Trump enters the stage

IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY
Six degrees of Rudy: Giuliani’s web tangles three Trump controversies
Ukraine only skims the surface of the former mayor’s influence in the administration.

Nov. 30, 2019, 7:46 AM EST
By Dareh Gregorian
All roads lead to Rudy.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who is now President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, is in the news constantly for his role in the impeachment inquiry. But while Giuliani’s efforts to have Ukraine launch investigations politically beneficial to Trump are much discussed, it’s not the only way he and his associates have woven themselves into the fabric of Trump’s world.

Asked in a text Wednesday by NBC News about how his circle has been able to be so influential in the Trump administration, Giuliani responded, “I don’t know.”

Here’s a look at Giuliani’s key players and how they intersect with Trump:

UKRAINE
Giuliani’s ties to Ukraine go back to at least 2008 when he did consulting work for Vitaly Klitschko, a former boxer who is now mayor of Kyiv. While he’s had other business dealings there over the years, Giuliani said he started focusing on Ukraine’s alleged role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election as a way of countering special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference.

This year, Giuliani seized on unfounded allegations that Ukraine had scuttled an investigation into Hunter Biden at the behest of his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, a leading 2020 Democratic presidential rival. Giuliani said his investigative efforts had the president’s blessing, which has been confirmed by multiple witnesses in the impeachment inquiry.

But Giuliani had some help with his efforts.

LEV PARNAS and IGOR FRUMAN
Parnas, a Trump donor, told the New Yorker earlier this year that he became “good friends” with Giuliani after the 2016 election. The friendship was lucrative for Giuliani, who told Reuters that Parnas’ company Fraud Guarantee paid his consulting company Giuliani Partners $500,000 for business and legal advice last year.

Parnas, who was born in Ukraine, told the New Yorker he volunteered to help Giuliani’s efforts there. “Because of my Ukrainian background and my contacts there, I became like Rudy’s assistant, his investigator,” he told the magazine.

Parnas and Fruman, his business partner in another company called Global Energy Producers, had already been agitating against U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Federal prosecutors said they raised money for a congressman in 2018, later identified to NBC News as former Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, in order to push for his help in getting rid of the ambassador.

Igor Fruman exits federal court after an arraignment hearing in New York on Oct. 23, 2019.Stephanie Keith / Getty Images file
As NBC News reported in October, the plot against Yovanovitch was driven by Ukraine’s former chief prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, who claimed without evidence that the ambassador had given him a “do not prosecute” list. Parnas and Fruman helped Lutsenko connect with Giuliani, and the two discussed a possible investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden. Lutsenko later said that he didn’t think Hunter Biden did anything wrong.

Parnas and Fruman also helped connect Giuliani with Lutsenko’s predecessor, Viktor Shokin, who claims he was fired for investigating Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden worked. There’s never been any evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden, but that hasn’t stopped Trump and his allies from pushing this narrative.

In addition to their work for Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman had another side gig — doing work for two of Giuliani’s longtime friends.

JOE diGENOVA and NANCY TOENSING
DiGenova is a longtime friend of Giuliani’s who was the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., while Giuliani was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. DiGenova and his attorney wife, Victoria Toensing, have their own Washington-based law firm, diGenova & Toensing, and are fixtures on Fox News, where they’ve been staunch defenders of the president.

Trump announced they were joining his legal team in March of last year, but had to pull back the offer because of conflicts of interest involving the Mueller probe. “However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters,” Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow said at the time.

As the New York Times and Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the couple, along with Giuliani Partners, had been in negotiations to represent Lutsenko earlier this year.

The husband and wife also worked with a Ukrainian oligarch, Dmytro Firtash, who has been fighting extradition to the U.S. Firtash told The New York Times he’d hired the couple in June at the urging of Parnas and Fruman. Toensing has said she hired Parnas as “a translator” to do work on Firtash’s case.

TURKEY
Giuliani has strong ties to the Turkish government and represented a Turkish-Iranian banker, Reza Zarrab, who was jailed in March 2016 on money laundering charges. Zarrab, who had an office in Trump Tower Istanbul, was close friends with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and had politically damaging information involving a government-run Turkish bank, Halkbank.

In February 2017, Giuliani met with Erdogan in Turkey about the case, and he later met with Trump and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson about Zarrab as well. He had company at both meetings.

MICHAEL MUKASEY
Mukasey, a former prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, worked with Giuliani at a New York City law firm, and the pair remained close over the years even after Mukasey became then-President George W. Bush’s attorney general.

Former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey.Yuri Gripas / Reuters file
Mukasey teamed with Giuliani on the Zarrab case, but their addition to Zarrab’s legal team did not sit well with New York prosecutors or the judge presiding over the case. The judge, Richard Berman, accused the men of having conflicts of interest — Mukasey’s law firm had represented eight of the banks that were victimized by Zarrab, as had Giuliani’s firm. Giuliani’s law firm had also served as an “agent” of Turkey, Berman found — but he allowed them to stay on the case because Zarrab had “voluntarily and knowingly” waived the issue.

How far they went to do so became clear recently. While NBC News first reported Mukasey and Giuliani’s meeting with Erdogan in 2017, the Washington Post last month reported that Mukasey and Giuliani had also met with Trump in the Oval Office about Zarrab that same year. Trump called Tillerson in to meet with them as well. “The president says, ‘Guys, give Rex your pitch,’” a source familiar with the meeting told the paper.

They suggested swapping Zarrab for an American pastor who was in Turkish custody. Tillerson considered the request inappropriate, and later complained to Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, who told him to ignore it, the Post reported.

Zarrab wound up pleading guilty and giving testimony in a related case that was devastating to Erdogan and Halkbank. Federal prosecutors in New York charged Halkbank last month in a multibillion-dollar scheme to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran, and Zarrab is expected to be the star witness at trial.

NAVY SEAL CASE
Two other Giuliani associates have been center stage in a case involving Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL acquitted of murder in the death of a wounded ISIS prisoner.

His cause had been championed by Fox News personalities and was taken up by another Giuliani friend.

BERNIE KERIK
Kerik, an Army veteran, is a former New York City police officer who once worked on Giuliani’s security detail when he was mayor. Giuliani gave Kerik the top job in the city jail system, and in 2000 named him police commissioner. The pair worked side-by-side on the day of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

In 2010, Kerik would be sentenced to four years in prison for offenses including failure to pay taxes and lying to the White House during his scuttled nomination to be Homeland Security chief.

Since his release, he’s become an advocate for prison reform. Like diGenova and Toensing, he’s also a frequent presence and Trump advocate on Fox News.

Kerik started acting as an adviser in the Gallagher case earlier this year. He helped set up a legal team that included Timothy Parlatore, who’s worked for Kerik in the past, and another Giuliani friend: Marc Mukasey.

MARC MUKASEY
Mukasey, the son of Michael Mukasey, is a former federal prosecutor who worked with Giuliani at two law firms. Mukasey left the firm Greenberg Traurig earlier this year to start his own firm and quickly landed high-powered clients, representing members of the Trump family and the Trump Foundation in a civil case that had been brought by the New York State Attorney General’s office. That case officially settled in early November.

Marc Mukasey, defense lawyer for Navy Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, arrives to military court on Naval Base San Diego on July 2, 2019, in San Diego.Julie Watson / AP file
Kerik, Parlatore and Mukasey scored a huge victory over the summer when Gallagher was acquitted of the most serious charges against him. Gallagher was convicted of posing for a picture with the corpse, and the court ordered him to be dropped in rank from chief to petty officer first class. The legal team vowed to fight the rank reduction, too.

Trump became a vocal advocate for Gallagher, both restoring his rank and ordering the Pentagon to drop a planned disciplinary hearing against him that could have resulted in his expulsion from the elite unit.

Kerik celebrated the developments with a picture of him, Mukasey and Gallagher. His “prayers have been answered,” Kerik wrote.

Giuliani weighed in on Twitter as well, saying Trump’s actions in the case “shows his courage and integrity.”

“Not many Presidents would put their neck out on the line,” Giuliani said. “It shows how much he values those who protect us!”

Dareh Gregorian
Dareh Gregorian is a politics reporter for NBC News.

Allan Smith contributed.

Trump better Potus then Lincoln?

Stone

POLITICS NEWS

53 Percent of Republicans Say Trump Is a Better President Than Lincoln

Yep, you read that right

PETER WADE

NOVEMBER 30, 2019 1:24PM EST

Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock

According to a new weekly tracking poll from the Economist/YouGov, a majority of Republicans prefer President Donald Trump over former President Abraham Lincoln. Yep, you read that right.

The poll, which surveyed 1,500 Americans, showed Republicans favoring Trump over Lincoln by 6 percentage points, 53 to 47. But the same poll gave us hope that not all Americans have lost their minds, with a total of 75 percent saying that Lincoln was indeed the better leader.

