Impeachment Inquiry Starts Public Hearings

[jaysizzles]

The comedy show is about to begin with Republicans and Trump trying to spin Sondland's testimony in Trump's favor somehow. This is pretty damning testimony.

 

[rareboy]

So this is apparently someone who doesn't remember that Sondland is Trump's pick...after buying the Ambassadorship.

 

[luckynumbah7]

Looks like from previews read on Morning Joe on MSNBC that Gordon Sondland is going to lay it all out on Mike Pompeo, Rudy Giuliani and Trump... Sondland is totally not going to allow himself to be made the fall guy by Trump and the Republicans.

I was wondering who Cheeto'd chosen with a backbone.

 

[rareboy]

 

[Sausy]

On Team Trump, there is no backbone, no center of morality or ethics. Trump poisons everything and everyone he touches. To keep Trump beyond this term, America will deserve to fall apart. And it will... there's no saving America after eight years of this. It's still just about zero chance even after the Sondland testimony that enough Senate Republicans decide to end their toxic relationship with Trump and vote to remove him, but the more info coming out that hits Trump hard, the more difficult it will be for Republicans to confidently renominate him and face another four years of Trump being Trump. There are no guardrails now.... but the Democrats must not complicate things by having a either the center or left railing against whoever is nominated as either too radical left or too establishment and threaten to withhold support or enthusiasm. Getting the Cheeto in Chief out of the White House next November has to be the only thing on the mind of Democrats... absolutely NO thought of a significant independent run from either side that could still hand Trump the presidency... we cannot afford it.... we cannot afford becoming a nation run by Federalist Society zealots and Tea party extremists.

Pam Bondi is the perfect communicator for the ignoramus in chief...Good Lord, this Administration sure can pick em!

Brent Bozell… another long standing member of the right wing idiot brigade... ignorance is bliss for these folks.

 

[smokeshadow]

Unfortunately, the truth doesn't seem to matter to the Republicans

https://www.thenewcivilrightsmoveme...ey-will-not-impeach-trump-it-does-not-matter/

 

[gsdx]

^ Should we be surprised? They know they're going down and they must stop it.

 

[Sausy]

If anyone is the real enemy of the American people, it's President Trump and all those who enable him.. Republican officials as well as the 35-40% who will never hold Trump to account no matter what he does. If they carry the day in 2020, god Damn America to the earthly hell it will richly deserve.

 

[KaraBulut]

...and....Sondland has just become Trump's worst nightmare with the admission that this was all done at the express direction of Trump....and that there was a quid pro quo.

Sondland realized that he won't look good in an orange jumpsuit. The Roger Stone verdict was a clear lesson: don't lie to Congress.

...Pam Bondi is the perfect communicator for the ignoramus in chief...Good Lord, this Administration sure can pick em!

There were lots of people in Florida who groaned and said, "Her, again?" when Bondi's name popped up as joining the White House to work on "messaging".

Right away, Devin Nunes continues to treat impeachment like it's a big circus, a big Democratic power play....people like Nunes sicken me. And yes, KB... I know he and Jim Jordan and John Ratcliffe and their ilk want me and other Americans watching to turn the channel and not get invested, not care... but it's not going to work with me, ...

Hopefully, Americans are watching and seeing that they've been lied to- again- by Trump.

One of the first stories that I learned in English was "The Emperor's New Clothes", so it doesn't come as a surprise that there's a group of people willing to tell the Emperor that his new clothes are amazing- either for fear of being tagged (possibly in a "tweet") as stupid or to just appease the fickle ruler.

What is shocking is that there is a large group of Republicans who are telling us that we don't see what obviously is there. This is the stuff that mafioso and street thugs do: common extortion. One day we're told that it wasn't "quid pro quo". The next day we're told, "Ukraine got their money, so no harm was done". Another day we're told, "the President controls foreign policy, so it's not extortion when he does it". The latest is, "We don't want to overturn an election".

These are just more lies. Notice that none of them are saying that Trump didn't do it. They know he did.

In the US, no man is above the law. This is extortion for Trump's personal political gain against his possible 2020 opponent.

It's really disconcerting that we have so many members of the US House of Representatives who are willing to lie and conceal and deflect for this highly-flawed, incompetent President.

 

[rareboy]

Out of fucking control much?

"I WANT NOTHING.
I WANT NOTHING.
I WANT NO QUID PRO QUO.
TELL ZELLINSKY TO DO THE RIGHT THING.
THIS IS THE FINAL WORLD FROM THE PRES OF THE U.S."

https://www.esquire.com/news-politi...PjNxKHpoFIIoWRFqtFdaunZqv8ezoYjd3gQYGraYED67A

Trump actually needed notes for this shrill rant?

 

[gsdx]

^ The note said "final word", but his quote says "final world". Did he really misread the note?

 

[KaraBulut]

He wrote it out with a Sharpie on a pad of paper that he was holding in his hand today.

 

[NotHardUp1]

...and....Sondland has just become Trump's worst nightmare with the admission that this was all done at the express direction of Trump....and that there was a quid pro quo.

He did even better. He became the concrete boots for the Secretary of State and the Vice President to go to the bottom of the sea. The Ambassador wisely decided that he wasn't dying on his sword for these treacherous bastards.

His actions may well be the queue for some GOP senators to recalculate their triangulation to the White House. The coming crucifixion of Sondland by Trump will be more wood on the fire. And it is undoubtedly coming. Desperate men do desperate things.

 

[TX-Beau]

That note is pure camera bait.

 

[Sausy]

ANYTHING the Republicans do at these hearings is camera bait. Someone on MSNBC said it best... Trump doesn't make it obvious when he REALLY wants something done and expects to get away with it. Michael Cohen said it too.. he's like a mob boss, just get it done. When he said to Sondland, "I want no quid pro quo"... that he just wanted Zelensky to do the right thing... he wanted the announcement of the investigations... but he wasn't going to release the military assistance unless Zelensky would do that thing. He may have suspected Sondland might be trying to trap him pressing for affirmation of those words "quid pro quo".

 

[NotHardUp1]

He may have suspected Sondland might be trying to trap him pressing for affirmation of those words "quid pro quo".

It was much simpler. He was already warned of the whistleblower's report. The words to Sondland were sheer damage control. No one who read the "perfect" transcript would believe such unmitigated bullshit. Any justice or jury in the land would conclude that it was exactly what it sounded like. The euphemistic use of "favor" carried with it all the meaning necessary of being a payment for the aid.

Once the omnipresent groundwork by the very agent Trump named during the call, Rudy Giuliani, is proven, and it is, then you have presidential-directed quid-pro-quo.

As oily as Sondland is, I'm so happy he's not needy or toadyfied like the other sycophants. He's seen the handwriting on the wall and he's not going to take one for the team. In fact, I'd wager that he's got dirt on Trump and that he doesn't give a rat's ass about any blowback, meaning he won't be recalled as EU ambassador. Trump is more likely to call him stupid or attack his conclusions rather than fire him.

What I'm most hopeful about is that Sondland is a tip of the iceberg, and that many of the Trump appointees have no love for their fickle master and his penchant for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, a leader who makes loyalty paramount but shows none of his own for his own.

 

[Sausy]

The thing that has saddened me most is the realization that no matter what, most Republicans want to believe Ukraine was the real source of the problem. They want to minimize or reject Russian culpability... they are primed to investigate the investigators with the news that it looks like Barr's probe is going to nail an FBI agent for alterations of a record and make this look like a deep state conspiracy.... the Republicans blew back at Fiona Hill and all intelligence about the origins of the investigations into Trump associated people, like Carter Page. They rail that it IS a deep state conspiracy, and this will prove it. I really fear for this country... Putin has what he wants, right and left at each other's throats and particularly on the right, a bonkers view of the state of the world. Trump has never touched corruption with Saudi Arabia, welcomed Turkish despot Erdogan twice, corrupt and monstrous as he is with the Kurds.... is sympathetic to Paul Manafort, who robbed millions from Ukraine and associated himself with pro-Moscow, corrupt interests. I really feel we are doomed.. even if Democrats make gains, they will be at war with themselves and the right will fight tooth and nail to derail any Democratic initiative.

