Month: December 2019

When Conservatives Complain We’re Not Civil or Serious

by tristero

Show ’em this:

A

It looks like we can all get along after all

by digby

Political scientists John Sides and Lynn Vavreck have been tracking voter preferences in a “large-scale project called Nationscape that we’re conducting with our colleague Chris Tausanovitch at the University of California at Los Angeles.”  They queried more than 6,000 voters weekly since July and found that Democratic voters really aren’t fighting about policy issues and many don’t seem to be choosing their favorites and runners up on the basis of ideology:

Using these data, we find a surprising amount of agreement among Democrats on major policy issues. Contradicting the conventional wisdom, clearly defined ideological “lanes” don’t seem to exist in the minds of most voters.

[T]here is little indication that voters are ranking the candidates primarily in terms of ideological affinity.

The reason may be that, right now, the ideological differences among the Democratic candidates, while noticeable to professional observers of politics, may not necessarily be large enough to register with Democratic voters paying only intermittent attention to the race. (One piece of evidence suggesting that at least some voters have yet to tune in: A large proportion of possible Democratic primary voters, 36 percent, still can’t provide a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Buttigieg, the candidate leading in Iowa, according to two recent polls.) And some voters, of course, also don’t have the kinds of strong and coherent ideologies that commentators assume.

In general, voters appear to be focused not on “lanes” but on the candidates who are getting news coverage and who thus appear viable contenders for the nomination. So when asked their second choice, supporters of each front-runner — Biden, Warren or Sanders — default to other front-runners, ideology aside.

The Nationscape project, supported by the Democracy Fund, provides other reasons to doubt that the Democratic Party is as divided as it’s often portrayed. Regardless of their candidate preferences, Democrats largely agree on many policies that have emerged as supposed litmus tests for who counts as moderate or progressive. In the past four weeks of our surveys, for example, more than 75 percent of likely Democratic primary voters supported raising taxes on families making more than $600,000, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and having the government provide a job to any American who needs one.

Perhaps predictably, then, supporters of the leading Democratic candidates — Biden, Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg — are also not particularly divided on these policies. Take raising taxes on the wealthy. This type of policy is most associated with Warren, and, indeed, 86 percent of her supporters favor it. But so do 78 percent of Biden supporters and 87 percent of Buttigieg supporters. Such numbers hardly suggest a party sharply divided into two warring wings.

It’s mainly Medicare-for-all on which divisions are apparent, but these are less sharp than many people assume. Among all Democrats we surveyed, 68 percent support “providing government-run health insurance to all Americans,” while 65 percent endorse the enactment of Medicare-for-all. Even here, when support wasn’t unanimous, it wasn’t because significant fractions of Democrats opposed these policies outright: Only 17 percent opposed Medicare-for-all. The rest were simply unsure.

This pattern holds among supporters of specific candidates, too. Eighty percent of Sanders supporters favor Medicare-for-all, as do 67 percent of Warren supporters — but so do 58 percent of Biden supporters and 55 percent of Buttigieg supporters. And opposition to Medicare-for-all tends to be mild: Only about a quarter of Biden and Buttigieg supporters outright reject it. And even among these voters — supporters of moderate candidates who oppose Medicare-for-all — about two-thirds still have a favorable view of Warren and Sanders.

There’s one framing of Medicare-for-all that leads to division. When we presented it as the outright elimination of private insurance, rather than leaving it to respondents to define it, a sizable split among Democrats emerged. Thirty-nine percent supported “abolishing private health insurance and replace with government run health insurance” while 33 percent opposed it, and the rest were unsure. This policy was more popular among supporters of Sanders or Warren than Biden or Buttigieg, but responses to it were lukewarm across the board: Only 49 percent of Sanders supporters favored it. (Seventy-six percent of Democrats in our sample support a “public option,” however.)

The tendency to overstate the ideological differences among supporters of Democratic candidates is not new. It happened in the 2016 Democratic primary — as we showed in our book “Identity Crisis.” Although Sanders supporters were more likely than Clinton supporters to describe themselves as liberal, the two groups didn’t differ that much on key issues, including raising the minimum wage, increasing taxes on the wealthy and whether the government should do more to provide health care and child care.

Of course, we should expect candidates to focus on where they disagree with their opponents, just as they did in the most recent debate. Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), for example, criticized Warren’s wealth tax as “cumbersome” and hard to implement. It’s hard to say “vote for me” if you’re the same as everyone else.

