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solarbirdThere is a lot going on.
If you're in Colorado, do everything you can against Senator Cory Gardner.
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The Lead CNN
twitter.com/TheLeadCNN
https://twitter.com/TheLeadCNN/status/1222275516880891904
GOP twitter.com/RepMikeJohnson on John Bolton’s account of Ukraine aid allegation: “It doesn’t make any difference at the end of the day ... abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are not impeachable offenses.” https://cnn.it/3122XoK
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BREAKING: Gardner says he doesn't want to hear from more impeachment witnesses
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/news/premium/breaking-gardner-says-he-doesn-t-want-to-hear-from/article_bb929014-42b1-11ea-b63d-27950ffe1e5f.html
U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner said Wednesday that he thinks the Senate has heard from enough witnesses in President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, taking off the table a potential Republican vote to subpoena national security adviser John Bolton.
“I do not believe we need to hear from an 18th witness," the Colorado Republican told Colorado Politics in a statement. "I have approached every aspect of this grave constitutional duty with the respect and attention required by law, and have reached this decision after carefully weighing the House managers and defense arguments and closely reviewing the evidence from the House, which included well over 100 hours of testimony from 17 witnesses.”
Gardner had previously been noncommittal about Democrats' demands to call more witnesses, including Bolton, who writes in a forthcoming book that Trump told him he withheld military aid from Ukraine to pressure the country to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden.
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Trump’s legal team gave thousands in contributions to Republican senators ahead of impeachment trial
https://www.salon.com/2020/01/29/trumps-legal-team-gave-thousands-in-contributions-to-republican-senators-ahead-of-impeachment-trial/
President Trump's legal team made numerous campaign contributions to Republican senators overseeing the impeachment trial.
Former independent counsels Ken Starr and Robert Ray, who both investigated former President Bill Clinton ahead of his impeachment, contributed thousands of dollars to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last year before they joined the president's team, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics (CFPR).
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White House says Bolton book contains top secret information
https://www.axios.com/john-bolton-book-white-house-threat-trump-impeachment-68611d2d-ea2f-4fd5-b87f-14f5b1b3761d.html
The White House says that former national security adviser John Bolton's book contains top secret information in a letter addressed to his attorney that was publicly released Wednesday.
The state of play: The development, first reported by CNN's Jake Tapper, sets up a potential legal battle between Bolton and the White House over the book's publication, which is currently scheduled for March 17.
The letter, dated Jan. 23, claims the book "contains significant amounts of classified information" that could "cause exceptionally grave harm" to U.S. national security.
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Bolton 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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Trump allies are handing out cash to black voters
Organizers have begun holding events in black communities where they lavish praise on the president while handing out thousands of dollars in giveaways.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/29/trump-black-voters-cash-giveaways-108072
Allies of Donald Trump have begun holding events in black communities where organizers lavish praise on the president as they hand out tens of thousands of dollars to lucky attendees.
The first giveaway took place last month in Cleveland, where recipients whose winning tickets were drawn from a bin landed cash gifts in increments of several hundred dollars, stuffed into envelopes. A second giveaway scheduled for this month in Virginia has been postponed, and more are said to be in the works.
The tour comes as Trump’s campaign has been investing its own money to make inroads with black voters and erode Democrats’ overwhelming advantage with them. But the cash giveaways are organized under the auspices of an outside charity, the Urban Revitalization Coalition, permitting donors to remain anonymous and make tax-deductible contributions.
The organizers say the events are run by the book and intended to promote economic development in inner cities. But the group behind the cash giveaways is registered as a 501(c)3 charitable organization. One leading legal expert on nonprofit law said the arrangement raises questions about the group’s tax-exempt status, because it does not appear to be vetting the recipients of its money for legitimate charitable need.
...
Scott declined to name the donors funding the effort. "I'd rather not,” he said. “They prefer to remain anonymous."
-----
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:
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[This is a very stupid article. It's possible to think someone is a terrible warmonger and yet still seek him out as a witness for things he observed. To think that's some sort of contradiction is bullshit. Being a warmonger isn't the same as being a liar - he's been _entirely_ upfront about his foreign-policy goals at all times, he _likes_ being known as a hawk - and his personal veracity for an event he witnessed is orthogonal to his terrible foreign policy ideas.]
