PMC Commentary

Another Trump henchman goes down

In the NY Times' latest installment of the president's deeply impeachable behavior being ignored by Senate Republicans, Trump's lead attorney on the defense team has now also been snagged by the net of the truth will out:

"Trump directed John R. Bolton … to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials [as early as May]…. Trump gave the instruction … during an Oval Office conversation … that included the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone."

Over the past several days, it has been Cipollone's criminal task to stand in the well of the Senate and lie to that chamber, the House managers, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and the American people. Had Bolton been called as a witness, he would of course have revealed Cipollone's presence in the May meeting; exposed him as just another unspeakably unethical, self-interested cog in Trump's mendacity machine; and cost him his law license a few days earlier.

Is there anyone, anyone at all, still serving this most corrupt of all presidents who isn't a stinking foul lowlife lying bellycrawling underhanded criminal himself?

12 hours to autocracy

I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!

I want you to get up right now. Sit up. Go to your windows. Open them and stick your head out and yell – I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore! Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad! You’ve got to say, I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!

The needs of the exceedingly few outweigh the needs of the many

As visually expressed by a former chief of staff to Mitch McConnell, Josh Holmes, here is the essence of how Senate Republicans view their constitutional obligation to remove a brazenly impeachable president from office, thus ensuring that excessive measures of executive power abused not reduce these United States to the slovenly condition of a Latin American dictatorship:

Sounds right.
more witnesses = Hindenburg
None of it changes ultimate acquittal. https://t.co/awrpZA0sjh pic.twitter.com/Evty23G87I

— Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) January 29, 2020

As Holmes so helpfully notes in observing that "more witnesses = Hindenburg," Republican senators see, in the person of Donald Trump, perhaps the greatest threat to that bedrock of American decency — the rule of law — as nothing more than a political matter of self-interest. America and the people who inhabit it can go to blazes, if that's what it takes for these Republican senators to keep their cushy jobs.

Alexander the Ungreat

"There is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven," says Sen. Lamar Alexander, in what must be the most contorted, tortured, brain-melting thought process since whenever Trump was last interviewed.

In other words, adds Alexander, this president is every bit as guilty as the House managers have argued he is — which the defense team has indignantly argued against.

"It was inappropriate" like no inappropriateness before, concedes the senator, "for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation," and "the House managers have proved this with what they call a 'mountain of overwhelming evidence.'"

But as another great brain-melter once put it:

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'was' is. If the — if he — if 'was' means is and never has been, that is not — that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement. Now, if someone had asked me in those days of Trump's wildly impeachable acts, are you having any doubts about Mr. Trump, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true."

Are we clear?

I believe so. What Alexander is really saying is quite simple: America, go fuck yourself; for like nearly all of my Republican colleagues and definitely all of Trump's base, I'll always put party above the nation's interests.

The censorious camel's nose

John Bolton has written and published several books about his foreign policy career; he is well aware of what falls into the category of classified national security material — and what does not. Shocking, then, that he would write another book that is made up of All Classified National Security material.

....many more mistakes of judgement, gets fired because frankly, if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book. All Classified National Security. Who would do this?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2020

Such are not precisely the words of a dictator. These are, as reported by the NY Times:

"On Capitol Hill, Mr. Trump’s aides circulated a letter informing Mr. Bolton that the White House was moving to block publication of his forthcoming book."

This is what Senate Republicans — traditionally, praetorian guards of American values and vigorous advocates of constitutional constructions — have bequeathed us: an institutional dictatorship which doubles as a ministry of censorship.

It's just the beginning, the first bit of slope that soon precipitously dives into an inescapable abyss.

Alan Dershowitz and the law of celebrity

###

To his words in the NYT's caption, Dershowitz added, "Mostly, [they're] right."

So "if the president does something which he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest," he continued, "that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment."

Thus spoke a former Harvard Law professor whose love of the limelight seduced him into a constitutionally insane argument on Trump's behalf. If this president, any president, simply declares that his shredding of sundry constitutional provisions was in the public interest, his impeachable behavior receives a pass.

Had Dershowitz decided to argue the rational, pro-removal position as voiced by virtually every constitutional scholar in the country — along with House Democrats, Senate Democrats, criminal defense lawyers, state and federal prosecutors, trial judges, county clerks, court custodians, women, children, and literate drunks protected by God — his voice would have been but one among millions.

Therefore his facetime on teevee would have been, to him, unacceptably limited, perhaps even absent. And so Dershowitz has mentally applied his Trumpian formula to himself: If a former Harvard Law professor does something which he believes will help him get oodles of television coverage, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in personal disgrace.

And boy is he wrong.

"Drop dead, America" - signed, the Republican Senate

I really don't know how visibly disheartened Democratic senators can any longer sit and countenance this sham of an impeachment trial. In short order, thanks to the playful brutality of Republican senators this criminal president will possess the adjudicated constitutional authority to do whatever he damn well likes, which, at any rate, he already believed was his right.

Once a Democratic president takes office — if another Democratic president takes office, given that Trump will soon have the unfettered power to hire foreign interference into our national elections with helter-skelter whimsy — his or her authority will, of course, revert to a strict constructionist standard, courtesy the criminal Republican senators whom honorable Democrats must countenance.

Meanwhile, the absurdity to which the majority Senate is so forcefully giving its imprimatur is more astounding than any other grotesquerie in American political or constitutional history.