But voters don’t seem to follow these disagreements in detail, much less consider them “profound divides.” In their minds, the candidates’ policy positions — let alone an alleged war for the soul of the Democratic Party — may well be taking a back seat to other priorities such as nominating someone who can beat President Trump.

It’s still early. Most people are only vaguely paying attention. After the first of the year it’s going to start getting very real. But this information is interesting in that it suggests the desire to beat Trump really is the overriding motivation across the whole coalition. I actually think that means we might get a progressive administration which, in my view, is going to be necessary to institute the needed reforms. It makes me feel a little hopeful for a change.

.

Nothing to see here, Congress. Move along.
by Tom Sullivan

An overwhelming amount of news broke Monday night.

Attorney General Bill Barr reprises his pre-release distortions of the Muller report, this time with the Justice Department’s inspector general findings about FBI’s Russia investigation. Barr reportedly disputes the conclusion that the FBI’s investigation was “adequately predicated” on Trump campaign aid George Papadopoulos’s besotted blabbing to an Australian diplomat that Moscow had thousands of Hillary Clinton emails.

Democrats are considering broadening the scope of possible articles of impeachment against Donald Trump to include obstruction of justice offenses chronicled in the Mueller report. The House Judiciary Committee begins its impeachment hearings on Wednesday. With Republicans falling in line behind the president, some Democrats want to move beyond a narrow focus on Trump’s abuses of power with Ukraine.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) believes demonstrating a pattern of abuse is in order. “If you show that this is not only real in what’s happening with Ukraine, but it’s the exact same pattern that Mueller documented … to me, that just strengthens the case.”

Regarding patterns of abuse, BuzzFeed News received another tranche of FOIA documents from the Mueller probe Monday evening. Jason Leopold dumped them online and invited crowd-sourcing of news from nearly 300 pages of FBI interview summaries (“302 documents”).

One of the first items to surface is from an interview with former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen (now serving a prison sentence for lying to Congress, tax fraud, and campaign finance violations). From page 37 of the PDF, BuzzFeed’s team reports:

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, told FBI agents about negotiations to build a gleaming Trump Tower in the heart of Moscow, about how much Trump, who was then in the midst of a presidential campaign, knew about the negotiations, and about the false statement that Cohen later made to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees about it all.

Cohen said that during the presidential campaign, he informed Trump that he had a discussion with a “woman from the Kremlin” about the plan to build the tower, according to a Nov. 20, 2018, summary of his interview with FBI agents and prosecutors from Mueller’s team.

“Cohen told Trump he spoke with a woman from the Kremlin who had asked specific and great questions about Trump Tower Moscow, and that he wished Trump Organization had assistants that were that good and competent,” the FBI summary says.

He also said that in his letter to Congress about the development, he initially wrote that he had “limited contact with Russian officials.” But that line was struck from the letter. Cohen said he did not know who specifically struck it.

Trump attorney Jay Sekulow told Cohen not to elaborate on details of the Moscow project so as not to “muddy the water.” Sekulow told the Associated Press Monday night (NYT story) Cohen never told him anything about any call with a woman from Russia. He did not respond to BuzzFeed’s request for comment. That is: Nothing to see here, Congress; move along.

Now might be a good time to remind readers that members of Team Trump feel “no obligation to be honest with the media.”

Josh Gerstein, legal affairs contributor for Politico, believes many of the redactions in the FOIA documents relate to conversations with the president. Marcy Wheeler guesses that’s right:

This is right: DOJ responding to Mueller FOIAs by calling them deliberative privilege. My GUESS is they think once Mueller decided stuff was too sensitive, it would always be b5. But it'll be an epic lawsuit. https://t.co/KGxYGQ7I4Q— emptywheel (@emptywheel) December 3, 2019

Wheeler also responds to the Republicans’ prebuttal of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment report in a tweet thread here. That report is scheduled for public release today.

Finally, Natasha Bertrand reports for Politico that the Senate Intelligence Committee investigated the Ukraine conspiracy allegations and, “according to people with direct knowledge of the inquiry, and found no evidence that Ukraine waged a top-down interference campaign akin to the Kremlin’s efforts to help Trump win in 2016.” Not that that will stop Republicans from publicly claiming (for Trump’s benefit) that this Moscow-inspired conspiracy theory is not a dead issue.