Both Democrats and independents disagree with Republicans by a wide margin. Ninety-four percent of Democrats saying that Lincoln was the better president, and 78 percent of independents agree that Lincoln was better.

After former Hillary Clinton press secretary Jesse Ferguson tweeted the Lincoln/Trump poll nugget, the term “53% of Republicans” began to trend on Twitter.

One reaction that garnered a lot of engagement on social media was a GIF from actor Billy Baldwin. Baldwin posted an animated photo of the Lincoln Memorial with the former president flipping the bird at both President Trump and Melania Trumpand included the viral phrase along with a shot at the GOP faithful, writing, “53% of Republicans apparently don’t even know who Abraham Lincoln was…”

However, the never-ending love from party loyalists for former president Ronald Reagancould not be toppled even with the seemingly unshakeable support for the current president. Reagan still bests Trump 59 percent to 41 percent as their favorite.

;

© 2019 PMC. All rights reserved.

Trump’s week: from ‘ordained by God’ to dethroned by a judge
Opinion by Richard Galant, CNN
Updated 10:21 AM EST, Sun December 01, 2019

(CNN) The sweetest sound Donald Trump could hear last week was that of his outgoing Energy Secretary, Rick Perry, proclaiming him the chosen one “ordained by God” to be President of the United States. But this was soon followed by the ringing declaration of Ketanji Brown Jackson, a US District Court judge: Trump is no king, she said, decisively rejecting Trump’s effort to shield his former White House counsel Donald McGahn from testifying before Congress.

“The primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings. This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control,” Brown wrote.

“Perry says he told Trump to his face that he was ‘the chosen one,’” wrote Jay Parini. (Perry also said he believed Barack Obama had been ordained by God.) “This notion has been going around the administration like a strange virus, infecting Sarah Sanders and Mike Pompeo as well,” Parini suggested. “I don’t have any easy answers, and it worries me to see evangelicals who do. There is a deep mystery here that precludes the arrogance implied in Rick Perry’s stance. We just don’t know what the Divine has in mind.”

Anthea Butler noted the support for Trump that comes from such inheritors of the American evangelical tradition as Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham. “Trump’s popularity with leading evangelical Christians brings a lot of 20th-century religious history full circle,” Butler wrote. “Perhaps what the Trump era has laid bare is how nakedly church leaders’ support of him is about political power.”

Perry is one of the onetime Trump critics and opponents who surrendered to him as he gained mastery of the GOP, wrote Michael D’Antonio. Along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, Perry and others are “too weak to resist” and “see survival in joining the cult that degrades the nation a little bit more every day.”

The President’s week had it all – a rally in his new home state of Florida, an unexplained tweet of Trump’s head on the body of Rocky Balboa and a surprise visit to American troops in Afghanistan.

Bring on Bolton
While religion’s connection to politics may be a matter of mystery, the law on the limits of presidential power is clear in Judge Jackson’s view. Ken Ballen, staff counsel to the congressional committee that investigated the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s, applauded the judge’s ruling and argued that its logic, “that White House aides must answer congressional subpoenas to testify applies to former national security adviser John Bolton’s possible testimony before the House Intelligence Committee as well.”

Bolton has been strongly hinting that he has a compelling story to tell about the withholding of aid from Ukraine, which is the subject of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into Trump. But he also has resisted testifying. And Democrats, eager to move ahead on impeachment before the 2020 primary voting begins, may not wait to hear from him.

That’s a mistake, argued Charlie Firestone, suggesting that censuring the President and continuing to investigate him would be a wiser course. “It essentially places a marker of condemnation pending a further possibility of bringing in an impeachment”.

Trump’s defense doesn’t hold water
Circumstantial evidence of a plot to withhold military aid from Ukraine in return for a political favor for President Trump continued to accumulate: the aid was ordered withheld the same day Trump had his now famous phone call in July with Ukraine’s president, and Trump knew of the whistleblower complaint against him before he decided to release the money. But the President stuck to his “I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo” defense.

The problem, according to Elie Honig: “The vast weight of the evidence – supported by logic and common sense – indicates Trump wanted a quid pro quo. And upon scrutiny, Trump’s self-serving denial carries little persuasive or evidentiary weight, and provides a flimsy shield for Trump and his supporters to hide behind.”

Regular rules of evidence don’t apply to an impeachment proceeding, Honig noted, but “our established legal rules likely would deem Trump’s self-serving denial too unreliable to use in court. The logic is so plain that even a child can understand it: Once you’ve been caught with your hand in the cookie jar, it doesn’t make you innocent to announce, ‘I want no cookies!’”

As more facts come out, you might expect public sentiment to shift, but so far the pro- and anti-Trump camps have become only more entrenched. Writing for CNN Opinion’s Fractured States of America project, Martin Bisgaard noted, “Republicans and Democrats have the same evidence at their disposal – the log of the call, the text messages and the depositions – and still they reach opposite conclusions about whether the President should be impeached.” Rather than being swayed by facts and then arriving at a conclusion, “they do the exact opposite – deciding on a conclusion and then twisting the facts to support it.”

SEALs and military justice
Trump sided with a Navy SEAL who had been accused of committing crimes on the battlefield. Rather than support the findings of the military justice system, he used his presidential powers to undercut them, and in the process the Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer was fired. In the Washington Post, Spencer wrote that the case offered a reminder that “the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.”

A Navy commander will have to clean up the mess left behind by the case, observed Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling. “There will be repercussions within the command, and within the Special Operations community, if someone who violated the standards and the culture of the military and his force is treated as ‘special.’”

John Kirby, a retired rear admiral in the US Navy wrote, “What makes our military great is not the money Trump claims he has thrown at it, but the standards of conduct to which it adheres and the high bar for ethics to which it subscribes. We do not always reach that bar, to be sure, but in the struggle to do so we have earned a reputation for integrity, fairness and professionalism that is the envy of the world.”

View on CNN
© 2019 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

{I think fiscal conservatism will trump Democratic Wefare conduits, at a time of critical opinions on good economic indicators cover middle-class insecurities-it’s once again-‘the money, stupid’ that deflects the vagaries of political wrongdoing from effective adjudication. }

The New York Times and The Washington Post have been caught lying very often since Trump got on the US political stage. They don’t lie as badly as CNN, but still. When it comes to politics, they have zero credibility.

???

{Yes, that is near absolutely true. But in another sense, the public has had far more political awareness than being given credit for lately, and the zero sum aspect of data, that senses and directs public opinion has altered political correctness significantly nowedays.
In particular, the absolute opined measures have translated into this change, by more use of relatively inspired, skeptical devalued reliance on other public opinions, emerging markets of opinions, as admixstures
of variability and proximate truth.

Quantified, the relative erosion of truth can be seen as an an adjunct of computation ofand denigration to an acceptable level of uncertainty, whereby falsity and truth becoming conflated themselves -can adapt a different procedural language -, which , according to the Republicans reduces the significance of formal rule to the letter of the law.
Hence the vocabulary of collusion can be enumerated into another language based on a probable distinction of how politics are conducted.
Such conduct can be argued, changes the stage upon which international focus, deals have to take place, out of the media spotlight.
This point was argued by detractors, who saw political dealings of the Trumpism as fairly common methods, the faults becoming. the ones, where fact finding by intelligence lost it’s covert aspect.
This is why it became an asset to institute a clown into top , -(topical)-performances, since there, the procedures and the performance of applying laws became seen as intertwined .
The universal order of an emerging new world needed more transparency, and that transparency could not have been revealed without substantial bending of rules deriving from the methods by which procedure had to accommodate them.
The Republican inversion of no procedural oversight, was a genius of managed intelligence, that reduced the Dems, to a public sentiment of childish understanding, (a slap to the middle class, of the middle of the road sentiments that became the movers toward conservatism as a solution)

This inversion did not fit well with the view that it be transparent, and that lack led to a necessary cover.

But, the cover up so obvious during Watergate , needed a higher intelligence with Trump, considering the entrance of Capitalism into world market policies. Recall the earliest corruption with Dad Capital, and that work being a primary source of Sentiment, reacting the extreme methods by which it became an appearent mode of production to sustain it’s self! Only after, this large gap was reduced to a tolerated procedure of daily affairs, could the rules that govern them were instituted.

The management , by which such policy genius could be instituted, became a necessary procedure, hence giving rise to the anomaly, and the characterization of Trump as ‘genius’
merely elicited the political genius of political science to control it’s unassailable symbol: Mr. Trump.

Hence genius of the one dimensional man, can transcend the evil in the Descartes era into the post Nietzchean stage that brought political collusion out of it’s negatively loaded connotation.

All this is accommodation, a necessary procedural one, that became the inverted battle cry of the Republicans against the Democrats(-, in effect destabilizing the rules- by which the impeachment hearings were conducted.)-could the hearings move on to higher uses of oversight and adjudication.

