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Month: November 2019

Karma’s a bitch

Published by digby on November 15, 2019

Karma’s a bitch

by digby

Roger Stone was convicted on all counts today in a trial that showed he and Trump were colluding with Wikileaks during the 2016 election and Stone lied about it under oath. (So did Trump, actually, in his written answers to Mueller but we all know that president are immune from prosecution while in office just because.)

Anyway, enjoy the schadenfreude as you read this:

President Donald Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone spent much of the 2016 presidential campaign launching attacks against the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. His website StoneColdTruth.com and associated social media accounts are filled with memes and doctored images that portray Clinton as old, sick, or in prison. Stone also frequently posted messages on Twitter calling for Clinton’s imprisonment and even started a petition advocating her prosecution that he shared with the hashtag #lockherup.

The image appears to be authentic and was likely created to promote merchandise sold via the Infowars conspiracy theory website. Stone sold a similar version of this shirt on his own website, Stone Cold Truth, accompanied by the caption “Wear them loud, wear them proud and help get the word out that all of these globalist criminals, Republican and Democrat alike, should be held accountable for their crimes.”

This is yet another Trump henchman going down trying to protect him. Cohen, Stone and perhaps soon, Giuliani. All the dirty tricksters are paying the price.

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“She’s going to go through some things”

Published by digby on November 15, 2019

“She’s going to go through some things”

by digby

Trump reached out during the hearing this morning to virtually tap Marie Yovanavitch on the shoulder and remind her that he has the power to make sure she “goes through something.”

Even some Trump TV hacks were taken aback by that. Via C&L:

None of that will matter in the long run. The new line among Trump defenders is that if it isn’t explicitly mentioned in the constitution, it’s not illegal. At least if the president does it:

Forget it, Jake. It’s Fox News ….

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The right-wing media thinks Trump’s impeachment is a lot of fun

Published by digby on November 15, 2019

The right-wing media thinks Trump’s impeachment is a lot of fun

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

There was a lot of talk on Thursday about the theater criticism of the impeachment hearings coming from some quarters of the mainstream media. Press Watch’s Dan Froomkin wrote a must-read piece here at Salon taking them to task for trivializing the event and creating the impression among many people who didn’t watch the live testimony that it was boring and worthless. This is another example of the media’s insatiable need for drama, explaining once again how Donald Trump, a carnival sideshow act if ever there was one, wound up in the White House.

Less discussed but equally important was the coverage of the hearings in the right-wing media. They too indulged in theater criticism and sports-style analysis but while some mainstream media reporters declared the hearings dull, they at least reported the testimony accurately. The right-wing media presented a version of the hearings totally at odds with reality.

The Trump TV flagship, Fox News, adopted a novel way of spreading its own propaganda during the hearings themselves. In the guise of on-screen, pop-up informational cards about the witnesses, they delivered Trump talking points. Media Matters’ Eric Kleefeld gathered several examples, notably those in which House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is described on screen:

Bill Taylor, the acting ambassador to Ukraine, was helpfully described this way:

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent was similarly characterized as someone who had no first-hand knowledge of the events to which he was testifying. This was, of course, the lame official talking point of the day, carried forth by every right-wing media talker on TV and radio, apparently sure that no one would notice that the most damning “first-person” information had been public for weeks: the White House “rough transcript” of President Trump flagrantly attempting to bribe the president of Ukraine. These witnesses were merely filling in background details of the conspiracy that Trump and his henchmen had been plotting for months.

Fox News’ evening opinion shows went a step further and described the hearings as a devastating defeat for the Democrats and an overwhelming victory for President Trump. Indeed, after watching for a couple of hours, Fox viewers could easily assume that the Democrats were going to have to close down the inquiry immediately.

Tucker Carlson thought the glass was half full, saying “it was like Christmas and New Year’s and the Super Bowl all put together.” Sean Hannity took the opposite tack, calling it “the worst show on earth” and dubbing the Democrats on the committee “dumb, bad, stupid and shallow corrupt idiots.” Each in his own way surely reassured the president and his supporters that the Democrats had completely failed to deliver and it had all been a rousing success for him.

In between those two guys, Laura Ingraham made fun of the witnesses and declared that the Democratic impeachment had collapsed.

Meanwhile, right-wing operative Joe diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, both of whom are professionally involved in the case — having worked with Rudy Giuliani to spread nasty rumors about Friday’s witness, former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch — appeared with Lou Dobbs on Fox Business and declared that the State Department and FBI agents on foreign assignment are all controlled by George Soros, who for some reason is trying to take over Ukraine.


Josh Marshall
✔@joshtpm

Holy Shit! Rudy/Trump confidant DiGenova spouts wild list of bananas conspiracy theories after hearing: “There is no doubt that George Soros controls a large part of the foreign service part of the State Department and the activities of FBI agents overseas who work with NGOs.”

Joe McCarthy would have been proud. That odious anti-Semitic comment drew a rebuke from the Anti-Defamation League, along with a demand that diGenova be barred from appearing on the network.

That ugly accusation made the rest of the juvenile insults hurled at Taylor and Kent seem tame by comparison. One guest on Carlson’s show said they “looked like people who sat by themselves at recess.” Hannity guest Mark Levin said they reminded him of “two homeless guys.” On talk radio, Rush Limbaugh mocked them as “self-important nerds who believe in their own superiority.”

All these people thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

The upshot is that right-wing media, led by the mothership Fox News and the White House, all took the tack that the hearing on Wednesday was a massive success for the president, largely because the Democrats and the witnesses are creepy, unattractive people.

Conventional wisdom holds that this is all done for an audience of one: the president. There is some truth to that, to be sure. Trump is obsessed with media coverage, and if the idea is to buck him up, this absurdly positive spin probably had an effect. But he isn’t the only one listening, unfortunately.

On Thursday, AP-NORC released a new survey showing that Americans are having a hard time figuring out what is true and what isn’t. And a certain subset is relying on extremely unreliable sources:

Democrats are more likely to say they rely on scientists and academics, while Republicans are more likely to trust what they hear from President Donald Trump. “When I hear him on Fox News — that’s where I get all my information,” said Al Corra, a 48-year-old Republican from Midland, Texas. Trump, he said, is the easiest way to cut through an otherwise confusing information environment.

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to put a great deal of trust in the president’s statements, 40% to 5%.

You can understand why right-wing media would spin the impeachment inquiry as positive news for Trump. Their audience considers him to be a truth-teller and a man of integrity.

Recent PRRI polling shows that Trump has a solid base of support among Republicans, who say nothing he could do could change their minds about him. What people in this group have in common is the fact that they get all their news from Fox, like the man quoted above.

These people are fearfully misinformed, obviously. Trump is the most dishonest person in public life and lies to their faces every single day. Fox amplifies his lies and delivers more of their own in a constant feedback loop. As we continue down the path of impeachment over the next few weeks, it’s clear that won’t just see Trump and his defenders batting back the accusations or spreading alternate conspiracy theories. They’ll do that, of course. But from the looks of things they’ve decided to offer their viewers a full-blown alternate reality in which the impeachment process is actually an ignominious defeat for the “nerdy” Democrats and government officials and a triumph for the president, regardless of what is uncovered.

I knew this was going to be a strange and different process than the two other impeachments I’ve seen in my life. But I didn’t see this coming. Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber are consciously attempting to make Trump supporters happy that he’s being impeached.

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Better health = more democracy by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 15, 2019

Better health = more democracy
by Tom Sullivan

As we brace for another day of impeachment drama, Eric Levitz at New York magazine’s “Intelligencer” offers support for why your health care is another key 2020 election issue.

One of the classic arguments for having strong unions is that not only union members benefit from their bargaining power, but nonmembers as well. Strong unions constrain income inequality generally.

Levitz suggests universal health care has similar effects. Examining states that implemented Medicaid expansion with neighboring holdout states provides “a nifty natural experiment for assessing the impacts of expanding access to public health insurance.” Comparisons demonstrate Medicaid expansion reduces premium costs for non-beneficiaries as well as increasing self-reported health and financial well-being.

