9/30/19: Monday proved to be another grim day for Team Trump, as September drew to a humiliating close.
True. Home sales were up. Unemployment figures were great.
The stock market was strong. In several respects, the economy was thriving.
____________________
“Including direct knowledge of certain alleged conduct.”
Inspector General Michael Atkinson
____________________
Yet, the president remained stymied on the international front. (Plus, he was about to get his dumb ass impeached!) First, nobody had seen Jared Kushner’s “peace plan” for Israel and Palestine, not even Ivanka. Second, Trump had torn up an existing nuclear deal with Iran. Now, as any fool could have predicted, Iran was pushing back in the Persian Gulf. As for a Nobel Prize, which the president said he’d win, “for a lot of things, if they gave it out fairly,” North Korea remained a nuclear threat fifteen months after he proclaimed North Korea wasn’t.
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton lambasted the
president’s policy toward North Korea to wrap up the
month. Whereas, Orange Leader had insisted that Dear Leader was a fine fellow
and loved his people and Kim Jong-un was his friend, Bolton told an audience
that Kim was the same homicidal maniac he had always been. “It
seems to me clear that [North Korea] has not made a strategic decision to give
up its nuclear weapons. In fact,” Bolton warned on Monday, “I think the
contrary is true…[The] strategic decision that Kim Jong Un is operating through
is that he will do whatever he can to keep a deliverable nuclear weapons
capability and to develop and enhance it further.”
Other voices were speaking out, too. And, as we shall see, Inspector General Michael Atkinson had already shot down a major Trump/Jim Jordan/Lindsey Graham right-wing BS talking point Sunday night. But no one got the message to the president by the time he woke Monday and started tweeting like mad.
We were soon treated to some of the president’s favorite lines, refurbished for the latest scandal.
At 6:39 a.m. we had: “The Greatest Witch Hunt in the history of our Country!”
At 7:03 a.m., Trump assured fans,
The Fake Whistleblower complaint
is not holding up. It is mostly about the call to the Ukrainian President
which, in the name of transparency, I immediately released to Congress &
the public. The Whistleblower knew almost nothing, its 2ND HAND description of
the call is a fraud!
Inspector General Atkinson.
That wasn’t even close to the truth, since the White House initially insisted that the call could not be released. And the Inspector General was about to blow that line of defense to atoms, tidbits, and splinters. Anyone who could read a newspaper, assuming they could still find one, would know that only the dire threat of impeachment pried the complaint from Trump’s paranoid grip.
“Arrest for treason?”
Still, the unhinged tweets kept coming. Even before most Americans had time to pour milk over their corn flakes, Trump was in full dictator-wannabe mode. At 7:12 a.m., he tweeted this threat:
Rep. Adam Schiff illegally made
up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most
important part of my call to the Ukrainian President, and read it aloud to
Congress and the American people. It bore NO relationship to what I said on the
call. Arrest for Treason?
(Again,
see 9/25/19 and 9/29/30 for context regarding this tweet.)
As always, Trump busied himself all morning, bingeing on right-wing news. At 7:43 a.m. he floated an all-caps tweet, based on a story he had just watched, hinting at a nefarious “Deep State” plot supposedly afoot.
“WHO CHANGED THE LONG STANDING WHISTLEBLOWER RULES JUST BEFORE SUBMITTAL OF THE FAKE WHISTLEBLOWER REPORT?” Trump demanded to be told.
Then: “DRAIN THE SWAMP.”
As the Inspector General had made clear the night before,
there was no “Deep State” at work and no swamp to drain. The president and his
allies had dinned it in supporters’ ears that they should ignore the
whistleblower complaint. It was nothing more than “hearsay” and “secondhand”
info.
“Fake News” CNN, however, took the trouble to quote from a statement by IG Atkinson. Was the entire complaint composed of “hearsay” and “secondhand” information – and maybe brownie recipes?
Atkinson’s statement read:
As part of his determination
that the urgent concern appeared credible, the Inspector General of the
Intelligence Community determined that the Complainant had official and
authorized access to the information and sources referenced in the
Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix, including direct knowledge of
certain alleged conduct and that the Complainant has subject matter
expertise related to much of the material information provided.
It continues:
Although the Complainant’s
Letter acknowledged that the Complainant was not a direct witness to the
President’s July 25, 2019, telephone call with the Ukrainian President, the
Inspector General of the Intelligence Community determined that other
information obtained during the ICIG’s preliminary review supported the
Complainant’s allegations [emphasis added].
Contrary to the president’s claim that rules had been changed, the IG stated that no rules had been changed. A whistleblower had never needed first-hand information before filing a complaint. It would only be necessary for the IG to uncover, within fourteen days, firsthand information to support allegations made. In this case that step was unnecessary. “The whistleblower stated on the form that he or she had both first-hand and other information,” Atkinson explained.
Trump’s intemperate threats fueled increasing unease. Andrew Bakaj, a lawyer for the whistleblower, reminded the American people that retaliation against any whistleblower was “a violation of federal law.”
Trump, of course, admitted he had people hard at work in an attempt to uncover the whistleblower’s identity.
And the identities of anyone who spoke to him or her.
“We’re trying to find out about a whistleblower,” he told reporters at the end of an Oval Office meeting. He said he wasn’t worried. His call to President Zelensky “was perfect, it was perfect. But the whistleblower reported a totally different statement.”
“I
made a call,” Trump reiterated. “The call was perfect…but the whistleblower
made it sound terrible.” His call was “so good,” the president continued, “it
was perfect…[and] this whole thing is a disgrace, and there’s corruption, and
we’re seeking it. It’s called drain the swamp.”
He couldn’t stop babbling. “There’s been corruption on the other side. There’s been corruption on the other [Democrats’] side like you’ve never seen.” Jabbing himself in the chest with a thumb, he insisted, there had been a lot of corruption in Ukraine “against us. And we want to get to the bottom of it, and it’s very important that we do.”
The problem was clear, if not to Trump. He was the guy who called Ukraine’s president. He was the guy who asked his counterpart to investigate a political opponent. He was the guy who solicited – it would appear – foreign help in next year’s election. Donald J. Trump was the guy willing to withhold U.S. military aid to force an ally to go along with his scheme.
Nixon was a patriot, at least.
Former Trump transition adviser J. W. Verret appeared on television to sound alarm. “People have made the analogy to the Nixon-era scandals and Nixon’s resignation, but this is a lot worse than that,” Verret said. “Nixon was a patriot. Of all the crazy things he did, he never would have accepted help from a foreign power for his own personal interest in an election, particularly one that would compromise the U.S.’ strategic interests. This,” situation in Ukraine, “is much worse and I think momentum continues toward impeachment.”
Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist and organizer, suggested that, as in the days of Watergate, it might be time for the GOP to cut its losses.
Dump Trump.
Presto, President Michael R. Pence! A leader you can be
confident won’t be banging porn stars.
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