The media are mere pawns in this effort to arrive at some approximated zero sum, a quasi synthesis of several dialectical layers, rather than either a substantially material one or, one that is purely academic.

Trump at a brain dead NATO- French President Macron says

As he left the White House for London, President Donald Trump complained the House Judiciary Committee will hold an impeachment inquiry hearing while he attends a NATO summit that comes at a critical moment for the 70-year-old military alliance. (Dec. 2)
AP
Blasting Democrats and their investigation of him from overseas, President Donald Trump said Tuesday he does not deserve censure or impeachment for his actions with regard to Ukraine.

“Unacceptable," Trump told reporters during a meeting in London with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “I did nothing wrong … You don’t censure somebody when they did nothing wrong.”

Trump also said Democrats are “unpatriotic” for pursuing impeachment in the way they are doing it, accusing them of looking at evidence of wrongdoing that justify such a sanction.

Some political commentators have suggested censure as an alternative to a House impeachment vote and trial in the Senate. But there is no evidence the idea has taken hold among House Democrats who are pursuing an impeachment inquiry over Trump and Ukraine.

The House Intelligence Committee is putting out a report saying Trump tried to get Ukraine to investigate U.S. Democratic political opponent Joe Biden, and threatened to withhold aid from Eastern European country if it did not comply with his request.

More: While focus is on Ukraine, here’s the evidence committees have compiled to bolster Trump impeachment case

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, noted that Trump has also said China should investigate Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who has had business interests in China and Ukraine.

“President Trump has sought foreign intervention in US elections—twice,” Schiff tweeted. “He poses a real and present danger to the integrity of the next election.”

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have prepared their own report defending Trump.

In the meantime, the House Judiciary Committee, which is expected to draw up impeachment articles against Trump, has a hearing set for Wednesday, the day Trump is scheduled to return to Washington from the NATO meetings in London.

Trump, who flew out Monday, has attacked the impeachment process and congressional Democrats throughout his trip.

“The impeachment is going nowhere,” Trump said Tuesday with Stoltenberg at his side. "They are wasting their time. It’s a disgrace.”

Originally Published 1 hour ago

© Copyright Gannett 2019

Are the Democrats crazy to try to go after Trump? Or maybe , paranoia has literally arisen from the level of latent hate that the Republicans project unto the unfathomable abyss?

Wednesday’s hearing will address constitutional grounds for impeachment. Democrats invited three witnesses — Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School, Pamela S. Karlan of Stanford Law School and Michael J. Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina Law School — and Republicans invited Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University Law School. All are scholars of constitutional law.

{Let’s see how this goes down}

washingtonpost.com
© 1996-2019 The Washington Post
Democracy Dies in Darkness

Impeachment hearings live updates: Scholars called by Democrats testify that Trump’s conduct is grounds for removal from office
By

Dec. 4, 2019 at 10:51 a.m. PST

Three constitutional scholars summoned by Democrats are testifying Wednesday that President Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine rises to the level of impeachment, as the inquiry moves to a new phase with the first hearing by the House Judiciary Committee, a panel prone to theatrics and partisan brawls.

Another law school professor, tapped by Republicans, is cautioning against impeachment. The focus has shifted from the House Intelligence Committee, which voted along party lines Tuesday to approve a 300-page report that concluded Trump had “compromised national security to advance his personal political interests.”

Impeachment: What you need to read
Updated December 3, 2019
Here’s what you need to know to understand the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

What’s happening now: The House Intelligence Committee sent the report summarizing its findings after two weeks of public hearings to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, paving the way for possible articles of impeachment. The public hearings followed closed-door hearings and subpoenaed documents related to the president’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

What happens next: The Judiciary Committee has scheduled its first impeachment hearing for Wednesday. President Trump was invited to participate, but White House counsel declined. Here’s a guide to how impeachment works.

washingtonpost.com
© 1996-2019 The Washington Post

…

The New York Times

Mocked Abroad and Assailed at Home, Trump Returns to Face Impeachment
Two days in London on the world stage provided him no respite.

By Peter Baker
Dec. 4, 2019
WASHINGTON — When times turn tough, presidents can hop on Air Force One to escape the country for a while and stride purposefully across the world stage. But the world stage was not so friendly this week for President Trump, who landed back in Washington on Wednesday night to confront a grim couple of weeks ahead.

Mocked by peers behind his back at a NATO meeting in London, Mr. Trump abruptly canceled a news conference and bolted early, only to fly home to a capital in the throes of judging whether he is fit for office. After hobnobbing with the queen, the president now faces the daunting likelihood that by Christmas he will become the third president impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.

The NATO meeting had seemed like an opportunity to demonstrate his global leadership like Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton sought to do with overseas trips during their own impeachment struggles. Scheduled long ago, the meeting allowed Mr. Trump and his allies to assail his domestic foes as “unpatriotic” for proceeding with an impeachment hearing while the commander in chief was overseas and gave him a chance to boast of his success in pressing the allies to invest more in defense.

But the visit was soured by a contentious meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France and a hot-mic video that captured other world leaders making fun of Mr. Trump. In response, a sullen president said one of the leaders caught talking on the video, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, was “two-faced,” and then slipped out of town without the scheduled wrap-up session with reporters, seemingly intent on not further spoiling the image of a successful visit.

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“The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to belittle my VERY successful trip to London for NATO,” he wrote on Twitter as Air Force One streaked across the Atlantic. “I got along great with the NATO leaders,” he added, claiming credit for persuading them to increase their military spending, although wildly inflating the actual numbers. “No increase for U.S., only deep respect!”

Quarreling with foreign leaders, of course, never troubled Mr. Trump before and in some ways has domestic political appeal with a Republican base that cheers on his defiance.

“The president has never been much bothered by shaking up international conventions, so tussling with foreign leaders, by those standards, isn’t a bad thing from his perspective,” said Antonia Ferrier, a former aide to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader. “For many Americans, having their president stand up to foreign leaders is a sign of strength.”

Sam Nunberg, a former political adviser to Mr. Trump, said the optics of the London visit would appeal to different elements of his base. “He held contentious press conferences with world leaders who are disdained in conservative circles while also getting the all important 10 Downing Street visit and greeting with the queen at Buckingham Palace, which always plays well with mid and high income voters,” he said.

Still, Mr. Trump seemed bothered by the conversation between the other leaders. Mr. Trudeau seemed to deride Mr. Trump for going off schedule to answer questions from reporters on Tuesday. “He was late because he takes a 40-minute news conference at the top,” the prime minister told Mr. Macron, Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and Princess Anne.

“You just watch his team’s jaws drop to the floor,” Mr. Trudeau said at another point in the video, expressing astonishment at Mr. Trump’s behavior. The other leaders are seen smiling in seeming sympathy or adding their own unheard comments to the discussion.

The overheard conversation came after Mr. Trump and Mr. Macron had engaged in a somewhat testy public session earlier in the day. “Let’s be serious,” Mr. Macron chided the president at one point during a discussion of Islamic State fighters.

At a separate session with reporters, Mr. Trump had complained that Mr. Macron’s recent comments bemoaning American disengagement with NATO had been “very, very nasty.”

The joking may have touched a nerve with Mr. Trump, who has long resented elites he felt did not show him proper respect or welcome him into their circles, whether it was Manhattan business titans or Washington political veterans. He visibly seethed in 2011 when President Barack Obama ridiculed him from stage during a black-tie Washington dinner.

“Trump doesn’t just want to be in the club, he wants to be the unquestioned leader and center of attention,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer. “It had to be both humiliating and infuriating that the other heads of state who were mocking him were untouchable by tweet or insulting nickname, but no doubt he was already calculating the next round of tariffs he would send their way.”

Foreign trips were a relief for Mr. Nixon and Mr. Clinton at similar points in their presidencies. As Watergate bore down in the summer of 1974, Mr. Nixon traveled to the Middle East and then the Soviet Union, reinforcing his peacemaking initiatives. Mr. Clinton similarly headed to Russia and Northern Ireland just after a grand jury appearance in 1998 and then later in the fall to the Middle East.

But in both cases, any relief was short-lived. Mr. Nixon ended up resigning weeks after getting home, and Mr. Clinton was impeached by the House only days after his return. The complaints about impeachment interfering with foreign policy rang loud then as well; Mr. Clinton was in the midst of bombing Iraq for defying international weapons inspectors even as the House took its vote.

There is no escape for Mr. Trump either, not in foreign cities, not in the Oval Office and not on the television he stares at upstairs in the White House for hours each day. His presidency is tethered to impeachment, his legislative agenda mostly on hold, his foreign policy overshadowed, his re-election on the line. He takes refuge in the boisterous and jampacked campaign rallies he holds and in the morning and evening lineups on Fox News.

