Trump Vengeance Machine Teleports To His First Impeachment
Tulsi sends a criminal referral after Ukraine PITCH PERFECT CALL whistleblower.
Like Jenna Marbles, now-again-President Donald J. Trump has got three looks. But instead of Homeless Guy, Twelve-Year-Old Boy, and Hooker, his troika is God, Business Deal Man, and Consequences Of His Own Actions Weaseler-Outer.
Allow this week’s cover of New York Magazine* to summarize the past year.
The Consequence-Weaseling is going great, no one in the history of all time has ever weaseled out of so many potential consequences of their actions so quickly. Except the weasel.
But Trump’s God-like lawless vengeance, not so great! For that he’s now having to go back, way back, to 2019 and his first impeachment, because the Department of Justice under Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche DuBois has been unable to dig up any actual evidence on Trump’s more recent enemies, even after (allegedly, we guess) doing warrantless fishing-expedition searches through targets’ lawyer’s files and loan and housing documents, and posting Ed Martin on the sidewalk outside of Letitia James’s house, peeping in the windows in a trenchcoat in the heat of summer.
Here comes Tulsi Gabbard, riding to the rescue! Russia’s girlfriend has sent a criminal referral to the office of (Acting) Attorney General Blanche for the whistleblower whose complaint helped trigger Trump’s 2019 impeachment and also for then-Inspector General Michael Atkinson who notified Congress LIKE HE WAS LEGALLY OBLIGED TO DO, alleging a “coordinated effort” within the intelligence community to “manufacture a conspiracy” to impeach Trump in 2019.
Then Tulsi went on Fox News to “hit the high points,” and they are toenail-smokin’-level high, you betcha! Though surely nothing compared to the toad-licking fantasies we’re fixing to hear from her ahead of Trump trying to steal the midterms. If you do not care to read and listen to all that bullshit, just put on your Dionne Warwick psychic crystal necklace, because these people are as predictable as a sunrise. What Gabbard is breathlessly describing is a normal and legal investigative process, and Congress getting briefed exactly like the law says they should be.
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And the evidence of that whole incident? We were there! WAFFLE HOUSE TIME MACHINE! To quote ourselves from September of 2019, “Uh oh, Rudy got his dick caught in Ukraine’s cookie jar!”
The New York Times reported yesterday that the whistleblower complaint wasn’t about a single phone call, but a series of actions by the president, which tracks with what we’ve been covering here for months now, namely that Trump seems to have been literally extorting Ukraine, by holding up military aid and demanding Ukraine commence bullshit investigations based on disproven allegations about Joe Biden that came out of Rudy Giuliani’s asshole. (Around here, we call the made-up scandal “Ukrainium One.”)
In essence Trump has been saying “You don’t get your aid unless you do NO COLLUSION to help me cheat my way into a second term by
framinginvestigating my political opponents.” Oh yeah, and he wants Ukraine to FESS UP that it only paid Paul Manafort all that blood money as part of a Deep State campaign led by Hillary Clinton. Or something. Yes, this is what supposedly sane and sentient human beings on the Right believe. No, it makes no fucking sense. Anyway, it’s mostly the Biden thing, based on Trump’s hallucination that Joe Biden somehow fired the corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor who was looking into a company Biden’s idiot son Hunter was one the board of. None of that happened.
Also note it was not just one PITCH PERFECT PHONE CALL, it was at least eight extortion attempts against our supposed ally, for reasons that had nothing to do with national security and everything to do with Trump trying to save his own ass. AS USUAL. What’s more, Trump ended up basically confessing during one of his moaning bitch sessions, who cares if he did it because he and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani had to do it for AMERICA because JOE BIDEN!
Via TPM:
“It doesn’t matter what I discuss, but I will say this. Somebody ought to look into Joe Biden’s statement because it was disgraceful where he talked about billions of dollars that he’s not giving to a certain country unless a certain prosecutor is taken off the case,” he said. “So somebody ought to look into that. And you wouldn’t because he’s a Democrat. And the fake news doesn’t look into things like that.”
Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani mentioned the same unsubstantiated claim on CNN Thursday evening about Biden.
“It’s a disgrace,” the President added. “But I had a great conversation with numerous people, I don’t even know exactly who you’re talking about, but I had a great conversation with numerous people, numerous leaders, and I always look for the conversation that’s going to help the United States the most. That’s very important.”
L’État, c’est lui! Unless it is time for some kind of accountability or consequences, that is. Then l’état c’est HUNTER BIDEN’S DONG.
Gabbard et al. also have alleged that mean old Joe Biden withheld aid to Ukraine until corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who had been actually delaying investigations into Burisma holdings, got fired. (Hunter had been on the board starting in 2014 in what looked more like an attempt by Burisma to look less corrupty and more Obama-level trustworthy. And, of course, he resigned in 2019, when his dad was also not president.)
And it was not just Joe Biden calling for Shokin’s firing — he was not even president at the time, anyway, Obama was — it was an international coalition. Also sounds like then-VP Biden was pretty fucking badass about it: “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” he told a Council on Foreign Relations panel in 2018 in recounting his visit. “Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”
Which the right-wing propaganda is now trying to massage into some sort of a BRIBE situation. I know you are, but what am I? I know you are, but what am I?
Oh hey, what ever happened with that intercepted phone call with foreigners talking about Jared Kushner that Gabbard refused to tell Congress even existed?
Say it together with me, Dionnes, not one got-damned thing.
It’s crazy-making, and in case someone has not told you yet today, you are not the crazy one, we promise. Put your own mental health first, because nobody else is going to, that’s for fucking sure!
The end.
*That whole NY Mag story is quite something, the meteoric rise into the inner White House circle of unrepentant former FBI agent turned January 6 defendant Justin Wise, who in 2018 also became a contractor Project Veritas under the code name “Bend Ghazi,” LOL, get it? That is, until he blew his own cover getting caught on film attempting to sneak and ding-dong gotcha at the Ohio Federation of Teachers Building in Cleveland in a “a ludicrous wig.” Everybody wants to be James O’Keefe, but it’s not so easy to be the Dildo Boat Captain, now is it? Hard out there for a pimp!
Anyway, Trump pardoned Wise, and since then he and incompetent freakazoid lawyer Ed Martin have been fruitlessly and incompetently grinding that Weaponization Working Group trying to make some kind of flour, though Wise has now resigned.
Better luck next fake news witch hunt!
[New York Magazine archive link / DNI press release]
PS., Anna Roisman, if you’re listening, I would like to order a remake of this but with LETITIA???
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTIONS TO THIS MATTER.
OT - I have some very sad news to share. Apparently, Paul and I are over. There's someone on Substack that DM'd me and told me my love life was a total failure and I needed to contact them IMMEDIATELY and I shouldn't ignore them because my life will be ruined if I don't.
I can't say I didn't write them a truly wonderful little note telling them they could fuck all the way off and my fucks for them was now complete.
Seriously, when did this shit start happening on Substack. It's not that I didn't delight in telling this cretin to fuck off it's just these grifting fucks are everywhere now and my patience is nil.
OT: As of 58 mins ago, "Trump has now made 13 posts over the last hour declaring victory in Iran."
https://bsky.app/profile/ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3mjpa3zv7xk2p