Barr last year that he had concerns that President Trump was effectively granting personal favors to the autocratic leaders of Turkey and China, according to an unpublished manuscript by Mr. Bolton.
Mr. Barr responded by pointing to a pair of Justice Department investigations of companies in those countries and said he was worried that Mr. Trump had created the appearance that he had undue influence over what would typically be independent inquiries, according to the manuscript. Backing up his point, Mr. Barr mentioned conversations Mr. Trump had with the leaders, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Xi Jinping of China.
Mr. Bolton's account underscores the fact that the unease about Mr. Trump's seeming embrace of authoritarian leaders, long expressed by experts and his opponents, also existed among some of the senior cabinet officers entrusted by the president to carry out his foreign policy and national security agendas.
-----
Alexandra Erin
twitter.com/AlexandraErin
"You know how nothing sticks to Trump when there is a scandal? Do you see any candidate, on the dems side, with that same strength to brush off controversy?"
Big question, so I'm making a new thread.
I do not, and I don't think it's possible, short-term.
And part of that effect is Trump and part of it is his base and part of it is the way the media and electorate have been tuned by the GOP for decades.
https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1222190088572014593
-----
Former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly tells Sarasota crowd ‘I believe John Bolton’
https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20200128/former-trump-chief-of-staff-john-kelly-tells-sarasota-crowd-rsquoi-believe-john-boltonrsquo
Asked if Bolton - Trump’s former national security adviser - should testify at Trump’s impeachment trial, Kelly said he supports calling witnesses.
President Donald Trump is denying that he told former National Security Advisor John Bolton he wanted to withhold military aid from Ukraine until the country launched investigations into Joe Biden and his son, allegations that Bolton levies in his new book, according to news reports.
But one of Trump’s former top aides told a Sarasota audience Monday evening that if the reporting on what Bolton wrote is accurate, he believes Bolton.
“If John Bolton says that in the book, I believe John Bolton,” said retired Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff for 18 months.
-----
Andrew Wortman
twitter.com/AmoneyResists
https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1222028005918330882
twitter.com/chrislhayes is fucking brilliant. He COMPLETELY DESTROYS the entire argument that Hunter Biden has any relevance to Donald Trump whatsoever in less than 3 minutes. I couldn’t state this better if I tried.
-----
And the war criminal runs wild
https://digbysblog.net/2020/01/and-the-war-criminal-runs-wild/
I’ve been watching the right’s media machine for a long time. And there have always been shady characters lifted to the top of the wingnut food chain — Oliver North and G. Gordan Liddy come to mind. But actual war criminals, accused of killing civilians including kids and knifing prisoners, becoming right-wing media heroes even surprises me, even if they were acquitted by a last-minute, very dubious, witness testimony. Of course, this would not be happening if Trump hadn’t been glued to Fox news and heard from their resident psycho, Pete Hegseth, who represents the racist murderer wing of the military, saying this guy was “tough warfighter.”
-----
Panicked Trump Hits Back at John Bolton Book With Blizzard of Lies
The White House is reportedly considering taking out a restraining order to silence the former national security adviser.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/01/john-bolton-book-impeachment
Last fall, as one witness after another testified to House lawmakers about Donald Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine for personal gain, spineless Republicans insisted that none of the incredibly damning evidence meant anything because the individuals providing the information supposedly only came by it secondhand. That argument was ridiculous from the start, considering that the various testimonies were from diplomats and government officials who most certainly knew a thing or two about the president’s abuse of power, including the E.U. ambassador with whom he had a loud phone conversation re: pressuring Ukraine to announce an investigation into Joe Biden, and the former Ukraine ambassador who was personally taken out of the equation by the president’s goons in order to make the corruption run more smoothly. Also: The White House, from which Republicans took their cues, had stonewalled any and all attempts to hear testimony from people with the kind of firsthand accounts that would apparently pass muster, like acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and, in particular, former national security adviser John Bolton. But as the old saying goes, wait around long enough and an account by someone who definitely has firsthand information will show up in the form of a tell-all leaked the same week that Senate Republicans try to silence witnesses and acquit the president.
...
This account quite clearly undercuts one of the major elements of Trump’s impeachment defense, which is that the freeze on the aid had nothing to do with his desire to hurt his domestic rivals and everything to do with a not-at-all-believable wish to root out corruption in Ukraine. (The president’s allies have long tried to make this defense stick, adding that the holdup in delivering the aid is a moot point anyway because it was eventually released, and not mentioning that it was conveniently unfrozen just days after the White House learned of the whistle-blower complaint, or the minor matter of Trump being told the freeze was illegal and pushing for it anyway.)
The revelations in Bolton’s book have obviously come at a rather inopportune time for both the White House and Republicans, who are trying to wrap up this impeachment business by Friday. Unsurprisingly, Trump has responded to what is effectively a smoking gun with a series of angry tweets painting Bolton as a disgruntled ex-employee, doubling down on his allegedly perfect phone call, and sprinkling in some easily debunked lies to boot:
