Fiona Hill Is Here To F*ck Sh*t Up! And She's Bringing ... John Bolton?
Didn't see that one coming.
If you had John Bolton pegged as one of the good guys in the Ukraine debacle, please award yourself 10 points. Zero points will be awarded for predicting that Rudy Giuliani would be the criminal wunderkind who brings down the whole administration -- you can smell that idiot coming a mile off. Because of the scotch, and cigars, and pungent arrogance.
The New York Times was first to get the money quotes from former chief Russia advisor Fiona Hill's House testimony yesterday. Hill described then-National Security Adviser John Bolton as livid that Trump had outsourced America's Ukraine policy to Rudy Giuliani to manipulate for Trump's personal benefit. Calling the President's private attorney "a hand grenade who's going to blow everybody up," Bolton told Hill that she needed to report Rudy's shadow foreign policy role to "White House lawyers," making sure to add that he himself had nothing to do with their illegal schemes.
If You Don’t Stop And Look Around, You Might Miss The Impeachment. Your Sunday Show Rundown!
When the best you've got defending you on the Sunday shows is Ron Johnson and Jim Jordan, your prospects are not looking good.
The long-awaited Trump impeachment is speeding up! Mark Zaid, one of the attorneys for the Ukrainium One whistleblower, has stated he is now representing " multiple whistleblowers. The announcement of a second whistleblower -- the second intel whistleblower, on top of the IRS whistleblower who already existed, and who is being described as "an intelligence official with first-hand knowledge" (NOT "hearsay," Lindsey Graham!) of some of the allegations outlined in the original complaint, threw a wrench on ALL the talking points of Trump's ardent defenders, to the point that nobody from the White House even showed up for the Sunday shows. But a couple of idiots from Congress did!
It was perhaps most difficult this week for GOP Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Appearing on NBC's "Meet The Press," OshKosh M'Gosh Johnson was asked about what he told the Wall Street Journal about how EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland told him Trump was doing quid pro quos with Ukraine and basically extorting the nation for electoral assistance in exchange, but don't worry, Donald Trump told him that's a damn lie and Donald Trump always tells the truth.
It did not go well for Johnson.
GOP Impeachment Plan To Dress Up Like Grandma And Devour Swing State Dems Hits A Snag
Spoiler Alert: They're just assholes.
The Republicans have a crafty new strategy on deck to deal with impeachment. They're going to go to Grandmother's house, hide in her bed, put on her lace cap, and be so gentle and nice to the swing-district Democrats that they'll climb under the blanket and be devoured whole! IT CAN'T FAIL!
The Washington Post reports this morning that the GOP is floating a plan to woo congressional Democrats in Trump 2016 districts by promising a basket full of warm, sweet legislation if they'll only cuddle up next to the president and stop all that ugly impeachment talk.
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk freely, said the appeal would be based on these Democrats' 2018 election promises to work with the president — accompanied with a warning that impeachment would hamper possible legislative victories.
What a deal! The President will only do his job if the Democrats will promise not to do theirs! Or as freshman national security Democrat Elissa Slotkin told the Post yesterday at a town hall in Michigan, "The president of the United States acknowledged openly that he went to a foreign leader and asked for dirt on an American. I cannot give up the rule of law in some trade. That is not something anyone should be trading away."
Besides the whole NOT HOW CONSTITUTION GOES thing, we can think of one or twelve tiny problems with this plan.
Problem #1: The GOP are ASSHOLES, That's Kind of Their Brand
Bill Barr Is Knee Deep In Sh*t. And So Is White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.
The president's lawyers need to get some good lawyers. Again.
Bill Barr, you got some 'splainin' to do! The attorney general's decision to steal the whistleblower complaint from the Intelligence Committee's Inspector General looked BAD even before the transcript of President Armtwister's phone call with the Ukrainian president came out yesterday. Trump's persistent attempts to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to work with Barr and Rudy Giuliani to gin up fake dirt on Joe Biden made it WORSE. Now that we've seen the whistleblower complaint it looks UNFUCKINBELIEVABLY CORRUPT.