But more than that:

Border-county studies have also yielded a less intuitive benefit of expansion. A 2018 study from the political scientists Joshua Clinton and Michael Sances found that in counties with high populations of Medicaid-expansion-eligible residents, the policy’s implementation increased both voter turnout and registration in the 2014 midterm elections. A 2017 study from Missouri political scientist Jake Haselswerdt found a similar correlation between Medicaid expansion and higher rates of voter turnout at the congressional district level in the 2012 election. Finally, just this year, a study of Oregon’s experiment with expanding Medicaid by lottery (prior to the Affordable Care Act’s passage) found that the program increased its recipients’ individual likelihood of voting by 2.5 percentage points.

Data for Progress helpfully draws out the implications of these findings in a recent report. Using Medicaid’s average impact on turnout across the three studies and the Kaiser Family Foundation’s estimates of the Medicaid coverage gap in the 13 states that still haven’t implemented expansion, the progressive think tank calculates that full implementation of Medicaid expansion would bring as many as 1.3 million Americans off our democracy’s sidelines and into the electorate by 2022.

Just why Medicaid expansion increases voter participation is unclear, Levitz writes. Beside offering voter registration as part of signing up, perhaps providing nonvoters with a tangible government service of benefit to their lives gives them a greater stake in the political life of the country than evanescent promises of more “freedom.” Levitz adds, “This would be consistent with MIT political scientist Andrea L. Campbell’s research on the development of Social Security, which suggests the program was a cause of American seniors’ high levels of voter participation, not a mere response to that participation.”

No wonder Republicans oppose universal health care.

[UPDATE] Smear ’em live! Fox attacks impeachment witnesses and Dems in real time @spockosbrain

Published by Spocko on November 15, 2019

Smear ’em live! Fox attacks impeachment witnesses in real time 

 by Spocko

[UPDATE] Trump is tweeting attacks against Marie Yovanovitch THIS MORNING while she is testifying. Witness intimidation in real time!  More details at Crooks and Liars

Fox News had to figure out a way to subvert the live testimony of credible witnesses and control the message. They couldn’t do their usual pick and choose of clips that support the President and his message, so they remembered the immortal words of serial sexual harasser Bill O’Reilly, “We’ll do it live!”

Eric Kleefeld at Media Matters has a great piece on this, (Fox News uses on-screen graphics to push pro-Trump lies during impeachment hearing) with screenshots of images from the hearing showing various tactics. I annotated a few just to highlight their style. Expect variations on this during all their live streams of impeachment hearings.

Fox will smear Former Ambassador Yovanovitch live during her testimony with on screen accusations. 

Now I don’t know for certain that Fox will be posting false, defaming statements during all the live testimonies of public figures. But if they, do we must officially call out the producers of these live comments. My friends at Media Matters are already keeping track, but some witness lawyers need to get on board. If Fox News is called out, and keeps doing this, when the defamation lawsuits are filed there should be email records to subpoena.

Just because a company calls itself “News” doesn’t mean they are following any journalism principles. And even legitimate journalism entities, if they cross over into actual malice, can be sued by a public figure for defamation.

I’m not a lawyer, but I believe there are ways to prove that Fox producers have knowledge that some of the claims made are false. If producers are sent notice the claims are false, and they keep making them, wouldn’t that be a,”reckless disregard of whether it was false or not”?

Fox is so desperate to curry favor with Trump they act like him. They are demonstrating the same vindictive behavior as Trump.  Would a jury conclude that attacking a person’s reputation with known false claims using on-screen graphics during a live stream, constitute actual malice?

Fox producers have a choice about what they put on screen, they can choose to repeat Trump’s defamatory claims about witnesses. They didn’t have to repeat debunked claims about Biden, but they chose to repeat them.

Controlling what people see on TV (even with the sound off) was a specialty of Roger Ailes.

Control the medium, control the message.

[Ailes] watches TV, he studies TV, mostly with the sound off, so that he can observe one of the rules he does follow—if someone’s doing something to make you turn the sound on, then they’re doing something interesting. On a wall in his office, there are screens broadcasting Fox News and Fox Business Network, as well as CNN, HLN, MSNBC, and CNBC. He watches them all, from the corner of his eye, and if you give him three seconds, he’ll give you the world….

