November 27, 2019

The Circus

November 27, 2019

How old were you that time when Trump beat Obama in that election that never happened?

VIDEO:
https://twitter.com/King_Of_Shade/status/1199526421712031745

November 27, 2019

Nearly 2,000 kids died since you blocked gun safety leg-How dare you accuse Congress of inaction?

Must Read Op/Ed by Fred Guttenberg

Trump, McConnell: Nearly 2,000 kids died since you blocked gun safety legislation. How dare you accuse Congress of inaction? | Opinion

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Reality is that nearly 2,000 kids have died since the Majority Leader of the Senate decided to block gun safety legislation passed by the House Of Representatives. How dare this White House and Leader McConnell accuse Congress of not doing anything, or, in the latter word's, being stuck in a holding pattern?

Leader McConnell, today I visited my daughter's gravesite. Turning the Senate into a graveyard for legislation so that your majority and the White House can stand idly by doing nothing except politicizing the issue is leading to more American families who visit loved ones in real graveyards. Do your job. If you don't, not, this issue will become the defining issue of the next election—and you will be out of one altogether.

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https://www.newsweek.com/mitch-mcconnell-donald-trump-how-dare-you-congress-inaction-1473965 …

https://twitter.com/DearAuntCrabby/status/1199661158602592256

November 27, 2019

Kellyanne uses Thanksgiving to joke about the slaughter of our allies.

Extreme narcissism can reduce someone to near sociopathy.

Case in point: joking about the slaughter of our allies.

Kellyanne Conway, this morning, on the turkey pardoning ceremony: "Now when I say the president's going to pardon a turkey, please don't run out and say he's preferring Erdogan over the Kurds. These are small-'t' turkeys... gobble gobble, stuff them, eat them for Thanksgiving."

https://twitter.com/HoarseWisperer/status/1199674644938338304

November 27, 2019

So Much Evidence: Eisenberg knows a lot.

The impeachment inquiry has been crippled from the beginning by the Exec Branch's obstruction, and its refusal to produce any records to the House.

But detailed, contemporaneous documentation showing Sondland lied in his testimony does exist. Because the NSC lawyers have it.

Trust me, Amazing thread!

snippets:

To see why, here's a quick recap of how the Ukraine matter unfolded, from the viewpoint of the National Security Council's top lawyer, John Eisenberg.

Thanks to @AmbJohnBolton, who made sure his subordinates went in to document every step along the way, Eisenberg knows a lot.

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July 10: Sondland attends the Ward Room meeting with the Ukrainian delegation, and tells the Ukrainians that he and Chief of Staff Mulvaney have an agreement – if the Ukrainians go forward with their investigations, Zelensky will get his White House meeting with the president.



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Later on July 10: After the Ward Room meeting, Fiona Hill goes to Eisenberg's office. She tells him Bolton sent her to report what had happened during the meeting with the Ukrainians, and Sondland's agreement to give Zelensky a WH visit in exchange for opening the investigations.


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Also on July 10: Vindman separately goes to NSC legal to report the meeting, and gives the whole backstory to Eisenberg. He explains that for months Giuliani has been pushing the Ukrainians for an investigation into Biden/2016, and that now Sondland was asking for the same thing.



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July 25: Per Eisenberg's instructions to "come back to me" if there were more concerns, Vindman return to NSC legal to report the phone call he had just heard between Pres. Trump and Pres. Zelensky.

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Vindman tells Eisenberg that in the call with Zelensky, Trump had made the same request for investigations that both Giuliani and Sondland had previously been pressuring the Ukrainians for. Trump had specifically requested that Zelensky investigate both Biden and the DNC.



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Also on July 25: Vindman's new boss, Tim Morrison, was on the Zelensky call as well. That same day, independent of Vindman, he goes to NSC legal to report what had happened on the July 25th call.



MORE, LOT, LOTS:
https://twitter.com/TheViewFromLL2/status/1197947172622413824

November 27, 2019

Well, there it is: confirmation that Trump knew he'd been caught

which is why he then unfroze the aid and told Sondland there was no quid pro quo. https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1199475455436480512 …

Breaking via NYT: Trump had already been briefed on the whistleblower complaint about his dealings with Ukraine when he unfroze military aid for the country in September, according to two people familiar with the matter.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/us/politics/trump-whistle-blower-complaint-ukraine.html …

https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/1199480652246110209

November 27, 2019

"We've never seen a chest quite like that."

Claims that the doctors at Walter Reed told him take his shirt off, and then said:

"We've never seen a chest quite like that."


https://twitter.com/svdate/status/1199495081998376961
https://twitter.com/JaxAlemany/status/1199495187791265792
https://twitter.com/Atrios/status/1199496885125439488

November 26, 2019

Trump throws Rudy under the bus (We all knew he would)

RUDY WHO?

There it is ... the “it wasn’t me” defense.

Trump Denies Sending Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine for Biden Probe

LISTEN: President Trump is now distancing himself more than ever from lawyer Rudy Giuliani, claiming he did not direct Giuliani to act on his behalf in Ukraine in a new interview with Bill O'Reilly.
AUDIO:
https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/status/1199475870915792898

This is crazy. In his call with Zelensky, when he was pressuring the Ukrainian president to launch investigations of the Bidens & the crazy debunked server conspiracy theory, @realDonaldTrump noted Zelensky & his people should talk to Giuliani & Barr.

https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/status/1199471455173562368
https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1199478490644566016
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-26/trump-denies-sending-rudy-giuliani-to-ukraine-for-biden-probe

November 26, 2019

Rachel Maddow explains to Trump "How Time Works"

"No one tried to honor the centennial of this because – and this is important – centennials mark the hundredth anniversary of things. In order to recognize the centennial of a thing from 1920, we had to wait til around 2020, because that’s how time works."

https://twitter.com/maddow/status/1199412144451805184
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/centennial-coins-trump-struggles-how-time-works

November 26, 2019

WIRED: There Is NO Ukrainian Server-NONE-Seriously NONE-Please Potus, SoS, Senators-STOP

Trump's Ukraine Server Delusion Is Spreading
Even secretary of state Mike Pompeo has given credence to Trump's demonstrably wrong theory that Ukraine hacked the DNC.

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Where does this malignant conspiracy theory come from in the first place? Maybe Paul Manafort. Probably 4chan. Regardless, it has since stuck in the president’s brain like a Ceti eel placed by a wrathful Khan, burrowing deeper until it consumes whatever remains of rational thought. The story, as Trump recently posited on a marathon call-in to Fox and Friends, goes something like this:

“A lot of it had to do, they say, with Ukraine,” Trump said. “It’s very interesting. They have the server, right? From the DNC, Democratic National Committee. The FBI went in, and they told them, 'Get out of here, we’re not giving it to you.' They gave the server to CrowdStrike, or whatever it’s called, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian, and I still want to see that server. You know, the FBI has never gotten that server. That’s a big part of this whole thing. Why did they give it to a Ukrainian company?”

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Almost every aspect of this is demonstrably wrong. CrowdStrike is not a Ukrainian company. Its cofounder and chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, was born in Russia and has lived in the US since his teenage years. The company is based in Sunnyvale, California, and went public this summer. As is standard in this sort of incident response, CrowdStrike never took physical possession of any DNC server. Its analysts instead captured an “image” of the hard drives and memories of affected machines, exact replicas that it could examine for signs of malfeasance. It handed all of that forensic evidence over to the FBI, which Department of Justice deputy assistant attorney general Adam Hickey confirmed just last month. And if the logical contortions required to view CrowdStrike as somehow partisan in all of this aren’t already enough, know that the company counts the Republican National Congressional Committee among its clients.

So: Not Ukrainian. No physical server. Not only was the FBI directly involved, but the DOJ indicted the Russian hackers responsible and laid out in exquisite detail how they did it—and how CrowdStrike fought them off. You can read the indictment for yourself here. Start on page 10; CrowdStrike is Company 1.
(scroll down)
https://www.wired.com/story/trump-ukraine-server-delusion-spreading/

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The Ukraine server conspiracy matters not only because it’s wrong, or because it empowers and absolves Russia, or because it weakens the strategically vital relationship between the US and Ukraine for no discernible benefit. It also matters because it puts in sharp relief how divorced the president is from reality, and the apparent lack of willingness or ability of those around him to set the record straight. And the more he and they repeat the lie, the more it seems true to the people who hear it.

The torrent of lies Trump and his enablers have sent rushing over the DNC server story threaten to wear the truth to a nub. So yes, we’ll keep writing about it. There’s no “server.” It’s not in Ukraine. The story is the same, and always will be.



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The Rest (LOTs):
https://www.wired.com/story/trump-ukraine-server-delusion-spreading/
https://twitter.com/nxthompson/status/1199447261345910790