For John Bolton, an ‘Upside-Down World’ After Trump Revelation
Democrats who once derided him now want him to testify at President Trump’s impeachment trial while some of his erstwhile Republican friends are throwing him to the curb.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/us/politics/bolton-trump.html
WASHINGTON - Not long ago, they called him "too extreme," "aggressively and dangerously wrong" and "downright dangerous." They called him "nutty," "reckless" and "far outside the mainstream."
Not they would like to call him their star witness.
Suddenly, John R. Bolton, the conservative war hawk and favorite villain of the left, is the toast of Senate Democrats, the last, best hope to prove their abuse-of-power case against President Trump. Democrats who once excoriated him are trumpeting his credibility as they seek his testimony in Mr. Trump's impeachment trial.
On the other side of the aisle, some of Mr. Bolton's longtime Republican friends are just as abruptly tossing him to the curb, painting him as a disgruntled former advisor who just wants to sell books. Some of the same senators who allied with him, promoted his career, consulted with him on foreign affairs and took his political action committee money are going along as he as painted as "a tool for the radical Dems and the deep state," as he was termed on one of the Fox News channels, part of the network where he worked for 11 years.
"It's a totally upside-down world," said Senator Christ Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland who two years ago denounced Mr. Bolton's "history of warmongering" when he was appointed Mr. Trump's national security advisor. "But what we should all agree on is we want to get to the truth of the matter about the impeachment charges and we should accept his testimony under penalty of perjury."
-----
Ezra Klein
twitter.com/ezraklein
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1222521721225449472
So last night I was on twitter.com/allinwithchris and I realized I don't know how to communicate how constitutionally dangerous the Senate situation is right now.
We're not arguing over what Trump did. We're arguing over whether Republicans *want to know* what Trump did.
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Trump team warns: Stand strong or prepare for an endless trial
The president’s aides are urging senators to wrap up the impeachment trial quickly or face the prospect of legal fights that drag on for weeks — or even months into the campaign season.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/28/trump-bolton-impeachment-senate-107988
The White House is delivering a stern warning to Republican senators: Make a wrong move and your spring could be ruined by the stain of impeachment.
With the latest revelations from former National Security Adviser John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s aides are trying to keep more Republicans from caving to the demands of Democrats who want witnesses in the president’s impeachment trial. Taking that step could drag proceedings out for weeks if not months due to legal fights, according to five people familiar with the situation, yet still end up with the same verdict: acquittal.
...
The White House is telling senators that if they don’t resist the call for witnesses, the proceedings could “turn it into a full-fledged trial with multiple witnesses on both sides and drawn out legal battles on evidentiary issues and privilege,” said a Republican close to the White House. That “could drag things out for months“ and become “tough on all incumbents up for reelection.”
The pressure is coming from Trump’s legislative and communications staff, not Trump's lawyers, according to a person familiar with Trump‘s legal team strategy.
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‘Language of a rapist’: Trump blasted for telling Pompeo he ‘did a good job on’ NPR reporter he attacked and lied about
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/01/language-of-a-rapist-trump-blasted-for-telling-pompeo-he-did-a-good-job-on-npr-reporter-he-attacked-and-lied-about/
President Donald Trump is under fire after praising his Secretary of State for attacking, smearing, and then lying about a veteran NPR reporter last week.
“I think you did a good job on her,” Trump told Mike Pompeo during a White House event Tuesday held to unveil his new Middle East peace plan. Many in the room, including Ivanka Trump, who has positioned herself as a women’s activist, laughed and clapped.
On social media the president’s words are being compared to those of bullies and rapists.
One journalist said: “It is what so many women recognize as language that accompanies assault. When men back each other up regardless of the facts.”