Republican chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina told Frank Thorp of NBC, “I don’t think there’s any question that elected officials in Ukraine had a favorite in the election.” Asked whether having a preference amounted to election interference, Burr challenged the news media to look into it and refused to answer if he had.

Even if Ukrainian officials preferred Clinton over Trump in 2016 and publicly said so, disliking Trump does not an election interference conspiracy make, as Burr well knows. But he’s got a liege lord to serve.

A fun little moment of recognition

by digby

I was writing furiously this morning and this made me look up at the top of the 11 AM hour because I recognized the words and thought what the hell?

It’s nice to know that some in the MSM are reading… lol.

.

He is the chosen one?

by digby

The “portrait” he bought with his charity’s money

This piece in the Atlantic about Trump’s narcissism is fascinating and maddening:

Senator Ted Cruz once described Donald Trump as “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen.” That characterization echoes what many psychological researchers and therapists have long concluded. Although the American Psychiatric Association strongly discourages mental-health professionals from assigning mental-illness labels to public figures, some clinicians have even suggested that President Trump has narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD. In a recent article in The Atlantic, George T. Conway III argued that Trump exhibits all the classic signs of NPD, and that for that reason, among others, he is unfit for office.

But Trump is stranger than any diagnostic category can convey. Narcissism is a psychological construct with profound implications for an individual’s well-being and interpersonal relationships. Personality and social psychologists have done hundreds of studies examining narcissistic tendencies, revealing certain patterns of behavior and outcome. In some ways, Trump fits those patterns perfectly. But in at least one crucial respect, he deviates.

Back in June 2016, I wrote in this magazine about how narcissists “wear out their welcome”:

Psychological research demonstrates that many narcissists come across as charming, witty, and charismatic upon initial acquaintance. They can attain high levels of popularity in the short term. As long as they prove to be successful and brilliant—like Steve Jobs—they may be able to weather criticism and retain their exalted status. But more often than not, narcissists wear out their welcome. Over time, people become annoyed, if not infuriated, by their self-centeredness. When narcissists begin to disappoint those they once dazzled, their descent can be especially precipitous. There is still truth in the ancient proverb: Pride goeth before the fall.

Nearly three years into Trump’s presidency, how does this generalization about narcissism hold up for him? On the one hand, many of the people who have staffed Trump’s administration have learned that he is not the “stable genius” he claims to be. Disappointed and beaten down, they have left in droves. On the other hand, Trump has retained the loyal backing of many voters despite scandal, outrage, and chaos. How is this possible? Why has Trump followed the predictable course for narcissism in one way, alienating many who have served in his administration, and defied expectations in another way, by continuing to attract an adoring core? 

At its mythic heart, narcissism is a story of disappointment. The ancient source is the Greek tale of Narcissus, a beautiful young boy who falls in love with his reflection in a pool. Captivated with his beguiling image, Narcissus vows never to leave the object of his desire. But the reflection—forever outside his embrace—fails to reciprocate, and as a result Narcissus melts away (in one version of the story), a victim of the passion burning inside of him. The lover’s inconsolable disappointment is that he cannot consummate his love for the reflection, his love for himself.

A real-life narcissist, by contrast, manages to take his eyes off himself just long enough to find out if others are looking at him. And if the narcissist has admirers, this makes him feel good. It temporarily boosts his self-esteem.

Likewise, his admirers feel a rush of excitement and allure. They enjoy being in the presence of such a beautiful figure—or a powerful, creative, dynamic, charismatic, or intriguing figure. They bask in his reflected glory, even if they find his self-obsession to be unseemly. As time passes, however, the admirers grow weary. Once upon a time, they thought the narcissist was the greatest, but now they suspect that he is not. Or maybe they just get tired of him, and disgusted with all the self-admiration. They become disappointed, for very few narcissists can consistently provide the sufficient beauty, power, and greatness to sustain long-term unconditional devotion. In the end, everybody loses. The former fans loathe themselves for being fools, or else they blame the narcissist for fooling them. And the narcissist never attains what can never be humanly attained anyway: supreme and unending love and adoration of the self.

It’s a long and interesting article about how he’s alienated insiders who tried desperately to help him. That, apparently, tracks with what narcissists usually do. But how can we explain his hardcore, unmovable base? That’ the strange part. He attempts to explain it:

Those who can’t point to specific achievements may remain loyal supporters because they hear relatively little that is expressly negative about their hero. If the president shot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue, would Fox News even cover it? Trump supporters and Trump detractors live in different worlds. They may not speak to one another about politics, knowing that such a conversation is likely to end badly. They get their news from different sources. They stay faithful to their respective political tribes.