The very first paragraph of the body of the complaint says, "the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference in the 2020 U.S. election" and that "Attorney General Bill Barr appears to be involved as well." It should go without saying that Barr's recusal from any matter relating to the whistleblower complaint was not optional here, since he's now a fact witness as to whether Trump put his plan into effect. That he's out there now shouting from the rooftops that the orange Boss Hogg never did tell him to GIT THEM BIDEN BOYS is kind of the point. This is exactly what the Special Counsel statute was written for:
Steve Mnuchin Gonna Git Those Trump Boys ... Just Kidding, That's If He Weren't A Lying Hypocrite
It's the Sunday Show Rundown!
We begin with Treasury Secretary and
actor/producer of the hit film Rules Don't Apply, Steven Mnuchin, who appeared on CNN's "State of the Union" and NBC's "Meet the Press" to talk about the additional sanctions the Trump administration has put on Iran. But to Mnuchin's dismay, the main story was Trump seeking help from a foreign government (again) to get dirt against a political opponent (again) to win an election (again).
Focusing on "State of the Union," which spares us from Chuck Todd, Mnuchin tried the bold tactic of "I know nothing":
TAPPER: And just, as a general premise, is it OK with you for a president, any president, to pressure a foreign leader, a foreign leader that wants hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States in aid, to investigate a political rival? Is that acceptable?
MNUCHIN: Well, you're -- you're speculating that the president pressured. I don't have any reason to believe that the president pressured...
TAPPER: He brought it up eight times.
MNUCHIN: ... in any way. Again, you're speculating. Just...
TAPPER: That is not speculating. That is in "The Washington Post" and "The Wall Street Journal" that he...
MNUCHIN: So -- so, everything in "The Washington Post" and "The Wall Street Journal," we should assume, is always factual?
TAPPER: OK. So how many times did he bring it up, then?
MNUCHIN: I'm not aware.
Mnuchin flopped about when Jake Tapper asked my favorite rhetorical question:
TAPPER: But let me just close by asking, if, for instance, President Obama had pressured a foreign leader, Putin or the president of Ukraine, anyone, and said, I want you to look into Donald Trump Jr. or I want you to look into Eric Trump, international businessmen, both of them, would you not find that inappropriate?
MNUCHIN: Again, I'm not going to speculate on that...
For a second, Mnuchin almost sidestepped that question successfully ... but then he tried to help Trump's little Biden/Ukraine conspiracy and inadvertently hoisted himself by his own petard:
MNUCHIN: What I do find inappropriate is the fact that Vice President Biden at the time's son did very significant business dealings in Ukraine. I, for one, find that to be concerning. And, to me, that is the issue perhaps that should be further investigated.
TAPPER: I don't understand. So it is OK for Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump Jr. to do business all over the world, it's OK for Ivanka Trump to have copyrights approved all over the world while President Trump is president, but while Vice President Joe Biden was vice president, his son shouldn't have been able to do business dealings?
MNUCHIN: Again, I don't -- I don't really want to go into more of these details, other than to say...
TAPPER: Well, you're just setting a precedent that the president is violating.
MNUCHIN: Again, I think there is a significant difference in what you're saying, OK, or what I was saying between Biden and his son's relationship with the Ukraine oligarch and potential business dealings that the Trump Organization has had which predated his presidency.
Seems the only significant difference is that it's ok for Trump but not others. And like that, Tapper points out both the hypocrisy and projectionism of the Trump administration. For this and Mnuchin swearing more Iran sanctions work, here's the video:
We move on to former CIA Director and current Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. Appearing on both ABC's "This Week" and CBS's "Face the Nation," he was asked a very simple question: If the Iran sanctions are working, then why is the situation worsening instead of improving? Pompeo gave the same condescending answer in both, partially because both were asked by women (Martha Raddatz on ABC and Margaret Brennan on CBS, respectively), but it was his answer on CBS that had an interesting caveat:
BRENNAN: This attack on Iran. It seems Iran's behavior is getting worse, not better, based on the Trump administration's campaign. You've been very aggressive with these sanctions. Why do you think sanctioning them leads to better behavior?