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John Bolton is just the latest right-wing media darling-turned-enemy after crossing Trump
https://www.mediamatters.org/john-bolton/john-bolton-latest-right-wing-media-darling-turned-enemy-after-crossing-trump
On July 26, 2017, The New Yorker published a cartoon by artist Peter Kuper titled “Five Stages of White House Employment.” The illustration showed what had already become a familiar arc within Trumpworld: a “MAGA” hat-clad supporter enters a room on a conveyor belt, shakes hands with the president as he moves across the room, experiences uncertainty, and is inevitably knifed in the back as he exits the room by a president who is simultaneously tweeting.
Two days later, President Donald Trump announced plans to replace White House chief of staff Reince Priebus with then-Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. Three days after that, Trump ditched White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci who was just 10 days into the job.
Former staffers who dare to criticize Trump or do anything else he may interpret as a sign of disloyalty get hit with nasty tweets from the president as well as the full force of pro-Trump media. Priebus kept his head low upon exiting the White House while Scaramucci would eventually speak out against Trump, leading the president to slam him as “totally incapable of handling” the job he was hired for. As conservative media take their cues from Trump when it comes to his former allies and employees, Priebus largely remained in their good graces while Scaramucci has regularly been criticized by right-wing media.
This week, it's John Bolton's turn.
For more than a decade, Bolton worked as a contributor at Fox News, where he was the network’s go-to voice for warmongering. Fox cheered him on while Trump reportedly considered him for a cabinet position following the 2016 election, and his regular appearances on the network -- and the routine praise Fox hosts lavished on him -- surely played a role in his being hired as national security adviser. Though Bolton left the administration in September (Trump tweeted that he had fired Bolton; Bolton insisted that he resigned), it wasn’t until the past few weeks that pro-Trump media fully turned on their longtime ally. Over the weekend, that newfound hostility came to a boiling point with news that a manuscript of Bolton’s upcoming book contained damning information undermining the administration’s defense against impeachment.
Gone were the days of Bolton laughing it up with the Fox & Friends co-hosts while riding a Simply Fit Board, replaced by segments on Lou Dobbs Tonight with chyrons calling him “a tool for the left.” This is what happens when you get on Trump’s bad side:
If you're in Colorado, do everything you can against Senator Cory Gardner.
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The Lead CNN
twitter.com/TheLeadCNN
https://twitter.com/TheLeadCNN/status/1222275516880891904
GOP twitter.com/RepMikeJohnson on John Bolton’s account of Ukraine aid allegation: “It doesn’t make any difference at the end of the day ... abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are not impeachable offenses.” https://cnn.it/3122XoK
-----
BREAKING: Gardner says he doesn't want to hear from more impeachment witnesses
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/news/premium/breaking-gardner-says-he-doesn-t-want-to-hear-from/article_bb929014-42b1-11ea-b63d-27950ffe1e5f.html
U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner said Wednesday that he thinks the Senate has heard from enough witnesses in President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, taking off the table a potential Republican vote to subpoena national security adviser John Bolton.
“I do not believe we need to hear from an 18th witness," the Colorado Republican told Colorado Politics in a statement. "I have approached every aspect of this grave constitutional duty with the respect and attention required by law, and have reached this decision after carefully weighing the House managers and defense arguments and closely reviewing the evidence from the House, which included well over 100 hours of testimony from 17 witnesses.”
Gardner had previously been noncommittal about Democrats' demands to call more witnesses, including Bolton, who writes in a forthcoming book that Trump told him he withheld military aid from Ukraine to pressure the country to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden.
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Trump’s legal team gave thousands in contributions to Republican senators ahead of impeachment trial
https://www.salon.com/2020/01/29/trumps-legal-team-gave-thousands-in-contributions-to-republican-senators-ahead-of-impeachment-trial/
President Trump's legal team made numerous campaign contributions to Republican senators overseeing the impeachment trial.
Former independent counsels Ken Starr and Robert Ray, who both investigated former President Bill Clinton ahead of his impeachment, contributed thousands of dollars to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last year before they joined the president's team, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics (CFPR).
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White House says Bolton book contains top secret information
https://www.axios.com/john-bolton-book-white-house-threat-trump-impeachment-68611d2d-ea2f-4fd5-b87f-14f5b1b3761d.html
The White House says that former national security adviser John Bolton's book contains top secret information in a letter addressed to his attorney that was publicly released Wednesday.