While in London, Mr. Trump defiantly declared he would not watch the opening of the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearings because he would be too busy conducting affairs of state, even as he lashed out at Democrats as “deranged,” “sick,” “nuts,” “crazy” and, in one case, a “maniac.” But while his blue-and-white jet headed back to Washington, he (or aides operating his account in his name) nonetheless blitzed out a couple dozen tweets recirculating posts from Republican allies castigating the hearing as it progressed.

At the White House in his absence, the atmosphere was somewhat surreal. The televisions around the building were tuned to the various news networks, especially Fox News, as they broadcast the hearing, but the volume was usually muted and aides sought to go about their business.

The White House refused to participate in the hearing, arguing that the process has been rigged by partisan Democrats, but it did send a couple of aides to sit in the hearing room and monitor the proceedings.

The assumption there, as elsewhere, was that the hearing changed no minds and the course of the next few weeks is already set — the House will probably vote by the end of the year to impeach along party lines, and the Senate will then hold a trial in which the president will not be convicted, setting him up to litigate the case during his re-election campaign.

“While I wouldn’t say impeachment is a good thing for the president, it is a highly divisive and partisan issue breaking down on party lines,” Ms. Ferrier said. “It has not changed people’s minds on the president. His approval ratings are remarkably consistent, in particular with Republican voters, and he clearly relishes a fight.”

But some who have been through this before said it was hard to put it aside. Dennis Ross, a foreign policy specialist who accompanied Mr. Clinton on his trip to the Middle East days before he was impeached, said that an impeachment vote remains part of a president’s legacy, even if it does not lead to his removal.

“Even though he may feel that he will be acquitted in the Senate because Republicans will not break ranks, and however much he tries to turn this to his advantage at a later point, the truth is no matter how you slice, it you can’t run away from the fact you were one of the few presidents who was impeached,” Mr. Ross said. “He obviously likes to be singled out, but not like this.”

Text from the Constitution was displayed Wednesday during the House Judiciary Committee hearing.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Trump Abruptly Exits NATO Gathering After Embarrassing Video EmergesDec. 4, 2019
In Tense Exchange, Trump and Macron Put Forth Dueling Visions for NATODec. 3, 2019
Scholars Call Trump’s Actions on Ukraine an Impeachable Abuse of PowerDec. 4, 2019
Trump’s Lawyers Won’t Participate in Impeachment Hearing on WednesdayDec. 1, 2019
Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent and has covered the last four presidents for The Times and The Washington Post. He also is the author of five books, most recently “Impeachment: An American History.” @peterbakernyt • Facebook

© 2019 The New York Times

Very true,

The Liberal-Left Media Conglomerate: Yahoo, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post, NY Times, etc.

All a bunch of fucking disgusting liars, degenerates.

90% of US Media is lined-up against Trump. It’s a disgrace to this country.

Perfect example of the Lies right here.

As-if the “Abrupt Exit” has anything to do with the “embarrassing video”. These fucking liars know no depths of depravity. “Abrupt” exit, instead of just a regular exit? These liars don’t know how or why Trump does what he does. They don’t know the reason. They make everything up. They say “Abrupt Exit” and “embarrassing video” as-if there were any sort of connection between the two when there’s not. NO CONNECTION. Trump probably left for an unknown, to the public, reason. Secondly, “embarrassing” video, is it really embarrassing what these foreign faggot leaders care or think? As-if they rule America? As-if they have more authority than US? As-if their opinion matters? These liberal-leftists should go live in their countries. Anti-American. Traitors.

If you’re an American, you stand by your President when confronted by foreign enemies or “allies” pretending to be an ally.

Lastly, these foreign “leaders” are ten-times the embarrassment of what’s presumed here. Canada, France, EU? Pathetic leaders. Trump is right, by the way, these foreign countries have been “taking off the top”, taking billions and billions of OUR MONEY for free, for nothing to benefit US. Democrats-Liberals have sold US down the river. Trump is actually getting our money back.

Fuck you!

The New York Times
Opinion

Let Trump Have a Miserable Little Christmas
Deck the halls with tons of tweeting.

By Gail Collins
Opinion Columnist

Dec. 11, 2019

Hey, it looks like we’ll have impeachment before Christmas. Talk about the holiday spirit.

“They said these two things — they’re not even a crime!” Donald Trump shrieked after Democratic leaders announced the House was going to vote on whether he should be impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. This was at one of his trademark rallies during which he also referred to F.B.I. agents as “scum” and claimed that Elizabeth Warren’s marriage was a “phony, disgusting deal.”

Ho, ho, ho.

Truly we live in not-boring times. Fifty years from now, kids who’ve been watching all this action from their college dorms will be able to answer their grandchildren’s questions about Trump’s bad hair and worse values. Advanced placement high school students might be writing profiles of Jerry Nadler.

There’s been so much action that almost nobody noticed this week when the New York attorney general announced Trump has coughed up $2 million to repay money he stole from his foundation. O.K., “stole” is pretty harsh. What would you call it if somebody established a charity and then used a large chunk of other people’s donations to buy portraits of himself — one six feet tall — purchase sports memorabilia and pay off legal settlements for his private businesses?

Still waiting for the word …

The Trump charity scandal is an old story, but the impeachment process puts it in a new light. Particularly if you combine it with the money he’s piling up from his Scottish golf resort (thank you Air Force visitors), the Washington hotel (welcome, Saudi officials) and from what the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington estimated were more than 2,300 conflicts of interest between his personal finances and his day job.

A dreadful leader plus a greedy crook: It really does give us a leg up in the drive to make sure Trump goes down in history as the worst president ever. That honor’s traditionally gone to James Buchanan, who floundered in the run-up to the Civil War.

“Unlike Trump, Buchanan was a generous man,” said Robert Strauss, who happens to be the author of a biography of Buchanan titled “Worst. President. Ever.” Buchanan “took in college students who couldn’t afford their room and board,” Strauss added. He never reneged on a debt.

It was published in October 2016. Strauss is still sticking with Buchanan, whom he calls “a nice guy put in the wrong job.” Obviously, secession tops being laughed at by leaders of other democratic powers at a cocktail party. But Trump could qualify for the bottom of the barrel if you throw in personal behavior and presume it’s better to be a nice guy in the wrong job than an awful guy in the wrong job.

Andrew Johnson was another awful president and history’s impeachment star until now, but he was praised for his financial integrity. “After becoming president, when prominent New York merchants tried to give him a magnificent carriage and span of horses he refused the gift,” noted Brenda Wineapple, the author of a history of the Johnson impeachment. “‘Those occupying high official positions,’ he politely said, must ‘decline the offerings of kind and loyal friends.’”

Money always comes up somewhere in this story. “To Impeach a President who has proved through results, to have one of the most successful presidencies ever, and most importantly, who has done NOTHING wrong, is sheer Political Madness!” Trump himself wrote in an email to his supporters this week, adding quickly that he was activating “Emergency Double-Match on All Contributions.”

The House is expected to vote on impeachment sometime next week, before everybody goes home for the holidays. There have been some delays — you can’t keep members of Congress from going off to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. Or, um, weekends.

While everybody’s waiting, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been moving some other stuff along. That trade deal with Mexico and Canada, and the Democrats’ plan to control the price of prescription drugs.

Do you think that’s a good plan? Some people don’t like the idea of distracting attention from the president’s evildoing. Take your pick:

A) Nobody should talk about anything but the terribleness of Donald Trump. I sculpted his head out of mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving and squished gravy all over it.

B) I started listening to the Judiciary debate the other day, fell asleep and missed my dinner date. Give these poor people a change of subject for a few hours.

C) Anything Nancy Pelosi does is a good idea. I never thought about her at all until a few months ago, but now I believe she’s a combination of Eleanor Roosevelt, Madame Curie and Meryl Streep.

Amazing times, huh? Of course, watching the impeachment drama loses a little zip when you remember that the Senate Republicans are never actually going to toss the president out of office. But that’s a story for 2020. Meanwhile, the holidays have to be a little bit brighter when you contemplate the fact that Donald Trump is definitely not having his best Christmas ever.

David Leonhardt

© 2019 The New York Times Company

{What is going on, really?

The quick bet conjoin two very real possibilities in contradictionary tests between political correctness and transparency.

On one hand , the clarity is anything but, a contradiction in terms, which most Nowedays are too keen to understand. The other, more substantive, and procedural, involved a very classy form of deception- go for the obviously contradictory of white nationalism- supposing they will buy it, and pass it along as contentively negative within a goal constructed objective, that transcends it’s self.

So the contradiction in terms will swallow it’s own material tail. Socialism will be devoured within a hidden subjective (subjugatory) process.

In fact it is the foreign policy contradiction, that pits Russian territorial demands against Ukraine’s ,
with the former advocating. NWO inscribed in an oligarchian constitution, as the latter views the antithetically formal dialectic of conserving the teratorially gained objectives of the recent past.

What fuels the objective criteria , becoming less and not more transparent, setting in motion of the swelling of it’s execution?

