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Month: February 2020

Drip, drip, drip

Published by digby on February 1, 2020

The Department of Justice joins the GOP Senate majority in the cover-up:

The Department of Justice revealed in a court filing late Friday that it has two dozen emails related to the President Donald Trump’s involvement in the withholding of millions in security assistance to Ukraine — a disclosure that came just hours after the Senate voted against subpoenaing additional documents and witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial, paving the way for his acquittal.

The filing, released near midnight Friday, marks the first official acknowledgment from the Trump administration that emails about the President’s thinking related to the aid exist, and that he was directly involved in asking about and deciding on the aid as early as June. The administration is still blocking those emails from the public and has successfully kept them from Congress.

A lawyer with the Office of Management and Budget wrote to the court that 24 emails between June and September 2019 — including an internal discussion among DOD officials called “POTUS follow-up” on June 24 — should stay confidential because the emails describe “communications by either the President, the Vice President, or the President’s immediate advisors regarding Presidential decision-making about the scope, duration, and purpose of the hold on military assistance to Ukraine.”

And to think the right-wingers shriek all day long about the Deep State.

The Department of Justice appears to be thoroughly corrupted at this point. To wait until the midnight after the Senate voted not to hear witnesses or subpoena documents that might shed more light on the president’s actions to reveal that there are more pertinent documents but they won’t release them anyway comes perilously close to some kind of trolling or, at least, a very calculated defiance.

We knew the DOJ helped Trump when they cavalierly dismissed the whistleblower complaint as a mere concern about campaign finance issues. This shows that they are actively involved in the cover-up right along with the US Senate.

A word cloud to ponder

Published by digby on February 1, 2020

Here are some interesting insights into how people see the top Democratic candidates. The Iowa caucus survey asked people to name the first negative and positive word that pops into their head. This is how it comes out:

I’ll let you come to your own conclusions. I will just note that I think it’s interesting that “woman” comes up pretty big as a negative for both women which, in a rational world, would be strange since women make up half the population.

Suicide pact

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 1, 2020

The U.S. Constitution may not be a suicide pact, but the Republican Party might be.

Watching a majority of the U.S. Senate refuse to hear evidence Friday against Donald Trump — evidence that inevitably will spill out anyway — was almost as disheartening as Trump’s win on November 8, 2016. What made it less so was 2016 set the stage for it as surely as Chekhov’s gun will go off before the curtain falls. Friday’s vote should not have been any surprise.

Trump says jump. His party says, “How high?”

No one on the Republican side gets out unscathed. Especially former national security adviser John Bolton. He could have testified before the House when his testimony under oath might have had national impact. Instead, he threatened to take the House to court and held back until his book was almost ready for the printer. That details are leaking out now reinforces the right-wing talking point that he’s only interested in book sales. Anything his revelations add now are tainted by Senate Republicans’ “perfidy,” as Sen. Chuck Schumer put it.

In closing remarks this week, House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff cautioned:

“The Constitution is not a suicide pact. It does not require us to surrender our common sense. Our common sense, as well as our morality, tells us what the president did was wrong. When a president sacrifices the national security interests of the country, it’s not only wrong but it’s dangerous. When a president says … he will continue to do it if left in office, it is dangerous. The framers provided a remedy, and we urge you to use it.”

But reasoning with a death cult about the implications of suicide is — I don’t know, pick your metaphor.

The final vote in the Senate is set for Wednesday. That Democrats negotiated a date after Trump’s Tuesday State of the Union Address is a kind of victory. It denies Trump the chance to crow, “I am invincible!” to a national audience. Not that the impeached, would-be monarch won’t try.

The challenge ahead for Democrats is how a Trump-fatigued electorate will respond this fall. Trump’s inauguration sparked the largest street protests in American history. Three years later, Trump is unbowed, congressional Republicans are cowed, and unindicted Trump co-conspirator Devin Nunes is suing an imaginary cow.

All week, I’ve wondered if Trump’s attempts to undermine Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency may have strengthened it. All the negative attention Trump has paid to Biden and his son reinforces the notion that Biden is Trump’s strongest potential opponent. Trump certainly thinks so. He’d rather run against Bernie Sanders. Whatever the progressive wing of the Democratic Party may want in a candidate, Biden may be what Democratic and independent voters most want in 2020: someone who can defeat Trump. And Trump himself and his impeachment defense team have been making the case all week that Joe Biden is that candidate.

Meanwhile, Trump the Petulant fumes about how unfair his avoiding culpability is.

And no matter what wrongdoing he gets away with, the 73-year-old will never stop playing the victim like a pouty 7-year-old.

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