The state of play: The development, first reported by CNN's Jake Tapper, sets up a potential legal battle between Bolton and the White House over the book's publication, which is currently scheduled for March 17.
The letter, dated Jan. 23, claims the book "contains significant amounts of classified information" that could "cause exceptionally grave harm" to U.S. national security.
-----
Bolton 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.
-----
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.
-----
Trump allies are handing out cash to black voters
Organizers have begun holding events in black communities where they lavish praise on the president while handing out thousands of dollars in giveaways.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/29/trump-black-voters-cash-giveaways-108072
Allies of Donald Trump have begun holding events in black communities where organizers lavish praise on the president as they hand out tens of thousands of dollars to lucky attendees.
The first giveaway took place last month in Cleveland, where recipients whose winning tickets were drawn from a bin landed cash gifts in increments of several hundred dollars, stuffed into envelopes. A second giveaway scheduled for this month in Virginia has been postponed, and more are said to be in the works.
The tour comes as Trump’s campaign has been investing its own money to make inroads with black voters and erode Democrats’ overwhelming advantage with them. But the cash giveaways are organized under the auspices of an outside charity, the Urban Revitalization Coalition, permitting donors to remain anonymous and make tax-deductible contributions.
The organizers say the events are run by the book and intended to promote economic development in inner cities. But the group behind the cash giveaways is registered as a 501(c)3 charitable organization. One leading legal expert on nonprofit law said the arrangement raises questions about the group’s tax-exempt status, because it does not appear to be vetting the recipients of its money for legitimate charitable need.
...
Scott declined to name the donors funding the effort. "I'd rather not,” he said. “They prefer to remain anonymous."
-----
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.”
-----
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:
-----
[This is a very stupid article. It's possible to think someone is a terrible warmonger and yet still seek him out as a witness for things he observed. To think that's some sort of contradiction is bullshit. Being a warmonger isn't the same as being a liar - he's been _entirely_ upfront about his foreign-policy goals at all times, he _likes_ being known as a hawk - and his personal veracity for an event he witnessed is orthogonal to his terrible foreign policy ideas.]
For John Bolton, an ‘Upside-Down World’ After Trump Revelation
Democrats who once derided him now want him to testify at President Trump’s impeachment trial while some of his erstwhile Republican friends are throwing him to the curb.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/us/politics/bolton-trump.html
WASHINGTON - Not long ago, they called him "too extreme," "aggressively and dangerously wrong" and "downright dangerous." They called him "nutty," "reckless" and "far outside the mainstream."
Not they would like to call him their star witness.
Suddenly, John R. Bolton, the conservative war hawk and favorite villain of the left, is the toast of Senate Democrats, the last, best hope to prove their abuse-of-power case against President Trump. Democrats who once excoriated him are trumpeting his credibility as they seek his testimony in Mr. Trump's impeachment trial.
On the other side of the aisle, some of Mr. Bolton's longtime Republican friends are just as abruptly tossing him to the curb, painting him as a disgruntled former advisor who just wants to sell books. Some of the same senators who allied with him, promoted his career, consulted with him on foreign affairs and took his political action committee money are going along as he as painted as "a tool for the radical Dems and the deep state," as he was termed on one of the Fox News channels, part of the network where he worked for 11 years.
"It's a totally upside-down world," said Senator Christ Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland who two years ago denounced Mr. Bolton's "history of warmongering" when he was appointed Mr. Trump's national security advisor. "But what we should all agree on is we want to get to the truth of the matter about the impeachment charges and we should accept his testimony under penalty of perjury."
-----
Ezra Klein
twitter.com/ezraklein
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1222521721225449472
So last night I was on twitter.com/allinwithchris and I realized I don't know how to communicate how constitutionally dangerous the Senate situation is right now.
We're not arguing over what Trump did. We're arguing over whether Republicans *want to know* what Trump did.