The growing paradoxical synthesis between capital and labor has in certain respects rests within an increasingly schizmatic position of constructed ambiguity, and is reflected in the equally strained political agendas of both points of view.

That the subjective-objective determinative processes are informed by the public’s mass psychologically fragmented view of social coherence ; is fairly obvious , with the optically contradictory lack of awareness.

Trumpism really rests on a backdrop of international fusing, geared toward the processes of objective construction of simulated factors, that can transcend the limiting gaps , which appear controlling the processes which , inter alia are suggestive of white nationalistic dominance and control, of economic and political criteria.

But are they so? Aren’t they the psychological trigger, to optically illusive power motives, which apply more to the white power brokers who head Forbes 500 international corporations, intent on capitalizing on broader international markets, while tuting regional and anti international principles?

The contradiction is obvious, and very significant, as the former Democratic South has become the backbone of Republican strength.

The question of slavery has become more generic, constituting extending to broad factors that signal gaps between the economically advantaged versus the disadvantaged, rather than those which narrowly factored segregated ethnic groups .

Can the forces generated , reach levels that precipitated the forces that led to the civil war? The amount of repression is fueled by the relative naivete of those whose assumption of power is transcended from institutions of faith based ideas , this is why the constituted original intent of the founding father’s literal meaning has been put under the microscope of axiomatic analysis.

This is why demands for procedural lack is put forward as weaknesses in equivocating meaning of applying rules to content. The substantiality of material dialectical antithesis is clothed in verbatim contradiction, necessitating Trumpism to have developed a new style of political grandstanding ( tweeting) that can make objective assessment of using contra indicative , fallacious presentations almost common place.

The Democrats can not arrange an optical illusive demonstration on the same level , therefore they have to diminish the significance of Ukraine’s corruption at par with Russia’s.

That Trump is as involved in corruption with the Russian oligarchs, as the charge against the Ukraine oligarchs who stole US military funds funding the fight between the Russians and the Ukranians, is the real picture emerging from an international swamp, that is not fueled by party affiliation. That much is pretty clear, and the premise that Russia manufactured the Ukrainian meddling , is equally tenuous, albeit, even if true, is a minor one, set to distract from the major one.

The major premise, the one which only philosophers can fathom, is, that the dialectical materialism, it’s loss after the fall of Communism, had directed an unprecedented conflict that outed the topical maps of the limited neuro-lingual descriptions of their very basic weaknesses .
Such which were aptly described against Russel’s ’ sense-data’ a basic idea that fell sense, common sense, the sense of social democratic ideas into the abyss of Das Capital.

Capital swallowed a nationalistic synthetic, simply because it has reached limits. The internationalistic necessity to absorb other national economies, heretofore existent even from the early 1950’ s, reached the climactic stage of today’s politicall and economic conflict, that only a pathetic comedian could pull off.}

…and when you take back what is yours, see what happens? I really don’t have much more than that to say on the matter, as after the General Election is over today, it’ll be back to Brexit-business as usual, so so-much for the short reprieve from hearing its name being uttered… in meeting rooms, and along hushed corridors.

Why can’t we keep on having/taking your money, they cry! into their breakfast-plate of eggs royale and freshly-ground morning coffee…

My favourite person to debate with, telling my other favourite person to debate with, to pretty much go fuck himself.

This place is too funny sometimes.

3 yes 17 no.
For Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Justice

Final Impeachment coming in a few days.

The New York Times
The Trump Impeachment
Judiciary Vote

For Trump, Impeachment May Be a Political Plus but Also a Personal Humiliation
As the House moves toward what even he says is an inevitable vote to impeach him for high crimes and misdemeanors, President Trump toggles between self-pity and combativeness.

President Trump at the White House this week. In private, he accepts no blame and expresses no regret, but he rails against the enemies he sees all around him.
President Trump at the White House this week. In private, he accepts no blame and expresses no regret, but he rails against the enemies he sees all around him.Credit…

By Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman
Published Dec. 12, 2019
Updated Dec. 13, 2019, 5:37 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Under pressure over his possible impeachment, President Richard M. Nixon supposedly talked to the paintings in the White House. President Bill Clinton absently toyed with his old campaign buttons. President Trump punches out Twitter messages in the lonely midnight hour.

Long after his staff has gone home, long after the lights have gone out elsewhere around the capital, the besieged 45th president hunkers down in the upstairs residential portion of the Executive Mansion venting his frustration and cheering on his defenders through social media blasts.

This is a season of conflicting impulses for a president who often seems governed by them. As the House moves toward what even he says is an inevitable vote to impeach him for high crimes and misdemeanors, Mr. Trump toggles between self-pity and combativeness. He looks forward to a Senate trial that he seems sure to win and thinks that it will help him on the campaign trail when he travels the country boasting that he had been “exonerated” after the latest partisan “witch hunt.”

But he nurses resentment over the red mark about to be tattooed on his page in the history books as only the third president in American history to be impeached. No matter what some of his critics say, advisers said he genuinely does not want to be impeached, viewing it as a personal humiliation. Even in private, he accepts no blame and expresses no regret, but he rails against the enemies he sees all around him.

“He doesn’t like what’s happening,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a vocal ally who has spoken with the president several times this week. “He thinks it’s unfair. But I think he’s resolved himself that they’re going to do it, they’re out to get him. I think he’s more determined now to win than ever.”

Mr. Trump’s mood has actually improved in the past couple of weeks, advisers say, as Republicans have risen to his defense. He has grown more energized, bombarding followers with tweets and retweets defending himself and attacking his enemies.

He set a record for his presidency on Thursday with 123 total tweets in a single day, eclipsing the record he had set on Sunday with 105, according to Bill Frischling of Factba.se, a service that compiles and analyzes data on Mr. Trump’s presidency. That was more in a single day than he posted in any full week in 2017. All told, it brought his total since Sunday to 367, the most since taking office of any week — with two days still to go.

Eighty-seven of the tweets on Thursday came from 7 to 10 a.m., just as the House Judiciary Committee was opening its marathon meeting to approve two articles of impeachment.

Mr. Trump decided against presenting a defense during a Democratic-run House inquiry he deemed unfair, conceding that a vote to impeach along party lines was inevitable. But he has set his sights on a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate as a more conducive venue to air his views about the impeachment battle and mount a defense that he imagines more like an offense.

That could put him at odds with Senate Republicans whose interests are not the same as his. Absent dramatic new revelations, Mr. Trump appears assured of escaping conviction in the Senate since that would require a two-thirds vote. But he has been eager to call witnesses Senate Republican leaders are not anxious to summon, like former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the unidentified C.I.A. whistle-blower whose complaint kicked off the impeachment inquiry.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, talked with Mr. Trump this week about holding a relatively abbreviated trial without calling witnesses, according to a person briefed on the conversation. Mr. McConnell envisioned a trial lasting about 10 to 12 days and sought to convince Mr. Trump that a quick acquittal without the spectacle of a parade of witnesses would be better for the president.

Mr. Trump seemed amenable, but he often changes his mind and no one is certain where he will end up. He sent his White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, and his legislative affairs director, Eric Ueland, to meet with Mr. McConnell at the Capitol on Thursday.

Still to be determined is who will represent Mr. Trump at the trial, whether it is short or long. Mr. Trump is said to have talked with several prominent lawyers about taking on his case, but multiple people said that Mr. Cipollone had resisted bringing in new representation, leaving him to serve as lead counsel.

Among those being considered is Alan Dershowitz, the famed lawyer who represented O.J. Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein, Roman Polanski and Mike Tyson and has defended the president on television. But he would probably offer guidance from the private legal team outside the White House as Mr. Cipollone takes the lead.

For Mr. Trump, the impeachment battle has become the defining test of his presidency, weighing him down and charging him up all at once.

Some advisers said the collective burden of three years in office and the nonstop investigations had taken a toll on him. People who have spent time around him lately said he seemed fatigued and might have gained weight. Some who work in the White House have noticed that he seems more standoffish, less likely to engage in small talk with those outside his inner circle.

Concerns about his health spiked after a mysterious, unannounced weekend trip last month to the hospital. The White House insisted it was simply a head start on his annual medical checkup, but provided few details about what was done and why. His White House physician climbed into the presidential limousine for the ride to the hospital rather than travel in another vehicle in the motorcade.

Other presidents facing impeachment strove to hide how much it weighed on them, even as they brooded and raged in private. Mr. Nixon sought to give the impression it had not affected him, but behind the scenes, aides worried about his stability in the last days in the White House. He asked Henry A. Kissinger, his secretary of state, to kneel and pray with him.

“Nixon tried to hold it inside, but not too successfully,” said Evan Thomas, the author of “Being Nixon,” a biography of the president. “Remember ‘the president is not a crook’? And the sweat on his face as he said it?”

Mr. Clinton seemed to mentally disappear during meetings as his mind dwelled on the struggle to remain in office. During a Middle East peace negotiation in Gaza, an aide spied the president scribbling down on his notepad: “Focus on your job. Focus on your job.”