POMPEO: Margaret, you-- you start the clock at the wrong point. Nineteen-seven--
BRENNAN: I'm talking about what happened this summer.
POMPEO: Nineteen seventy-nine is the trajectory of the Iranian Revolution. Forty years of terror. Forty years of terror.
That's not how it works! You don't get to conveniently choose the point in which the clock starts on history. But since Pompeo decided the "clock" starts on 1979, here's an interesting historical overview of why THAT particular year is interesting:
So Pompeo wants to start at the point where the CIA-installed Shah of Iran was deposed -- or when the consequences of our intervention in another country's government leadership destabilized the region began. Of course, that's a very convenient time to "start the clock" for the former CIA director. But if Pompeo has a problem with 1979, has no one told him about
1986 or Oliver North? Maybe this will help:
Seems rather convenient to leave out the part where we sold weapons TO Iran to fund an illegal war in Central America, which destabilized THAT region and created the migrant refugee crisis Trump ignores or cages in detention camps. Pompeo condescension, here is the video:
We end with former Secretary of Defense and retired Marine General James Mattis. While appearing on ABC's "This Week" to promote his book on leadership, he was asked by Martha Raddatz what makes a good leader.
MATTIS: Well, I think the most important thing that you have to have to be a good leader, is you have to have the ability to build trust, and that starts with listening. I'll put it in George Washington's words: listening, learning, helping and then leading.
But right before this answer, Mattis was asked a very straightforward question that he decided to sidestep:
RADDATZ: Secretary Mattis, I just want to turn to something else that's in the news, and that's the whistleblower investigation. President Trump just said "I hope they can put out that conversation." Should a president be asking foreign leaders to investigate political opponents?
MATTIS: Yeah, Martha, this is not something I have background on. I don't know anything more than what I read in the news. And apparently no one has seen the complaint, so I really prefer to talk about things I know more about.
Leadership, or whatever.
Have a week!
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Trump Campaign Manager Brad Parscale Draining Swamp All Over His Wife
Is Parscale pissing on our leg, or is it raining?
Brad Parscale is GRRRR SO MAD, you guys. Donald Trump's campaign manager will not stand for Fake News CNN accurately reporting that his wife Candice is the registered owner of a digital media company which raked in upwards of $900,000 from the pro-Trump America First Action PAC. How dare those scumbags viciously attack Republicans by printing truthful information showing that the "firewall" between the Trump campaign and the PACs slurping up sacks of secret cash is protected by Ol' Pube Beard's sacred promise not to speak to his own wife!
Trump's Taxpayer-Funded Trip To Hump A Fracking Well In Pennsylvania
Burn baby burn.
Donald Trump would set fire to the last glacier on earth if it meant he could win Pennsylvania again in 2020. He spent the entire day yesterday in the swing state getting high on the fumes of burning hydrocarbons and his own flaming ego. And you, the lucky American taxpayer, paid for the matches! Because the White House isn't even pretending to segregate the people's business from campaign events, as every president since Reagan has done. They just book him at a Shell plant in Monaco, Pennsylvania, stick a regular MAGA rally speech on the Teleprompter, and call it Remarks on American Energy and Manufacturing.
Ooops, make that Monaca, Pennsylvania. Thanks, crackerjack professionals in the White House Press Office!
What Is Bill Maher Wrong About Today?
It's your Real Time rundown because we don't know why.
We have decided to start recapping Bill Maher's Real Time. Because we hate ourselves.
After a boring interview with George Will, we moved on to Real Time's meat and potatoes, the panel discussion. This week's panel: “The Bulwark" editor Charlie Sykes, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, and “free speech champion" and New York Times Opinion writer Bari Weiss.