But the crux of the matter—the secret to Trump’s success with the base—may be that if bad news can’t quite pierce the Trumpist bubble, neither, in a way, can Trump. The millions of American voters who adore the president do not have to interact with him directly. Unlike the White House staff, they do not have to endure Trump’s incendiary outbursts or kowtow to his unpredictable whims. As anonymous members of a television audience, they can gaze upon their hero from afar.

If they want to get a little closer, they can attend a Trump rally. In the local sports arena or civic center, they can sit just a few hundred feet away from the president, cheering and chanting. They can express their love for the him in the presence of thousands of others who love him too. They can laugh at his jokes and partake of the anger and disgust he expresses toward his enemies. Excitement fills the arena. What outlandish thing will he do? What will he say to capture the headlines of the next day? A Trump rally is a safe space for Trump supporters. They can sit back and enjoy the performance, because whatever he says cannot directly threaten them. He will be gone tomorrow.

The relationship that Trump enjoys with rally-goers may mirror the one he established more than a decade ago with viewers of The Apprentice. In her article “From Apprentice to President,” the cognitive scientist Shira Gabriel argued that viewers of Trump’s reality-television show formed “parasocial bonds” with the host. These “one-sided psychological bonds with specific media figures such as favorite celebrities” leave the viewer feeling that she truly knows the star and enjoys a special relationship with him. After statistically controlling for a range of other factors, Gabriel found that American television viewers who established parasocial bonds with Trump as the host of The Apprentice were disproportionately likely to vote for him in the 2016 presidential election, even if they were Democrats. They were also more likely than others to report that they believed Trump’s promises to bring back factory jobs to the United States, build a wall on the Mexican border, and defeat America’s enemies in the Middle East. If it were not for The Apprentice, Gabriel argued, there would be no President Trump.

Trump’s biggest fans have a parasocial bond with an icon—whereas his advisers and staff must work through a real-life social bond with a difficult human being. Trump’s biggest fans believe that they have an up-close-and-personal relationship with Trump—but they never actually see the man up close.

Other charismatic presidents, such as Ronald Reagan and Obama, probably established parasocial bonds with their supporters, too. The relationship between Trump fans and Trump may be more resilient, however, because of the peculiar nature of the president’s narcissism.

Generally speaking, politicians work hard to present themselves to the American people as regular human beings whose emotional lives and personal stories may resonate with their fellow citizens. Trump is strangely different, and he revels in that. He is a stable genius who admits to no faults. He has no inner doubts. He has never made a mistake. He has never failed. As one of the countless examples of Trump setting himself apart from every other human being on the planet, consider this statement he made on The Tonight Show in 2015: “I think apologizing’s a great thing, but you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize, sometime in the hopefully distant future, if I’m ever wrong.”

The fact that Trump will not admit to error sets him apart from most narcissists. Research shows that highly narcissistic people often create heroic stories of their own lives wherein they have triumphed over their limitations and failures, against all odds, to become the awesome people that they believe they are. Trump has never talked about himself in that way, even when urged to do so. Instead, he suggests that he has always been perfect, like the flawless image of Narcissus in the pool.

“I am the chosen one,” Trump told reporters in August, in response to questions about obtaining a trade deal with China. In claiming this almost superhuman status, Trump may somewhat inoculate himself against critical press. His supporters adore him as something like a larger-than-life force, a beautiful persona reflected in the pool. Should they encounter new negative information about the president, they may judge it against the “evidence” of their acquaintance with the president’s persona—and discount it. The contrast is simply too great between what the “fake news” claims, and the infallible presence onscreen.     

The president’s raging narcissism has created chaos in the White House, and it has driven away scores of advisers, staff members, and others who had hoped to serve productively in his administration. As is usually the case with narcissists, Trump has worn out his welcome. He has disappointed and alienated many of the people with whom he has worked closely, as narcissists eventually do.

But Trump’s unusual brand of narcissism has simultaneously worked to solidify his loyal base of support in the American public at large. Those who admire him from afar may enjoy an extraordinarily durable parasocial relationship with a reflected persona that is deeply familiar to them. They know in their heart who Donald Trump is. They continue to admire his wonderful and unchanging essence, beautiful like the boy in the pool, even if they know very little about what it is like to encounter Donald Trump as a real human being. 