Mr. Trump, in his own way, is more transparent. Rather than pretend he is not bothered by the attacks on him, he lashes out at his enemies. Rather than affect a stiff-upper-lip demeanor in public, he fumes about the injustice he feels. “Trump is incapable of impulse control,” said Douglas B. Sosnik, a senior adviser to Mr. Clinton during impeachment.

Mr. Trump lately has taken the advice of some advisers by highlighting policy priorities, as Mr. Clinton did. In recent days, he advanced trade deals with China and with Mexico and Canada. During an event on child care on Thursday, he stuck largely to the script and never mentioned the word “impeachment.”

For a while after the revelations about his efforts to pressure Ukraine to help him against his Democratic rivals while withholding American security aid, Mr. Trump grew deeply upset. He felt isolated and abandoned, according to people in contact with him. He questioned why Democrats would not just let him govern. He lamented that he had done nothing wrong. He was angry at any Republican on television saying otherwise.

What Mr. Trump’s advisers worry about is the snapback of his anger once the impeachment process is over. They predict he will be furious, and looking for payback.
Since the public hearings before the House Intelligence Community, he has felt invigorated, pointing to the testimony of Gordon D. Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union who did not directly implicate Mr. Trump telling him to link the aid to his demand for investigations of Democrats, although Mr. Sondland added that he thought that was clear.

Mr. Graham said he warned Mr. Trump against that in a phone call on Wednesday night. “I just told him we know how impeachment ends, then after that your fate’s in your own hands,” Mr. Graham said. “Get back to being president and have a good story to tell.”

The Impeachment Inquiry
House Panel Delays Vote on Impeachment ArticlesDec. 12, 2019

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent and has covered the last four presidents for The Times and The Washington Post. He also is the author of five books, most recently “Impeachment: An American History.” @peterbakernyt • Facebook

© 2019 The New York Times Company

A lot of appearent anger on the faces of Republicans, in contrast of their claim of the absence of proof by the Democrats of a prima facie case!

Now, things get interesting both: nationally and internationally.

MagsJ:

Something is always owed when money is given or lent, something that is worth the price, to finance wars or proxy wars, as in the interesting war of attrition game theory.

There value of redeemable and irredeemable lending and gifting of moneys both have negative and positive consequences, sometimes it is better not to attempt to take back what has been given.

Hey! Boris won smashing! But to some , Brexit is a bad deal, perhaps leading to the dissolvence of the UK.!

Is this the split image of what goes in the US?

Hello MagsJ !

Something is always owed when money is given or lent, something that is worth the price, to finance wars or proxy wars, as in the interesting war of attrition game theory.

There value of redeemable and irredeemable lending and gifting of moneys both have negative and positive consequences, sometimes it is better not to attempt to take back what has been given.

Boris won smashingly. But to some , Brexit is a bad deal, perhaps leading to the dissolvence of the UK.!

Is this the split image of what goes in the US?

The reversal of psychological fact finding originated with the Revolutionary War, and the flight from British rule was the centerpiece. France played the modern version of Brexit, as Trump plays the current role with Boris. Roles do change, the content and the processes which govern the dynamics return in revised forms, and who will know who is on -first , or third, beneath the dignity of those forming an everlasting web of conjectures , innuendos and inferences.*

*Inferences , it seemed to me to be the key code to what was meant to represent the gap between what difference exists between presumptions and elements that went for ‘facts’ ; in yesterday’s judicial argument in the House of Representatives.

Guardian

Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s Twitter bullying of Greta Thunberg: ‘Today was an unpresidential day even by our very unpresidential standards.’

Late-night TV roundup
Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘A rotting yam mocking a 16-year-old with Asperger’s’

Late-night hosts responded to Trump’s Twitter attack on Greta Thunberg and the slog to a House vote on articles of impeachment

Jimmy Kimmel

“Today was an unpresidential day even by our very unpresidential standards,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday night, a day in which Donald Trump bullied the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg on Twitter. Thunberg, 16, was named Time magazine’s person of the year this week for her activism, beating out finalists Nancy Pelosi, the Hong Kong protesters, the anonymous whistleblower on Trump’s pressuring of Ukraine, and Trump himself. Ever the gracious loser, Trump called Thunberg’s Time cover “ridiculous” and tweeted that she should “work on her Anger Management problem [sic], then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!”

It’s rich coming from “the sweaty old man who’s mad at a magazine because they didn’t put him on the cover of it”, Kimmel said. “And the fact that Greta Thunberg is a teenager makes this especially insane.”

In response, Thunberg simply changed her Twitter bio to “a teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend.”

Stephen Colbert on impeachment: anger is Trump’s ‘happy place’
Kimmel had nothing but praise for her burn: “Trump hasn’t been roasted that thoroughly since the last time he locked himself in his tanning bed.”

Additionally, “aside from the obvious vomitousness of that rotting yam mocking a child with Asperger’s – again, because she’s more popular than he is – this tweet he posted has the potential to get very interesting” because Trump retweeted congratulations to Thunberg from the actor Roma Downey. Downey is married to Mark Burnett, the producer of The Apprentice, and if Trump starts a war with Burnett’s wife, Kimmel explained, Burnett could “accidentally” release all the behind-the-scenes footage from years of Trump’s defining reality TV show.

The unedited video could have “who the hell knows what – Trump crushing Sudafed and snorting it off a conference table, maybe punching his son Don Jr in the face, pulling his penis out and forcing Meatloaf to say how fat it is,” Kimmel joked. “All that footage gets released, and maybe that will be how Greta Thunberg saves the world.”

Trevor Noah
On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah provided an update on the assholery of the Trump family. “The Trump family has a long history of being assholes,” Noah said, “but lately, you could say that they’ve been stretching the limits of how big an asshole a person can be. Starting with President Trump himself, who apparently has nothing better to do than pick fights with children.”

Noah referred to Trump’s bitter tweet about Thunberg. “Come on, man, the president of the United States is on Twitter, bullying a teenage girl,” he said. “Just try to imagine any other president doing something like this. Imagine FDR doing a fireside chat where he just goes in on Shirley Temple – ‘My fellow Americans, this little girl can’t dance for shit!’”

In other asshole news, Noah continued, reports emerged recently that Donald Trump Jr went to Mongolia this summer and killed an endangered sheep with a laser-sight gun. “What kind of asshole wants to kill an endangered species?” Noah said. “Like, most of us don’t even want to take the last nacho out of the bowl and Don Jr is out here putting panda bears in chokeholds.

“It’s obviously not great karma for Little Bo Creep to be killing off a species, so you would think maybe the Trumps could make things up to the universe with their family charity,” Noah continued. “Except this family is so cartoonishly villainous, they even do charity like assholes.” Noah pointed to a recent New York court ruling which ordered Trump to pay back $2m he stole from his charity for campaign purposes and a $20k painting of himself for his resort.

The court also ordered Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr to attend a training session on how to not misuse charity funds, a training Noah jokingly obtained. His “New York State Guide to Avoiding Charity Abuse” offered straightforward advice: “Don’t steal from a fucking charity, asshole.”

Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert recapped the day in Congress, in which the House judiciary committee debated whether to send two articles of impeachment to the House floor. “But first, they spent hours proposing highly specific and asinine amendments,” Colbert said, such as Florida congressman Matt Gaetz’s amendment to name Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Gaetz publicly mocked Hunter Biden’s struggles with drug addiction, which is “pretty ballsy for a congressman to bring that up when he was arrested for DUI in 2008”, Colbert said.

Meanwhile, “the president is putting on a brave face in public but impeachment seems to be getting to Trump,” Colbert explained. According to a report from CNN, aides say he has “appeared distracted and unfocused during conversations”.

“Yes, distracted and unfocused, unlike the old, laser-focused Trump,” Colbert panned, before imitating the president: “‘My fellow Americans, I come to you tonight to announce that American ground forces are – hey, there’s a guy I know, anyway, China, give me dirt on Joe Biden, bing, bing, bong, bong, bong flush your toilet 15 times, goodnight!”

Trump is also reportedly surprised that it’s the Ukraine scandal that’s led to impeachment. “Yeah, me too,” Colbert said. “After all the shady deals he’s been involved in over the years, he gets tripped up by a phone call? Trump getting impeached for Ukraine is like Paul Newman winning an Oscar for The Color of Money – he definitely deserves it but it should have happened way before this.”

© 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

This is why!

Welcome to Politics.

The Liberal-Left are like Moslem Terrorists in the Middle East, using children to shield themselves from bullets on the frontline, as they shoot at you.

Then a children gets hit and they scream as though the other side is evil.

If you want to bring Children into your Holy War, then don’t be surprised by these results.

