It’s really ironic that a war-mongering psycho like John Bolton could be the puzzle piece that brings down sociopath Donald Trump.
Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman testified before the House Committee on Impeachment this week and immediately set off a firestorm of attacks on his patriotism. It seems these sycophantic Republicans who used to be in the forefront of patriotic fervor have forgotten what being a patriot means when contrasted to the criminal behavior of their favorite President. They seem to think anyone who has a view that differs than the fat liar in the White House is a traitor. That is because they don’t understand that the President isn’t the country. He is just supposed to lead the country.
What Vindman told congress was that the Trump administration lied when they released a doctored version of the phone call made by Trump to Ukrainian President Zelensky.
Then the sociopath in the Oval Office went on TV and did what he does best; he lied. He told a national TV audience that the transcript was the exact, word for word, comma for comma representation of that infamous conversation. It would have been very effective except that every newscaster and pundit had a copy of that transcript in front of them and every one of them could read the words that appeared at the top:
CAUTION: A Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation. (TELCON) is not a verbatim transcript of a discussion. The text in this document records the notes and recollections of Situation Room Duty “Officers and-NSC policy staff assigned to listen and memorialize the conversation in written form as the conversation takes place. A number of factors can affect the accuracy of the record, including poor telecommunications connections and variations in accent and/or interpretation.
The word “inaudible” is used to indicate portions of a conversation that the note taker was unable to hear.
If Trump knew how to read he could have read this himself. It says in no uncertain terms that the words below are not an exact recreation of the conversation in question, that they are a version of what had actually been said, and that no one should mistake them for a exact version of that phone call.
That’s where Vindman came in. He pointed out that throughout the letter, all references to Biden and the important information had been removed or changed. Democrats are holding out this testimony as just another nail in Trump’s now lead lined coffin.
But even with all the evidence piling up like a tsunami ready to strike the beach of the White House lawn, the Trumpophiles were hard at work trying to find any small tidbit that they could hold out to their base to try, no matter how inaccurately, to vindicate their leader.
Of course the fact that we already knew the truth never bothered the likes of Laura Ingraham or John Yoo, a couple of blundering liars on Fox News. By the way, how come a foreigner like Rupert Murdoch is allowed to own American news media? Anyway, Ingraham and Yoo have no compunctions about lying; anything goes for them as long as they have a microphone with which to defend the felon in the White House.
But it all seemed to come apart when it was learned that John Bolton, GOP war-monger and ultra- conservative campaigner for Trump; who left his job as Defense Advisor in a huff over the misguided acts of Rudy Giuliani, requested a judicial opinion as to whether he should accept the invitation of the House Panel to testify, or to honor the presidential dictum not to show up.
It’s obvious that Bolton wants to testify, especially after calling Giuliani and Mick Mulvaney’s operation to try and get dirt on Joe Biden, a “drug deal” and Giuliani a “hand grenade.” But he is still mindful of the legal chaos that came out of the Bush/Cheney mob’s exposing of Valerie Plame’s status as an agent of the CIA just to get even with her husband, Joe Wilson, for going against them and their war plans for Iraq.
Because of his past support of all things Republican and especially his avid support of Trump, Bolton’s testimony is expected to be seriously damning to the President’s chances of avoiding the big “I”.
It’s really amusing to watch the Trumpians attack Nancy Pelosi over her part in moving the impeachment ahead. It has been Pelosi who stood back, understanding that it was politically risky to try to impeach any President, no matter how degenerate or psychotic.
But Trump wouldn’t let Pelosi pass. He committed new offense after new offense, obviously emboldened by each criminal activity that went unpunished, until he finally went over the top for even those who had followed him to this point but could no longer watch his destruction of the Constitution.
Don’t forget, all these people who are speaking out against Trump and his lackeys are either Republicans or non-affiliated. Almost none are liberals or Democrats. They are true believers who saw so much corruption they could no longer believe. They voted for Trump or at the very least didn’t vote against him, but amount of corruption issuing from the White House insured that they could no longer enjoy the Kool Aid.