I tell my people that if they want to be artists of television, the screen is their canvas, but they have to repaint it every three seconds.” [Emphasis added.] (Why Roger Ailes watches TV on mute. link)

This is expected from Fox. This is their way of editorializing in real time. My question in these cases is often “Is there anything we can do about it?”

Fox’s editorializing live during the testimony influences the MSM. Producers and news directors KNOW that these lies are being pushed, so they feel the need to bring them up again and again to debunk them. Repeating them in the process. Strengthening them.

Those stories, even when debunked, start to build in normal people’s minds. People who don’t follow politics closely think, “Maybe there IS something strange about Hunter Biden?” (… butter emails!)

One thing we can do is be prepared for how Fox’s spin will influence their watchers. My friend, Robert Yasumura, pointed out what to listen for:

I replied with how you might respond.

Most of us don’t want to argue with assholes. I especially don’t want to do it at Thanksgiving. MAGA hat people aren’t going to change their minds over pumpkin pie. But there ARE people you can reach. People who listen to NPR, PBS and the News Hour. These people might be getting the taint of Fox News messages without realizing it.

First, check out what people are absorbing from the headlines they get from PBS and the mainstream media. Listen to what they say. They won’t be believing the crazy stories, but they might be getting other  ideas, like “The senate will never vote to convict Trump” or “Trump didn’t get busted by Mueller and he is going to get away with the Ukrainian deal.”

This is conventional wisdom. They might be getting it from PBS and NPR. They might even be getting it from Rachel Maddow! The experts she has on to talk about what is happening right now/ Not what will happen after the next horrific Trump action.

But if you are reading progressive blogs and listening to The Majority Report you have a opportunity to remind them of how things can change and that Trump’s people HAVEN’T “gotten away with it.”

Yes, Trump is still in office. But Michael Cohen is in jail. If Trump wasn’t President he likely would be in jail for those crimes too.

 Paul Manafort is in jail. Papadopoulos served time. Flynn, Gates and others are waiting to be sentenced. 

So when you talk about “politics” with people you think are like-minded at Thanksgiving, you might find out that even though they never watch Fox, they are still being tainted by it. Listen, remind them of who HAS gone to jail. They might bring up their fear of Democrats blowing it or not following through. When I hear that fear I remind them of two things:

1) There are multiple cases against Trump running at the same time. When the results come out they will be damning to Trump and his cronies.

2) Count on the incompetence, vindictiveness, greed and hubris of Trump and his cronies.
Maybe Trump’s lawyers will be able to parse the words, delay the testimonies and withhold the documents for months.  But there are fewer people in the White House to prevent Trump violating the constitution. Letting “Trump be Trump,” as we have seen with his actions abandoning the Kurds, is deadly.

Trump thinks he can walk on water, but he can’t. He has been walking on the backs of sneaky lawyers, piles of his father’s money and then shiploads of Russian mob money. He’ll walk on the crushed bodies of the people he threw under the bus to keep walking.

Impeachment is forcing him to walk faster. That bloated body of his isn’t going to respond well to more pressure. I’m a believer that the multiple methods used concurrently will bring him down.  He’s either going to be taken down by the congressional evidence produced of the crimes he has committed, or he’s going to trip over Rudy Giuliani’s body.  If both of those fail, he will bring himself down.  The clock is ticking.  I’m hopeful.

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A quiet, powerful protest

Published by digby on November 15, 2019

A quiet, powerful protest

by digby

A little Thursday night soother for you:

I love it. NOt that it will make them regret their dirty dealing. It was, after all, a huge success. But they should never be allowed to forget just in case on some level there is a tiny slice of humanity left inside them.

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Pardon me, Donald

Published by digby on November 15, 2019

Pardon me, Donald

by digby

The Roger Stone jury is deliberating as I write this.  And apparently, Stone thinks he’s going to be convicted. Karoli Kuns at Crooks and Liars reports:

…Media Matters reports that he turned to his good friend Alex Jones to convey a message to the (so-called) President of the United States: Pardon me.