-----
Trump team warns: Stand strong or prepare for an endless trial
The president’s aides are urging senators to wrap up the impeachment trial quickly or face the prospect of legal fights that drag on for weeks — or even months into the campaign season.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/28/trump-bolton-impeachment-senate-107988
The White House is delivering a stern warning to Republican senators: Make a wrong move and your spring could be ruined by the stain of impeachment.
With the latest revelations from former National Security Adviser John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s aides are trying to keep more Republicans from caving to the demands of Democrats who want witnesses in the president’s impeachment trial. Taking that step could drag proceedings out for weeks if not months due to legal fights, according to five people familiar with the situation, yet still end up with the same verdict: acquittal.
...
The White House is telling senators that if they don’t resist the call for witnesses, the proceedings could “turn it into a full-fledged trial with multiple witnesses on both sides and drawn out legal battles on evidentiary issues and privilege,” said a Republican close to the White House. That “could drag things out for months“ and become “tough on all incumbents up for reelection.”
The pressure is coming from Trump’s legislative and communications staff, not Trump's lawyers, according to a person familiar with Trump‘s legal team strategy.
-----
‘Language of a rapist’: Trump blasted for telling Pompeo he ‘did a good job on’ NPR reporter he attacked and lied about
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/01/language-of-a-rapist-trump-blasted-for-telling-pompeo-he-did-a-good-job-on-npr-reporter-he-attacked-and-lied-about/
President Donald Trump is under fire after praising his Secretary of State for attacking, smearing, and then lying about a veteran NPR reporter last week.
“I think you did a good job on her,” Trump told Mike Pompeo during a White House event Tuesday held to unveil his new Middle East peace plan. Many in the room, including Ivanka Trump, who has positioned herself as a women’s activist, laughed and clapped.
On social media the president’s words are being compared to those of bullies and rapists.
One journalist said: “It is what so many women recognize as language that accompanies assault. When men back each other up regardless of the facts.”
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John Bolton is just the latest right-wing media darling-turned-enemy after crossing Trump
https://www.mediamatters.org/john-bolton/john-bolton-latest-right-wing-media-darling-turned-enemy-after-crossing-trump
On July 26, 2017, The New Yorker published a cartoon by artist Peter Kuper titled “Five Stages of White House Employment.” The illustration showed what had already become a familiar arc within Trumpworld: a “MAGA” hat-clad supporter enters a room on a conveyor belt, shakes hands with the president as he moves across the room, experiences uncertainty, and is inevitably knifed in the back as he exits the room by a president who is simultaneously tweeting.
Two days later, President Donald Trump announced plans to replace White House chief of staff Reince Priebus with then-Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. Three days after that, Trump ditched White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci who was just 10 days into the job.
Former staffers who dare to criticize Trump or do anything else he may interpret as a sign of disloyalty get hit with nasty tweets from the president as well as the full force of pro-Trump media. Priebus kept his head low upon exiting the White House while Scaramucci would eventually speak out against Trump, leading the president to slam him as “totally incapable of handling” the job he was hired for. As conservative media take their cues from Trump when it comes to his former allies and employees, Priebus largely remained in their good graces while Scaramucci has regularly been criticized by right-wing media.
This week, it's John Bolton's turn.
For more than a decade, Bolton worked as a contributor at Fox News, where he was the network’s go-to voice for warmongering. Fox cheered him on while Trump reportedly considered him for a cabinet position following the 2016 election, and his regular appearances on the network -- and the routine praise Fox hosts lavished on him -- surely played a role in his being hired as national security adviser. Though Bolton left the administration in September (Trump tweeted that he had fired Bolton; Bolton insisted that he resigned), it wasn’t until the past few weeks that pro-Trump media fully turned on their longtime ally. Over the weekend, that newfound hostility came to a boiling point with news that a manuscript of Bolton’s upcoming book contained damning information undermining the administration’s defense against impeachment.
Gone were the days of Bolton laughing it up with the Fox & Friends co-hosts while riding a Simply Fit Board, replaced by segments on Lou Dobbs Tonight with chyrons calling him “a tool for the left.” This is what happens when you get on Trump’s bad side:
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