Greta Thurnberg is probably low-IQ, appealing to emotionalism, and has no substantiated claim toward “Global Warming” or “Climate Change”, as-if these terms were anything more than buzzwords the Liberal-Left now use as excuses to push their agenda, often involving taxation, theft, and extortion.

Oh dear…

So it’s not over yet, and the House of Representatives vote next week will be the definitive vote… based on?

Well… global debts are constantly being written off, and foreign aid is gifted not lent, so there is nothing to take back, so what is left being owed?

That will be a discussion to be had when Party leaders meet, but the majority of Brits want Brexit and want to remain in the UK… it’s not like we haven’t talked about this, as a Nation, over the decades.

Well… US politics always seemed complicated, but it now seems that media output is being tailored towards a wider non-US audience in recent months, and we can now therefore see the similarities in processes and how the US political system works.

IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

Trump faces fight-or-flight moment in Senate impeachment trial

Analysis: With his legacy, his re-election and his movement on the line, it would be quite a retreat for the president to sidestep a full Senate trial.

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Dec. 13, 2019, 5:57 PM EST / Updated Dec. 14, 2019, 7:30 AM EST

By Jonathan Allen

WASHINGTON — The closer Republicans get to a Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, the more it looks like an improvised political explosive.

The White House and the Senate Republican Conference are united in their desire to dispose of it, but divided over how to do that in the way that inflicts the most damage to Democrats and the least harm to them. The choice is between a show that gives Trump the chance to turn the tables on his accusers, or a quick dismissal that amounts to an exercise in self-preservation for him and GOP senators.

In other words, it’s fight-or-flight time for Trump.

With his legacy, his re-election and his movement on the line — at a time when congressional Republicans are in lockstep defense of his actions — it would be quite a silent retreat for the chest-thumping, trash-talking Trump to slip away from the chance to have a made-for-TV trial befitting his reality-era presidency.

He sounds like he doesn’t want to.

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“I wouldn’t mind the long process, because I’d like to see the whistleblower, who’s a fraud, having the whistleblower called to testify in the Senate trial,” he said Friday, referring to the anonymous intelligence community official who first accused him of wrongdoing in a complaint filed with the intelligence community inspector general.

He also noted that he believes that the House’s impeachment process — the Judiciary Committee there approved two articles against him on Friday morning and the full House is expected to approve them next week — has benefited him.

“It’s a very sad thing for our country, but it seems to be very good for me politically,” he told reporters.

And yet he also signaled some willingness to listen to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and some White House advisers who prefer a trial with more “no” and less show.

Download the NBC News app for full coverage of the impeachment inquiry

“I’ll do long or short,” he said.

But while McConnell has kept power in the Republican conference for more than a decade by averting risk, Trump didn’t get to the Oval Office by playing it safe. His instincts likely lean toward brawling.

The hope inside the GOP right now is that if he does want to brawl, it’s with Democrats, not fellow Republicans. And so they’re seeking a sweet spot of consensus that suits him.

“The president should have every right to put on the defense he wants,” said Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who is among a group of lawmakers that resisted McConnell’s initial plan for a quick trial that would preclude witnesses. “And I have every confidence that [White House Counsel] Pat Cipollone and the rest of the president’s defense team will give him the best advice to make the right decision.”

The calculus is complicated by a set of instincts and interests shared by the president and some of his most aggressive allies in the Senate that are broadly at odds with those of McConnell, Republican senators in tough re-election bids, and White House officials who fear that a circus-like trial could result in unnecessary pain for everyone.

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Like any leader of a party caucus in Congress, McConnell will place his first loyalty with his peers and keeping them in power. But what’s perceived as good for Republicans in hard re-election fights — a quick trial that puts less of a spotlight on Trump’s alleged misdeeds and the senators’ handling of them — doesn’t fit with Trump’s apparent desire to present his case before the presidential election season heats up.

This Senate, a far more hospitable arena for Trump than the House, is the only remaining venue for him to litigate it.

“What’s interesting is they’re totally split on it right now,” said Rachel Bovard, a former Senate Republican aide who keeps in close touch with GOP officials. Some “want to sail directly into the wind … that’s what the president wants.”

The truth is that either option could backfire.

A speedy trial might make Trump look more guilty, because Democrats will argue he ran and hid behind Republican votes without defending himself. At the same time, a longer version might expose Trump and GOP senators to further revelations about the Ukraine scandal, or simply the humiliation of a public spectacle.

“Get it over fast is the best way,” Bovard said, concluding that more time tends to lead to unforced errors for Senate Republicans. “Everything they touch goes sideways.”

McConnell is clearly eager to avoid a bigger public split with Trump that could hurt Republican senators with Trump’s base. On Friday, he spoke with Fox News’ Sean Hannity about his efforts to coordinate with Cipollone, who may lead the president’s defense on the Senate floor and who could, conceivably, be a witness in the trial.

But even in tying himself to Cipollone, he revealed that he remains favorable to a quiet trial that would be positively un-Trumpian.

“I’m going to take my cues from the president’s lawyers,” McConnell said. “But, yes, If you know you have the vote, you’ve listened to the arguments on both sides, and believe the case is so slim, so weak that you have the votes to end it, that might be what the president’s lawyers would prefer, and you could certainly make a case for making it shorter rather than longer since it’s such a weak case.”

Of course, the president doesn’t always do what his lawyers want — especially if they’re telling him to shut up and take the win.

Jonathan Allen

OPINION | WHITE HOUSE

December 14, 2019 - 12:00 PM EST

Is a trap being set for Trump in the Senate trial?

BY DOUGLAS MACKINNON, OPINION CONTRIBUTORThe views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The HillTWEET SHARE EMAIL

Can 20 U.S. senators withstand the potentially irresistible temptation to reverse the results of the 2016 election and remove a president a number of them openly or privately dislike?

Since Donald Trump announced his intention to run for the White House on June 16, 2015, many of the entrenched elites across the various power centers of Washington and beyond have spent many of their waking hours trying to stop or unseat him.

The political charade of an impeachment “investigation” is but the latest example. But that impeachment charade could harbor the greatest threat to Trump’s presidency.

Over the past week, I have heard from three seasoned Republicans who fear that President Trump and the West Wing are seriously underestimating the potential danger of a Senate trial. Human nature and common sense dictate that, despite the well-meaning resolution circulated by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) condemning the House impeachment process, it’s important for the White House to understand that the weight of history is settling upon the shoulders of these senators - some of them quite weak - and because of that pressure, private conversations are taking place and a trap may be sprung for the president in that trial.

A potential trap set by seemingly loyal Republican senators.

Those I spoke with, like others, worry that the impeachment process, especially a potential conviction in the Senate, will forever poison the integrity of our constitutional and congressional processes and put every future president at risk of having his or her election reversed for partisan and ideological reasons.

But such is the lingering animosity about Trump by many in the GOP establishment, and there very well may be enough Republican senators willing to topple the first domino and set in motion a chain reaction - no matter the consequences.

In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in October, former governor and U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley put her finger on the greater issue, saying in part, “President Trump is a disruptor. That makes some people very happy, and it makes some people very mad. … When I was in the administration, I served alongside colleagues who believed the best thing to do for America was to undermine and obstruct the president. Some wrote about it anonymously in The New York Times. Others just did it. They sincerely believed they were doing the right thing. I sincerely believed they weren’t. … No policy disagreement with him … justifies undermining the lawful authority that is vested in his office by the Constitution.”

What’s at stake, Haley said, “is not President Trump’s policies. What’s at stake is the Constitution.”

She is correct, but does all of this go beyond Trump being a disruptor? As we have witnessed, Trump is being opposed, called out and undermined through leaks by multiple anonymous and named sources from the “deep state,” his own National Security Council, former White House staff, former and current Pentagon, State Department and diplomatic officials, members of Congress and their staffs, and basically every other agency within the federal government.

There appears to be a common thread that runs through all of this opposition and stated hatred: “He is not part of the club. He is not one of us. He can’t be controlled.”

The unrelenting opposition to Trump is not based on the fictional quid pro quo with Ukraine’s president but rather a desperate need by the entrenched establishment from both political parties to maintain the status quo of their all-powerful club - aka part of the “swamp” Trump sought to drain.

For Trump to be convicted in a Senate trial, 20 Republican senators would have to join forces with the 47 Democrats. We should not worry about those who openly dislike Trump, such as Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Susan Collins (R-Maine) or Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska); we should worry about those in the purple states, who face tough reelection fights in 2020, and those who have continually criticized and demeaned the president in private.

What is driving all of this, of course, is the fear that Trump will win reelection. Well, 63 million Americans voted for him in 2016, and 20 GOP senators soon may have the power to invalidate those votes. Can they resist doing so and vote not to convict? Conventional wisdom says that will be the outcome. But as we all know when it comes to Donald Trump, you can throw conventional wisdom right out the window.

For that reason, when it comes to a trial in the Senate, Trump and the West Wing need to remember the sage advice of President Ronald Reagan: “Trust, but verify.”