“Roger Stone’s message is this: He expects to be convicted,” said Jones. “He said only a miracle can save him now.”

Later Jones quoted Stone directly. “He said to me, ‘Alex, barring a miracle, I appeal to God and I appeal to your listeners for prayer, and I appeal to the president to pardon me because to do so would be an action that would show these corrupt courts that they’re not going to get away with persecuting people for their free speech or for the crime of getting the president elected.’”

Oh! Such victimhood! It oozes.

Jones then took matters into his own hands. “These libtard jurors know damn well he’s innocent,” he complained. “But they want to sit there and feel all officious and powerful and send him to prison, hoping for some victory against flyover country that they despite so much, that they’re so angry they don’t have control of.”

I have no doubt that Trump is going to pardon Stone. He has to doesn’t he? Stone knows a lot. He also lies. He is also vengeful.

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Trumpers have been purging the state department from the beginning

Published by digby on November 15, 2019

Trumpers have been purging the state department from the beginning

by digby

They barely even try to hide it. But they try just enough to show that they know very well that they are doing something wrong:

In a new report published Thursday, the IG found there was no evidence that “impermissible factors influenced the personnel decisions” in two cases. But they were blocked from “essential information from key decision makers” and couldn’t make a determination in two other cases. In the last one, they found the individual was removed from her position because of “perceived political views, association with former administrations, and perceived national origin” — all of which are against department rules.

The report recommends added training for all political appointees about prohibited personnel practices and suggests possible disciplinary action be taken against senior officials, such as Brian Hook, who now serves as a senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a special envoy to Iran.

Despite those findings and detailed evidence laid out in the report, the State Department told the IG it “disagrees with the finding in the report that improper considerations played a role in the early termination of Employee One’s detail” and will not discipline Hook.

“Employee One” is Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, as confirmed by ABC News, a career civil servant removed early from her high-level position on the department’s Policy Planning staff after officials said she was born in Iran and was an “Obama/Clinton loyalist” that “did not belong” in her position, according to the report. In particular, an article from the online outlet Conservative Review that maligned Nowrouzzadeh was sent around on four separate email chains, including one forwarded by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to Margaret Peterlin, chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Nowrouzzadeh was born in Connecticut and had worked for the U.S. since the George W. Bush administration in 2005. She started at the State Department in 2012, according to the IG, and was detailed to President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, where she helped work on the negotiations and messaging around the Iran nuclear deal. After that, she returned to State and was spending a year on Policy Planning, the department’s in-house think tank that develops foreign policy ideas, when her time was cut short by three months. 

Email chains with the Conservative Review article were forwarded by Julia Haller, the department’s White House liaison, and Matthew Mowers, a senior adviser to the secretary. Hook, who was then the new head of Policy Planning (S/P) and called it “helpful” in two separate email chains, according to the report.

“As background, she worked on the Iran Deal, specifically works on Iran within S/P, was born in Iran and upon my understanding cried when the President won,” Haller wrote to colleagues on March 14, 2017.

Nowrouzzadeh herself sent the article to Hook, identifying what she called “misinformation” in it and expressed concern for her physical safety. Hook never responded to the email, but they later met in person. Hook told the IG he told her it was a “fairly standard” attack and she should ignore it.

But, according to the report, it was at least partially the grounds for the administration’s decision to remove Nowrouzzadeh, because conversations around terminating her “addressed only [her] perceived political beliefs and perceived place of birth.”

Hook told the IG that Mowers and Tillerson’s deputy chief of staff Christine Ciccone, who had also circulated the article, told him Nowrouzzadeh “did not belong” in her role, without specifying why. Ciccone denied that was true, while Mowers told the IG he couldn’t recall a conversation.
(MORE: Government shutdown hits State Dept. with deep, lasting effects)

Hook’s deputy Edward Lacey, a career employee who seemed like he was trying to ingratiate himself with Hook by blasting “Obama/Clinton loyalists” on the Policy Planning staff, emailed Hook on April 6, saying Mowers told him to begin the process of removing Nowrouzzadeh. “Yes I agree,” Hook replied.