Or … it’s a cult of personality.

Whatever it is, it’s twisted and dangerous in a leader of the world’s only superpower. 

.

Trying to rig the election is the most important impeachable crime

 by digby

He welcomed the cheating in 2016. Celebrated it openly. (I love Wikileaks!!!)  He has tried to do it again for 2020, this time using the full force of the US Government to get it done. Depending on free and fair elections to decide the fate of this president is extremely risky:

Ironically for Trump’s defenders, their argument that this should be decided at the ballot box in the next election reveals precisely why he must be removed from office and disqualified from running again.

When it comes to foreign election interference: Fool America once, shame on Trump and his foreign supporters; fool America twice, shame on America. Russia helped Trump in the last election; he has already pressured Ukraine and asked China for help in the next one.

As so often, the wisdom of our Constitutional Framers is instructive. Spoiler alert: Alexander Hamilton (in Federalist No. 72) knew Trump was coming:

An avaricious man, who might happen to fill the office, looking forward to … yield[ing] up the emoluments he enjoyed … might not scruple to have recourse to the most corrupt expedients. 

An ambitious man, too, when … seated on the summit of his country’s honors, … would be … violently tempted to embrace a favorable conjuncture for attempting the prolongation of his power, at every personal hazard.

Put another way, Donald Trump likes how he can line his and his family’s pockets with emoluments—at his D.C. hotel, his far-flung golf resorts, Mar-a-Lago. Now, with the potential of election loss next year, he makes “recourse to the most corrupt expedients.” He is indeed “violently tempted” to every effort to prolong his power.

Our Framers expected, our Constitution allows, and our national ideals demand that Donald Trump be prevented from cheating in the next election. Other than denying him the Republican party nomination, impeachment by the House and removal and disqualification by the Senate is the only remedy.

Sadly, that won’t happen. But if a majority of Senators (which means a handful of Republicans) would vote to remove, even if they can’t get to two thirds, it would send a message that he cannot expect total support should he try to do it again. It’s not much. It won’t stop him from strutting around like a conquering hero insisting he’s been “totally exonerated.” But any crack in the wall of support might give him second thoughts about doing something totally outrageous.

.

What is this cult you speak of?


by digby

Some truly embarrassing polling numbers for the Republican Party

Who is the best Republican president between Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln? For most Republican respondents to a recent poll, the answer is Trump.

In response to the question, “Which Republican president was better?,” more than half (53 percent) of GOP respondents answered “Trump,” while 47 percent answered “Lincoln.”

The poll was conducted by The Economist magazine and polling site YouGov.com.

Lincoln, however, was the preferred Republican president among Democrats (94 percent), independents (78 percent), and the pool of all respondents (75 percent). Lincoln was also tops among men, women and all other categories – except Republicans

In a way, it’s not really all that surprising. After all, Lincoln freed the slaves and defeated the confederacy. A majority of Republicans today are probably not big fans of any of that.

Trumpie’s not going to be happy about this, however:

There were other mixed results for Trump in a comparison against Ronald Reagan, according to the Washington Times.

In one section of the poll, Republicans were asked to rank Republican presidents on a scale of 1 to 8, with 1 being “best” and 8 being “worst.” Trump was considered the best by 32 percent of Republican respondents, followed by Lincoln (29 percent) and Reagan (27 percent).

But when asked directly whether Trump or Reagan was the better president, 41 percent of Republican respondents said Trump while 59 percent said Reagan.

Look for him to start slagging Reagan in his rallies.  This will not stand.

Meanwhile, here’s the fever swamp denizen Gateway Pundit this morning:

.

Zelensky speaks

by digby

 
He spoke to TIME Magazine about the whole controversy:

Hardly six months into his tenure as the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky has already learned to temper his expectations. He does not expect his first round of peace talks with Russia, which are scheduled to take place in Paris on Dec. 9, to end the war that has been raging along their border for the past five years. Nor does he expect too much from his Western allies going into these negotiations, Zelensky said in a wide-ranging interview on Saturday.

Speaking to reporters from TIME and three of Europe’s leading publications, the President explained that, despite getting caught up in the impeachment inquiry now unfolding in Washington, D.C., Ukraine still needs the support of the United States.