The panel discussion turned, as all of American life does lately, to whether we should
Impeach The Motherfucker in the aftermath of Trump's disastrous interview with George Stephanopoulos where he said he would not refuse foreign help nor report it to the FBI. Maher said we should impeach, for the correct reasons. Eliot Spitzer went with the feeble argument of
inaction waiting until the election:
Spitzer: Look, first you don't impeach someone for something he might do but hasn't done. Trump is a narcissistic demagogue who is the worst president we've ever had. Let's take that as a baseline. But, but ... I think, Bill, it is better for our democracy to beat him at the electoral box next year. We can impeach him, the Senate won't convict him. Let's beat him with democratic votes. We should do it, we can do it. Let's get a good candidate.
So a few things there, Client 9.
Rude Dems Blocking Trump's Salt-Of-Earth Everyman Ambassador Picks!
Meet some VERY BEST very best people!
MAY GOD OUR FATHER PAINT THIS COUNTRY RED WITH THE BLOOD OF JESUS! So sayeth Lynda Blanchard, President Trump's nominee for ambassador to Slovenia. NBC has a story today on Blanchard and the rest of the inaugural committee donors whose nominations to represent US America to the hottentots are stalled in the Senate for the inelegant reason that they're TOO STUPID. There's knowing in the abstract that Trump is selling off our diplomatic corps to any dickhead with a checkbook, and there's knowing that the guy he wants to send to the Bahamas thinks that nation is actually a US protectorate.
Look, before you get yer panties in a bunch, just remember that California real estate developer Doug Manchester was smart enough to give $1,000,000 to Trump's inauguration. So, like, he may not know anything about geography or history, but he's got enough to sense to pick a winner!
Yeah, it's going to be one of THOSE articles.
Not So Fast, Wingers! There Are Still One Or A Thousand Pending Investigations.
Not for nothing, but this isn't over.
BREAKING! The guy who sent Trump a letter saying, "Presidents are kings who can't obstruct justice, hire me!" has found that the president didn't obstruct justice! Thanks, Bill Barr -- you're a hell of a wingman.
While we await the release of the REAL Mueller report, as opposed to the Barr whitewash letter, let's take a moment to remind ourselves that the president's legal troubles are in no way at an end. He might well get away with playing footsie with the Russians, winking and nodding about sanctions and gratefully accepting the massive electoral boost from Putin's pet hackers, but he's not getting away with all of it. So here's a helpful list of the pending legal threats to the Trumpland gangsters.
Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler: Just The Witch Hunter We've Been Waiting For!
Play it again, Sam Nunberg! You played it for him, now you can play it for me.
Yes, there really is a Santa Claus. Only sometimes he waits for March, when he appears in the form of a jolly Jewish Judiciary Chairman from Manhattan who brings us sacks upon sacks of glorious document demands to be litigated, docketed, savored, and finally unwrapped in open hearing. HO HO L'CHAYIM!
Yesterday Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York dropped requests for documents -- because he's nice, and he asks politely before busting out those subpoenas -- on 81 different people and entities in Trumpland. Don't you ever let anyone tell you your vote doesn't matter. As Mr. Nadler put it in the Committee's announcement of the investigation:
Over the last several years, President Trump has evaded accountability for his near-daily attacks on our basic legal, ethical, and constitutional rules and norms. Investigating these threats to the rule of law is an obligation of Congress and a core function of the House Judiciary Committee. We have seen the damage done to our democratic institutions in the two years that the Congress refused to conduct responsible oversight. Congress must provide a check on abuses of power.
Put that shit directly in our veins, babeeee!
INFINITE SCREAMMMMM! Wonkagenda For Fri., March 1, 2019
Jared calls his father-in-law, HHS says no kiddy fiddling in baby jails, and the shitshow at CPAC. Your morning news brief!
Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things we may be talking about today.
Michael Cohen Is Ready For His Close-Up
Get it all out, buddy!
OOOOOH, SPILL IT HONEY! Michael Cohen has agreed to testify publicly before the House Oversight Committee about all Trump's dirrrrty filthy secrets. Well, not all of them. Chairman Elijah Cummings isn't trying to kneecap Robert Mueller's investigation like a common Trey Gowdy or Devin Nunes, so he'll steer clear of the details in the Russia investigation, so we guess we'll have to save getting recommendations for the best AirBnBs in Prague for another day, allegedly. But hinky shit at the Trump Org and the hush money payoffs to all the ladies that Trump bumped his orange bits against are fair game. Bow chicka bow bow! And also EWWWWWWWWW.