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant and author, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administratio

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The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

What a farce, implying the Republicans will not back Trump, after the corruption, sedition, and outright Treason the Democrats have already committed against America.

Wether the Constitution is based on a present model, or an approximated objective, the partiality and the partisanship of it’s interpretation can be understood, in light of past or future variable elements of the sense of that understanding.

However , such dialectic makes little sense without that variability, since the Republicans see it as transcending that interpretation in an absolute sense, and that basically is shown by the evidentiary charges of foreign interference and collusion.

That reduces the applicability if said constitution’s understand ing in terms of contradictory rhetoric.

Today the difference is further fine -tuned by relativistic inferencial terms, and hence the contradiction appeals to a wider scope of interpretation.

The party line further fragments this divided partisanship, whereas a single layered divided one dimensional rhetoric rules the bilateral model.

Functionally independent, by checks and balances , excluded elements mirror preceding interpretations, irrespective of actual mutual involvement ; In stead of a smooth and continuous procedure - the disjunctives eliminate the need for a
functional middle.
In stead , the view of a center as a shifting fulcrum on a single trajectory ,is a description based on elements that inherently make sense. The continuity is comprised of elements which may not cohere with each other.

The time we spent here arguing about the idea of the gaps within that continuum , giving rise to original framing and content , may give pause
to giving a more accurate sense of how the shift toward either side of the aisle may effect equilibrium in establishing constitutional intent. Rather , instead by split mandate on the idea of check and balances, a progressive, rather then a regressive (make America great again) inductive could be far more effective to us and future generations.

That one of the earliest charges against Trump was an absence of a declared mandate, a charge that lead to the actual position we as society find ourselves in, often goes unrecognized nowadays.

The missing element is precisely the theatrical dialectic, that has.been used to create the anomaly as collusive. Hegel & Marx , instead of developing the required continuous structural succession to create an ever widening conjunction in form and practice,( as shown by the the existentially reduced phenomena of the the spirit of the constitutive aspects of the nothingness of the spirit) , had no relation to the manner in which it effected the materiality of it’s sensibility. They are mere expressed opinions in fragmented terms. The gap created a demand for resolution, and the filler, Kant’s imperative in categorical terms comes to mind.

No mention from either side of a.compromise, basically because putting party line of either into a compromising situation, widens the gap , rather then narrowing plausibility, into contradictive points of view. The constitution is reduced to competing , rather then unified modes of interpretation.

Nowhere do the colluded economic and political considerations seen as related, that is why the major defense Trump uses to his lack of mandate in the impeachment procedure is the materially precedented defense: the roaring economy, as he sees tax cuts play into it. He disclaims any qualitative and unified priority as a necessary distinction, and the fact that the tax cut improves mostly the upper social strata , does not enter the equation in his mind.

Great Compromises in United States history lay historically alongside the necessity to change the consisting negative effects prior assumptions of larger collusive and unrecognized relationships to the fragmented logically continuous sequences, that mirrored the actual spatial-temporal spaced out facts and fictions.

That Ayn Rand was able to justify this with a shrug, developed the view which made the transcendental irrelevant , and created the idea that Marxism dealt a fatal blow to the dialectic.

When the USSR was replaced by a diminished Russia, the loss of the material invalidated and totally expunged the idea of spiritual progressive development. It’s consequence was split by partisan rhetoric, in literal terms of what constitutes political development, within the confines of narcissistic brackets, returning it’s self as subsisting as in for it’s self, rather then in it’s self.
There the distinction became axiomatic and contradictory. The 'for-it’s self became the contrary of what it should have developed into, it mirrured the conjectures of mimicking the sudden morphed values, that negated the conservative values of institutionalized policy and long held cultural predicates. The process was shorted, at a much faster rate then cultural associations could absorb.
The resulting confusion has become an international, macabre dance, of power played determinants, with blind determinism of the will to succeed became the battle cry.

This old dance, has nothing but a foreboding structural precedence behind it, and should resonate with it’s loosely associated forbidding aspect, an aspect that can be associated with dialogue going underground, each party becoming almost a secret organization, each with it’s own particular agenda.

This is the time to recognize imminent danger, and not long after from hence, when the waste in human value is belatedly and with feigned regret is finally expressed.

There is more to this diatribe, then seemingly simple obfuscation can gain the power, to enable a national/ international will to set the agenda by which to govern, not only through materially induced Machiavellian stratagem, but by reliving the spirit of the Law, which does transcend the historically significant milestones which required action through time.

Compromise was at several times in history a requisite by which to go on living , by measure of rationality.

Evidence already gathered has revealed John Bolton’s deep misgivings about the way Trump was pressurising Ukraine for personal political gain.

Trump impeachment inquiry
Trump impeachment: Democrats push for Bolton to testify in Senate trial
Schumer writes to McConnell seeking terms of trial

The lies have it: how Republicans abandoned the truth
Ed Pilkington in New York

Mon 16 Dec 2019 08.38 EST

Democrats are pressing for John Bolton, the former national security adviser fired by Donald Trump in September, and the president’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, to be called to testify in the impeachment trial expected to be held in the Senate next month.

Trump impeachment: Democrats fume as Republicans rally behind president
The demand that two key eye witnesses to many of the most contentious elements of the Ukraine scandal should testify was contained in a letter from Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, to his Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell.

The request sets up a bruising clash over the terms of only the third impeachment trial in US history.

The trial, which Schumer proposes should start on 7 January, is now all but certain. The House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats, is set to vote in favor of two articles of impeachment on Wednesday.

In his letter, Schumer lays out a possible structure based on how Bill Clinton’s impeachment was organised in 1999. He pointedly notes that the ground rules on that occasion were approved by a vote of 100-0.

He writes: “Senate Democrats believe strongly, and I trust Senate Republicans agree, that this trial must be one that is fair, that considers all of the relevant facts … The trial must pass the fairness test with the American people. That is the great challenge for the Senate in the coming weeks.”

But hopes of a similar bipartisan agreement over the likely trial were all but dead in the water before Schumer sent his letter. Republicans have made clear they have no intention of abiding by constitutionally proscribed parameters for the trial, which effectively place senators in the role of jurors.

McConnell, who as the majority leader will have ultimate say over how the trial is conducted, has stated brazenly that Trump will not be convicted and that he will design the trial in consultation with the president – the lead juror in league with the defendant.

“Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with the White House counsel,” McConnell said last week.

Other senators have indicated they have made reached a verdict of acquittal even before the first witness is called.

“I have made up my mind, I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here,” Lindsey Graham, the Trump apologist from South Carolina, has said.

This weekend, footage of Graham speaking in 1999, when he was a House manager in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, made the rounds on social media.

“I have a duty far greater than just getting to the next election,” Graham said in the footage. “Members of the Senate have said, ‘I understand everything there is about this case, and I won’t vote to impeach the president.’ Please allow the facts to do the talking … Don’t decide the case before the case’s end.”

Though the Republicans are in the driving seat, their control is not beyond challenge. Were the Democrats to persuade just four Republicans to vote against party lines they could reach the 51 votes needed to determine some features of the trial.

In an interview with CNN on Monday, Schumer implied that getting those four votes was not out of the question, though he would give no names of potential targets.

“There are a good number of Republicans who are troubled by what the president did,” he said, “who want to see all the facts.”

Speculation has focused on senators including Mitt Romney of Utah, who has criticised Trump relatively strongly, and moderates Susan Collins, of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Trump faces two articles of impeachment. The first accuses him of misusing his office to bully Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden in a way that would benefit Trump’s re-election campaign; the second charges the president with obstructing Congress by blocking witnesses to impeachment hearings.

Despite the hyperpartisan battle ahead, Schumer’s demand for Bolton and Mulvaney to be called as witnesses could be significant as it goes to the heart of the evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that impeachment is devised to penalise.

Two other key officials have also been requested by the Democrats: Mulvaney’s senior adviser, Robert Blair, and Michael Duffey, associate director for national security, Office of Management and Budget.

Trump impeachment: Lindsey Graham will ‘not pretend to be a fair juror’
Evidence already gathered has revealed Bolton’s deep misgivings about the way Trump was pressurising Ukraine for personal political gain, reportedly complaining: “I am not part of whatever drug deal [Trump aides] are cooking up”.

Mulvaney’s testimony would also be potentially critical given his statement in October that there had indeed been quid pro quo with Ukraine. The Trump administration withheld almost $400m in military aid to the country at the same time as demanding an investigation into Biden.

Alongside Schumer’s letter, the Democrat-controlled judiciary committee also released early on Monday its complete 658-page report into impeachment.

It charges Trump with placing “his personal, political interests above our national security, our free and fair elections, and our system of checks and balances. He has engaged in a pattern of misconduct that will continue if left unchecked.

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This thread started in April 2018 still idealizes a bunch of corrupt mass media organizations. Will you ever learn Meno?