Otherwise his country does not stand much of a chance, Zelensky said, in its effort to get back the territory Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, starting with the Crimean Peninsula. Nor can Ukraine rely on steady financial support from abroad if President Donald Trump and his allies continue to signal to the world that Ukraine is corrupt, Zelensky said. “When America says, for instance, that Ukraine is a corrupt country, that is the hardest of signals.”

During the interview in his office in Kyiv, the comedian-turned-president denied, as he has done in the past, that he and Trump ever discussed a decision to withhold American aid to Ukraine for nearly two months in the context of a quid pro quo involving political favors, which are now at the center of the impeachment inquiry in Congress.

But he also pushed back on Trump’s recent claims about corruption in Ukraine, and questioned the fairness of Trump’s decision to freeze American aid. “If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us,” he said. “I think that’s just about fairness. It’s not about a quid pro quo.”

Zelensky has no choice but to try to make amends with this monster in the White House. His country depends upon it. He denies they ever personally “discussed a quid pro quo” but everyone knows that he made Zelensky an offer he couldn’t refuse. It’s right there in the “transcript” Trump inexplicably released and demands that everyone must read.

Trump, of course, is saying he’s been completely exonerated. As he always does:

Trump is lying and this Fox News chyron helps him spread it. Zelensky said no such thing: https://t.co/Ern6aidcHF pic.twitter.com/K7Ly8zqS5E

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 2, 2019

Here’s the actual exchange:

When did you first sense that there was a connection between Trump’s decision to block military aid to Ukraine this summer and the two investigations that Trump and his allies were asking for? Can you clarify this issue of the quid pro quo? 

Look, I never talked to the President from the position of a quid pro quo. That’s not my thing. … I don’t want us to look like beggars. But you have to understand. We’re at war. If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us. I think that’s just about fairness. It’s not about a quid pro quo. It just goes without saying.

It’s understandable that he can’t admit to the quid pro quo. But we know that Zelensky agreed to the CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria.  It was only the intervention of the whistleblower that stopped him from having to do it.

 You can read the whole transcript of the interview here.

The Republicans are bringing their impeachment circus to town


by digby

My Salon column this morning:

House Democrats said they planned to move quickly on impeachment and it appears they really meant it. It’s hard to believe that the process has come this far in just eight weeks, but Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the House leadership seem determined to get this thing over with as soon as possible, so it’s rushing toward completion before we can even catch our breath. (I’m on record disagreeing with that strategy if it means ignoring the gigantic body of evidence pointing to corruption and the obstruction of justice documented in the Mueller report. But nobody asked me my opinion, so …)

Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has said his committee will have a full report on its findings in Trump’s Ukraine bribery scandal ready for review by the House Judiciary Committee this week. The hearings, depositions, text messages and contemporaneous notes from the witnesses, as well as the White House “transcript” containing what amounts to a presidential confession, are all public knowledge. So the report is unlikely to contain any surprises. But Schiff did not rule out other information “coming to light,” and it’s certainly possible. It seems as if there is a new crime revealed every day.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., will gavel his committee’s first hearings on Wednesday morning. Members plan to first hear from various experts about the impeachment process itself and then begin the process of evaluating the evidence. That certainly means the Intelligence Committee report, and possibly more information from the Mueller report and other committees engaged in oversight. If they determine the evidence meets the constitutional criteria they will draw up articles of impeachment and put them to the House for a vote.

Republicans have been whining for the past two months about “the process,” rending their garments over the fact that the president wasn’t allowed to have lawyers present to defend him during the Intelligence Committee hearings. (One might have thought that the Republicans on the committee might have felt injured by that, but they played along, unaware or simply not caring that the president was essentially calling them chopped liver.)

It’s still unclear exactly how Nadler plans to proceed, but it’s possible he had thought to follow the Bill Clinton impeachment model, under which hearings would first establish the constitutional grounds for impeachment, followed by appearances by the chairs of relevant committees presenting evidence of impeachable offenses, and culminating with a presentation by the president’s lawyers giving their side of the story. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

Nadler offered the White House the opportunity to participate in the Judiciary Committee hearings, but late Sunday night White House counsel Pat Cipollone issued another incomprehensible, word-salad letter to the committee refusing to have anything to do with what he claims is an unfair process. It’s far more likely that the White House doesn’t care to participate because it can offer no reasonable defense. It’s one thing to have GOP congressmen blathering on about Joe Biden and conspiracy theories, and quite another to have a professional attorney excuse Trump’s behavior under oath. We have yet to see anyone effectively make a coherent case in his favor, beyond fatuously claims that the president is a crusader against corruption, which is ludicrous but still would not excuse his bribing a foreign leader to help sabotage a political rival and smear the opposing party. It is indefensible on the merits and one can certainly understand why none of his lawyers would want to go there.