A.B. Stoddard, Associate Editor for Real Clear Politics spent way too much time this week babbling about what a difficult choice the Republican Senators are going to have struggling with the decision they will be forced to make on impeachment and their only out will be to change the laws to allow U.S. Presidents to use foreign powers to attack their political enemies and to extort those foreign politicians to do so.
No, A.B., that’s not their only choice. They can, for once, choose to do the right thing. As you also point out the mountain of evidence of the President’s guilt is so overwhelming it cannot be ignored or denied by any logical, reasonable human being. But it has been ignored for a very long time in the McConnell controlled Senate, where these scurrilous cretins have chosen, for personal or political gain, to deny the facts. Now when they are backed into a corner because of Trump’s criminal activities you want us to feel sorry for them? I don’t think so.
The Senate Republicans are where they are because they have chosen to ignore their duty to the people of this country. They understand that to do the right thing will put their political careers in jeopardy. Now that they have been caught in the same snare that they chose to ignore in order to back the criminal Trump you want us to excuse them. No way!
The Senate Republicans have only one salvation. They must follow the evidence put before them. They must ignore the dangers of convicting Trump and flying in the face of his base when primary election time comes and they must, for once, do the right thing.
But they won’t! They have already shown us what they are made of and it has already putrefied. No matter how much the Democrats and their followers want the Right to see the light, they have already made it crystal clear that they are far more interested in their pathetic careers in office than they are of any oaths sworn to uphold the constitution or protect the American people.
There will be no conviction of Trump, no matter how much legitimate evidence is brought before the McConnell led Senate. Sure Nancy Pelosi understands this, but she could no longer ignore the calls for justice. Unfortunately, too many thoughtless voters elected too many spineless Senators so the only justice we are ever going to see involving Donald Trump is when he is thrown out of office by the voters and then arrested by what’s left of our criminal justice system.
And for a former classmate who said at a recent reunion, “How do you know all these guys that are testifying before the House Committee, are telling the truth?” Let me laugh in your face again.
That question leads to comparing many Conservative career bureaucrats, with long histories of serving their country, testifying against a President who has, by actual count, lied to the American public over 13,000 times in he last three years. Who ya gonna believe?
Now we hear that Trump is contemplating a Fireside Chat, during which he would read the text of the transcript of the, now infamous phone call between himself and Zelensky.
I fell off the chair when I heard that one. First he would have to be able to read. Then he would have to stay on the subject for more than 30 seconds and last he would have to escape his handlers who would be locking every door in the White House to keep him from getting anywhere near a microphone or a camera.
What Trump doesn’t seem to realize about an impeachment hearing is that it doesn’t contain any of the protections that he was afforded during the Mueller investigation. The men who conducted that investigation were professional prosecutors who operated inside a very tiny circle of rules and laws set up to protect the investigation from ever being accused of violating the defendants rights. This will not be the case with an impeachment hearing, which is basically a political and not a judicial process. In other words, even if they can’t get a conviction the Dems will look to castrate him.
What Trump doesn’t, because of his ego, even comprehend is that the Democrats are fully aware that he will lie and they expect to be able to take advantage of that. They already expect conviction in the Senate to be an impossibility, but they need to expose him over and over as such an unmitigated liar that he becomes nothing but a fool. They don’t expect this to have any influence on that 35% of the voters that are his base. No, those fools are intractable. The Dems are after the 30% that sits between Left and Right. Those are the votes that win or lose elections. It’s that independent vote that the Dems must win if they are to sweep the 2020 election. They need to have the unaffiliated voters see, live on TV, what a lawless, bumbling idiot Trump really is. If they accomplish that, whether he is convicted or not will be irrelevant.
And as a final thought, someone brought up the Trump library on Deadline White House, today. Al Sharpton laughed so hard he must have peed his pants. The question was about where one would put it now that Trump is moving to Florida to avoid NY taxes. No matter where they put it, it would have no meaning other than as a peon to illiteracy. A library dedicated to a man who didn’t read. A truly Republican triumph! It does seem like the only appropriate location might be Guatemala or possibly northern Syria near the Turkish border.
And what would such a library contain? Surely an excellent collection of picture books.