Cohen will appear in open session on February 7 "to give a full and credible account of the events which have transpired." And if we might be so bold, Yr Wonkette would like to suggest a question for Chairman Cummings. To wit: Who the hell is Executive 2?
Oh Great, Democrats Want To Let Americans Vote. What's Next, SOCIALIST TRANSGENDER ARUGULA?
This is what you voted for. Or at least a big chunk of it.
The new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives didn't waste any time getting to work last week. After passing a bill to reopen the government (DOA because no WALL, even though it's identical to a Senate bill that passed unanimously before the shutdown), Dems rolled out "House Bill 1," an ambitious package of election and ethics reforms aimed at making elections fairer and reducing the influence of money on politics. Republicans will never get behind it, but that's kind of the point: to call attention to the differences between the parties on some pretty basic matters of democracy and fairness, and to lay down a marker for what voters can expect Dems to run on in 2020.
It's also a pretty big departure from the Republican House in 2017, whose first legislative achievement was making it easier for people declared mentally incompetent to buy guns.
ONE DOLLAR, BOB! Wonkagenda For Fri., Jan. 4, 2019
Nancy Pelosi starts the 116th Congress off with a bang, and Trump loves Vladimir Putin's revisionist history. Your morning news brief!
Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things we may be talking about today.
STOP HITTING YOURSELF DEMS.
Sheldon Whitehouse wants YOU to stop being a fucking pushover, and he ain't talking to Nancy Pelosi!
Sup, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, cracking the DOMINATRIX KITTY WHIP at all of us and WE LIKE IT?
Twice, in 2000 and 2016, Democrats won the popular presidential vote, saw a Republican president sworn in, and went ahead without fussing much over the legitimacy of a president who lost the popular vote. We tend to care about process and respect rules. Imagine if President Obama had lost the popular vote and been sworn in. There'd never have been an end to it.
Republicans invented BirtherGate and simply refused to work with Obama, as if he were illegitimate, when he was a popular president who had really won—by a lot.
Five Republican justices on the Supreme Court gave a 5-4 decision unleashing partisan gerrymandering on the country, and the Republican Party instantly implemented its REDMAP project. REDMAP launched a new model of gerrymandering: gerrymander the big swing states to get the biggest Republican delegation you can, not to protect individual Republican members. Ironically, that meant creating some bombproof, highly-Democratic districts. Super-saturating those few Democratic districts left a statewide voter pool that could be gerrymandered into Republican districts everywhere else. Did it work? In 2012, Democrats won more overall votes than Republicans did in Pennsylvania, but Republicans had packed those Democratic voters so heavily into five districts that Republicans won all remaining thirteen districts. Pennsylvania's statewide vote, Democrat by a small margin; Pennsylvania's delegation in Congress, 13-5 Republican.
That helped Republicans gain the House of Representatives by 33 votes, even though Republicans lost the country by a million House votes overall. Had Democrats been the overall losers, yet through gerrymandering controlled the House, do you think Republicans would have let the public forget that, or conceded the legitimacy of the "majority"? Fat chance.
Over in the Senate, the advantage to small Republican states is baked in to the Constitution. The result is that in the current Congress, Democrats in the Senate represent about 40 million more Americans than the Republican "majority." Were the shoe on the other foot, every American would know about it.
You go read now, about how we shit the bed in our fights on climate change, dark money, and immigration reform, because we're askeered Breitbart might ACORN us, and how it is time to STAND UP AND SHOUT and stop LETTING FOX NEWS SAY WHAT IS TRUTH. We will here refrain from purity-testing Chuck Schumer's ass out as minority leader, oh wait no we won't, GO WAY CHUCK SCHUMER SHELDON WHITEHOUSE GETS YOUR JOB.
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