I have no illusions about ANY of the Trump appointees... John Bolton would rather sell a book and make millions than give conservatives someone who can understand just how dangerous and insecure we are under Donald Trump. Someone they can't accuse of being one with the deep state. Mulvaney... please. Pompeo... please. Volker, well meaning but he should have figured Burisma= Biden. Sondland still I think was holding back, being as honest as he was because he had to be to avoid a future like Roger Stone.

 

[NotHardUp1]

As I again sat riveted to Adam Schiff's eloquent and accurate portrayal of the subversion of the virtue of the national interest by a corrupt administration, I took heart in the cold comfort of actually hearing such a defense of the right in our Constitution. Yes, it is mixed with sadness that the relevance of that is passing, like Middle Earth except the orcs are taking over.

There is also a shard of cold bitterness at the realization that we have no one to blame but ourselves, not Trump, not the Russians, not the Tea Party, not the NeverTrumpers, not Antifa, and not any one faction. We are in too many ways like the worst of our presidents, like Donald J. Trump himself, a fool led by the simplest stories, rushing headlong into vain follies that are as doomed as following mirages in a desert.

We've been a culture too eager to tear ourselves apart, and therefore vulnerable to those who know too well how to exploit such weakness. Even the English knew that. Ask the Indians.

We've spent the last century and more marching to materialism, defining a century as ours by evaluating our economic empire, all the while failing to recognize our soul was rotting away, like some poor stupid oxen bitten by a monitor lizard, staggering under our own weight once the blood was poisoned so completely.

We tolerated the slow subjugation of our laws, while the industrialists, Wall Street thieves, realtor scum, and others gradually killed labor unions, stole pensions, pissed away bailout government loans, and made home ownership and college education the province of the upper middle class and not the working class.

We sat by obsessing on Superbowls, and Ass-shaking pop stars, and froth while taxes fell to shameful levels and infrastructure crumbled and schools became stagnant backwaters of indolence and mediocrity. We used technology to distract us with frivolous games and social media apps to make scorekeeping of acquaintances more desirable than actual relationships and friendships that means something. While our population grew to so many millions more, we grew less connected to our own families and culture.

In a nation too weak to put down the cell phone and take up the hard work of building real community, we have found ourselves fragmented into factions and coalitions that increasingly would be happy to be rid of a large percentage of the other.

Our immediate future likely has us facing two untenable scenarios. Either the unlikely happens and the GOP senators will break with their obvious fool and his evil path that is leading us to a government more depraved than any in our lifetimes, or the acquittal that will result in the reelection of the man who has nakedly opposed the very rule of law he is by title supposed to uphold.

If the former, we will surely see violence and possibly civil war, as the right appears prepared to set the world afire before giving up control. If the latter, I'm not sure how the supporters of the rule of law will ever regain control after four more years of displacing the judiciary with partisans, of disabling the regulatory function of government while the last raiders take the spoils, and while manipulations such as gerrymandering make reversal of the march to fascism impossible.

We are at a precipice.

 

[KaraBulut]

The Manchurian Congress...

The thing that has saddened me most is the realization that no matter what, most Republicans want to believe Ukraine was the real source of the problem. They want to minimize or reject Russian culpability...

And Putin is relieved that they're taking the bait.

Putin says 'thank God' as Republicans push his bogus conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in 2016 [Business Insider]

Russian President Vladimir Putin is gloating as Republicans continue to trumpet a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine — not Russia — interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.

"Thank God, no one is accusing us of interfering in the US elections anymore; now they're accusing Ukraine," Putin said in Moscow on Wednesday.

—Bloomberg TicToc (@tictoc) November 21, 2019

 

[KaraBulut]

A "domestic political errand"...