So it looks like it’s going to be up to Republican members on the committee to make his case for him. Judging from what we’ve heard from various prominent Republicans over the weekend, we can expect that this next phase will see a ratcheting up of resistance to the proceedings and more antics from the backbenchers on the Judiciary Committee. They have some real characters who are ready to turn this into a wild and crazy trip down the rabbit hole.

We don’t yet know how Nadler plans to run the hearings but I think everyone hopes he follows Schiff’s example. A draft of possible impeachment proceedings from September indicates that Nadler plans to allow committee staffers “designated by the chairman and ranking member” to “ask questions of witnesses for a total of one hour, equally divided across the parties (in addition to the normal questions from members),” so it’s likely that the hearings will at least have an hour or so of meaningful exchanges.

But that’s going to be tough. This committee is one of the most rancorous in the House and it has twice as many members as the Intelligence Committee. Many of them are showboating egomaniacs on a good day. Both Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, who were highly combative during the Intelligence Committee hearings, also sit on Judiciary, so we can expect more of their red-meat performances. And we can be sure that Trump’s most loyal guard dog, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, along with borderline crackpot Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, will be looking for ways to upend the proceedings.

As Judiciary member Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told Fox News on Sunday, “it’s a bunch of brawlers sometimes on the Judiciary Committee, so it should get pretty hot and under the collar as we go along. I don’t think things have been done the way they’ve been done in the past, Mike, and so it causes some rancor and it should be pretty — much more feisty, I would say than the Intel Committee was.”

Nadler has his hands full, to say the least. But if anyone thinks that the circus atmosphere will be over once the House votes on impeachment and it moves to the more staid and dignified Senate, they should think again. Republican senators are behaving little better than Gaetz and Gohmert. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has vowed to call Hunter Biden to testify on the premise that “we’re not going to live in a country where only one party gets investigated.” (Which must have made Bill Clinton shake his head in wonderment, considering that Graham was one of the House managers of his impeachment trial.)

But Graham has to battle another Southern senator for the role of most outrageous Trump defender. That would be Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who has been currying favor with Trump by appearing on the Sunday shows making rash claims about Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election.

Republicans literally spreading Russian disinformation manufactured on some troll farm. https://t.co/WaMvjoA0lG

— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) December 1, 2019

This is crazy talk, but it’s very likely where the impeachment process is headed both in the House and the Senate. The most sober and dignified part of the process is probably behind us, unfortunately.

.

“The president called out her name as he acted out an orgasm in front of thousands of people at a Minneapolis rally on Oct. 11, 2019″

by digby

At his rally in Minneapolis, Donald Trump did an impression of former FBI agent Peter Strzok having an orgasm pic.twitter.com/JLms1il0xp

— Edward Hardy (@EdwardTHardy) October 11, 2019

It was one of the grossest moments at any of his rallies and that’s saying something. It was so gross that it prompted Lisa Page, the “Lisa” he was mocking in that depraved speech to speak on the record for the first time. She spoke with Molly Jong Fast for the Daily Beast:

That was the moment Page decided she had to speak up. “I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse,” she says. “It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. I decided to take my power back.” 

She is also about to be back in the news cycle in a big way. On Dec. 9, the Justice Department Inspector General report into Trump’s charges that the FBI spied on his 2016 campaign will come out. Leaked press accounts indicate that the report will exonerate Page of the allegation that she acted unprofessionally or showed bias against Trump. 

How does it feel after all this time to finally have the IG apparently affirm what she’s been saying all along? She said she wouldn’t discuss the findings until they were officially public, but she did note: “While it would be nice to have the IG confirm publicly that my personal opinions had absolutely no bearing on the course of the Russia investigations, I don’t kid myself that the fact will matter very much for a lot of people. The president has a very loud megaphone.” 

Page, 39, is thin and athletic. She speaks in an exceedingly confident, clear, and lawyerly way. But having been through the MAGA meat grinder has clearly worn her down, not unlike the other women I’ve met who’ve been subjected to the president’s abuse. She is just slightly crumbly around the edges the way the president’s other victims are. 