At least one Trump official defended the criticism of Nowrouzzadeh, as Haller told the IG that her perceived nationality could raise questions of “conflict of interest” or make her ineligible for a security clearance, even though she already had one.

I don’t think you can assume that Trumpers haven’t run dozens of people out of government for similar reasons but they just decided it was the better part of valor to stay quiet about it. Why wouldn’t they be clearing out people who they see as “not their kind” in other ways?

This whole thing brings to mind an old scandal in which the Clinton administration garnered a special counsel investigation that lasted for six years because they fired members of the White House travel office due to an FBI investigation that suggested financial impropriety. Times have sure changed.

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Turkey’s new and bestest ally in US Government — Lindsey Graham?

Published by digby on November 14, 2019

Turkey’s new and bestest ally in US Government — Lindsey Graham?

by digby

Yesterday I posted about Trump’s weird meeting with Turkish President Erdogan, in which he invited a bunch of Republican Senators who have been critical of Turkey in recent days to the White House. He apparently thought he was “mediating” between his good, good pal Erdie and the Republicans who’ve had some qualms about all the violence and ethnic cleansing of American allies against ISIS.

He didn’t really need to mediate. These Republicans are all sniveling cowards who will do exactly as they’re told.

Exhibit A:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) blocked a resolution on Wednesday that would have formally recognized the Ottoman Empire’s genocide against the Armenian people.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) asked for consent to pass the resolution that would have provided “official recognition and remembrance” of the Armenian genocide.

“The United States foreign policy must reflect an honest accounting of human rights abuses, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide. We cannot turn our backs on the Armenian victims of genocide,” he said.

Menendez noted that he listened to President Trump’s press conference Wednesday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Turkish president scolded a House-passed resolution recognizing the genocide and instead promised to “establish a history commission.”

Graham objected to passing the resolution in the Senate, saying senators shouldn’t “sugarcoat history or try to rewrite it.”

Under the Senate’s rules, any one senator can ask for consent to pass a bill or resolution, but any one senator can block it.

Graham’s objection came hours after he took part in a White House meeting with Trump, Erdoğan and a group of GOP senators.

“I just met with President Erdoğan and President Trump about the problems we face in Syria by the military incursion by Turkey. I do hope that Turkey and Armenia can come together and deal with this problem,” he added on the Senate floor.

Graham added that he was objecting “not because of the past but because of the future.”

He was talking about his own future.

Has there ever been anyone to display their cravenness and desperation so publicly so often?

By the way, the Senators sat there like a bunch of potted plants as Trump and the Turkish leader treated them like lackeys:

During a meeting in the Oval Office Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pulled out an iPad to show a small group of Republican senators and President Donald Trump a propaganda video casting the Kurds in a negative light, according to a GOP source familiar with the situation.

The source called the video, which was first reported by Axios, “surreal” and “straight propaganda.”

Trump later went out and said that Erdogan has a very good relationship with the Kurds. You know, the people they are currently ethnic cleansing and calling terrorists.

If he weren’t currently being impeached this probably would have been a bigger story. As it is, the president of the United States shamelessly sucking up to authoritarian dictators is just another day in the Trump administration.

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Oh Rudy

Published by digby on November 14, 2019

Oh Rudy

by digby

He’s such a card:

Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has said he is confident the president will remain loyal to him as an impeachment inquiry unfolds in which the former New York mayor has become a central figure.

But Giuliani joked that he had good “insurance” in case Trump did turn on him, amid speculation Republicans will seek to frame him as a rogue actor.

In a telephone interview with the Guardian, in response to a question about whether he was nervous that Trump might “throw him under a bus” in the impeachment crisis, Giuliani said, with a slight laugh: “I’m not, but I do have very, very good insurance, so if he does, all my hospital bills will be paid.”

Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, who was also on the call, then interjected: “He’s joking.”

Actually, he wasn’t joking. I think it’s perfectly sane of him to remind his good, good friend of all the great “conversations” they’ve had. He tends to forget those things.

Of all Trump’s accomplices, he’s the one most in need of a presidential pardon if it comes to hat. He put a lot of people in federal prison. He knows he cannot go there, under any circumstances.

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