My heart drops to my stomach when I realize he has tweeted about me again. “It’s almost impossible to describe” what it’s like, she told me. “It’s like being punched in the gut. My heart drops to my stomach when I realize he has tweeted about me again. The president of the United States is calling me names to the entire world. He’s demeaning me and my career. It’s sickening.” 

“But it’s also very intimidating because he’s still the president of the United States. And when the president accuses you of treason by name, despite the fact that I know there’s no fathomable way that I have committed any crime at all, let alone treason, he’s still somebody in a position to actually do something about that. To try to further destroy my life. It never goes away or stops, even when he’s not publicly attacking me.”

He will enjoy reading that, as will his tens of millions of fans. This degrading, demeaning behavior is exactly what they love about him.

Does it affect you in your normal day-to-day life? 

“I wish it didn’t,” she said. “I’m someone who’s always in my head anyway – so now otherwise normal interactions take on a different meaning. Like, when somebody makes eye contact with me on the Metro, I kind of wince, wondering if it’s because they recognize me, or are they just scanning the train like people do? It’s immediately a question of friend or foe? Or if I’m walking down the street or shopping and there’s somebody wearing Trump gear or a MAGA hat, I’ll walk the other way or try to put some distance between us because I’m not looking for conflict. Really, what I wanted most in this world is my life back.”

You probably already know the story about Page and Strzok and the emails about their affair while they were working on the Clinton and Russia investigations. Trump has tweeted about it dozens of times. Strzok testified in public about it. (If you don’t, the article goes into it for you.)

Anyway, this is the part I had forgotten about:

The Inspector General’s office had guaranteed Page and Strzok that the affair would not be made public. But then, The Washington Post included the affair in its story. And in a slip of a second, Page goes from being an anonymous government lawyer to playing an unwilling and recurring role in Trump’s twisted tweetstorms. 

“So now I have to deal with the aftermath of having the most wrong thing I’ve ever done in my life become public,” she says. “And that’s when I become the source of the president’s personal mockery and insults. Because before this moment in time, there’s not a person outside of my small legal community who knows who I am or what I do. I’m a normal public servant, just a G-15, standard-level lawyer, like every other lawyer at the Justice Department.” 

And despite how awful that felt, Page had no idea it was going to get much, much worse.

“After this comes out, there’s a firestorm, of course, and now the president and the Republicans on the Hill latch on to this, and it becomes about political bias,” she explains. 

“A week or two later, Rod Rosenstein [then the deputy attorney general] was scheduled to testify on the Hill. And the night before his testimony, the Justice Department spokesperson, Sarah Flores, calls the beat reporters into the Justice Department. This is late at night on a weekday. Calls them in to provide a cherry-picked selection of my text messages to review and report on in advance of Rod Rosenstein going to the Hill the next morning.” 

Why does she think the administration released her text messages? 

“You’d have to ask Sarah Flores,” she says. “I can tell you that the reporters there that night were told that they weren’t allowed to source them to the Justice Department, and that they weren’t allowed to copy or remove them, just take notes. That’s what I know.” 

Those texts were selected for their political impact. They lack a lot of context. Many of them aren’t even about him or me.
Sarah Isgur Flores has left the administration and referred questions to the Justice Department. The department declined to comment. 

As Politico noted at the time, “The DOJ decision to release the text messages to the media and lawmakers before the IG report has drawn criticism from outside the department.” Ben Wittes wrote on the Lawfare blog, “Rosenstein here has, at a minimum, contributed to that circus—at the expense of his own employees. In throwing a career FBI agent and career FBI lawyer to the wolves by authorizing the release to the public of their private text messages—without any finding that they had done anything wrong—he once again sent a message to his workforce that he is not the sort of man with whom you want to share your foxhole.”

 Keep this in mind:

Broke this story 2 years ago next week, still remember the grief I got for it from certain DOJ beat reporters. Flores’ emails, FOIA’d by @CREWcrew, show her instructing reporters not to source the texts to DOJ even though she invited them over for viewing. https://t.co/sCdNYtbR6s https://t.co/1o3Y6O4UGm

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) December 2, 2019

You can see Sarah Isgur Flores today on CNN where she is often on speaking as a disinterested political “analyst.”

Molly Jong Fast concludes with the observation that Trump’s destruction of Lisa Page’s life is not just another illustration of his gleeful misogyny it’s more evidence of his destruction of government itself. He has polluted and corrupted everything he’s touched. And episodes like that show how the press has often helped him do it.

Read the whole interview. It’s depressing and frightening all at once.

.