Trump committed no statutory crime, say Senate Republicans and the president's defense thugs, thus his actions must be unimpeachable. As a former assistant to Ken Starr noted the other day on MSNBC, according to that logic, Trump could announce the names of every secret U.S. agent overseas, and his manifest gutting of our national security (and resulting murder of countless Americans) would have to be deemed faultless.

As already mentioned, Trump will soon be openly free to invite foreign powers to interfere into our presidential election. Russia? China? Ukraine? Come on in, boys, the Trumpian sewer is just fine.

For that matter, given this rather peculiar precedent, every member of Congress will also be free to invite foreign powers to interfere in their elections.

Sen. Mitch McConnell can hire Chinese communist nationals to man all the Kentucky voting booths, Rep. Ted Lieu can hire Taiwanese nationals to oversee his district's democracy, Rep. Eliot Engel can accept millions from everyone who wishes to bomb Iran, and Sen. James Inhofe, most appropriately, can take all the boodle he likes from whatever nation is considered the dumbest on earth. (Problem: That would be us.)

The mind wanders in horror at the destructive consequences of what Republican senators are doing. The absurdity, the grotesqueness, the absolute unAmerican vileness of what these ignorance-elected guttersnipes are about to inflict on this once-great nation causes the mind to recoil in unprecedented despair.

As of this Super Bowl weekend, probably, America will be gone.

The unforgivable blasphemy of Senate Republicans' prayer and pledge of allegiance

Perhaps, to date, the greatest farce of this impeachment trial has come not during the defense team's willfully bogus arguments, but before the majority leader has even officially commenced the day's proceedings. I write of the opening prayer and the pledge of allegiance.

To the authentically theologically oriented, hearing the Senate chaplain beseech the vastly dismayed God of 100 to bless the proceedings and direct the chamber's criminal element of 53 to do justice and fairness with a tender conscience must be the most blasphemous, heretical charade of the century.

What the chaplain should ask is for all of America to pray for the latest in a series of long-forgotten, ancient divine miracles: that Senate Republicans cut the bullshit and hypocrisy, and carry out their constitutional oaths by doing their fucking job. In. those. words.

Then comes the pledge of allegiance, as though our consciences had not already been insulted enough. Consider the words that each GOP senator violates with his or her heart and mind:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

But perhaps things aren't quite as bad as I have imagined. If one just eliminates from the pledge allegiance, Republic, one Nation, God, indivisible, liberty and justice, one has a true bobbydazzler of an oath for Republican senators.

Orson Welles presents, "The Fourth Man"

The Wall Street Journal first reported yesterday that at a Republican caucus meeting, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell mournfully conceded that the votes just might exist for some semblance of a fair impeachment trial.

Yet that bit of say-what? reporting took a backseat to the story's real humdinger, 14 paragraphs down: "The president’s lawyers … argued that too little is known about the Bolton claims for them to factor into the Senate trial."

Hmmm, damn, they should just pass on those claims then, because, you know, it's not like they could maybe call John Bolton as a witness?

The president's main man, Jay Sekulow, though, resolved this brain teaser with an elegant Occamism: "[He] pointed to the president’s denials." Ah, well, there you go.

On this matter I agreed with Chris Matthews yesterday, who said in effect what I was thinking: I'll believe McConnell's lack of unfair votes when I see it — when I see The Fourth Man.

Presently Sens. Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are considered somewhat in favor of fairness. Lamar Alexander, Pat Toomey and Rob Portman might join them.

Yet as the NY Times reports this morning, "key Republicans said they were increasingly confident they could bring the trial to an end, and they described Mr. McConnell’s comments as a pointed signal that it was time for rank-and-file senators to fall in line."

How many times, gentle reader, have we been told to expect that a handful of congressional Republicans might, for once, do the right thing?

Justice is so messy

Better to just leave it be, says former J.A.G. attorney and upholder of Republicans' hour-by-hour values, Sen. Lindsey Graham.

“One witness would probably lead to a lot of witnesses,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said, adding it would be a “lousy idea for the country” to go down that route

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 28, 2020

You will recall that according to Lindsey and Republicanism's ephemeral values of yesterday, the Democrats' House prosecutors should have called such witnesses, whoever they were, during the indictment process — however legally protracted that would have been, and no matter how lousy the idea would have been for the country.

Republicanism: integrity, always integrity.

Neocon John Bolton and Gen. John Kelly join the liberal media

Since the Gray Lady has, exclusively, John Bolton's book manuscript, full of damning truths about the most corrupt president in U.S. history, for days and possibly weeks it can play the game of rolling disclosures — all of them above the fold.

Today's reveals that Bolton "privately told Attorney General William P. Barr last year that he had concerns that President Trump was effectively granting personal favors to the autocratic leaders of Turkey and China," and Mr. Barr effectively agreed with Bolton that Donald Trump is a grifter extraordinaire:

* "Mr. Barr singled out Mr. Trump’s conversations with Mr. Xi about the Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE, which agreed in 2017 to plead guilty and pay heavy fines for violating American sanctions on doing business with North Korea, Iran and other countries. A year later, Mr. Trump lifted the sanctions over objections from his own advisers and Republican lawmakers."

* "Mr. Barr also cited remarks Mr. Trump made to Mr. Erdogan in 2018 about the investigation of Halkbank, Turkey’s second-largest state-owned bank. The Justice Department was scrutinizing Halkbank on fraud and money-laundering charges for helping Iran evade sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department. Mr. Erdogan had been making personal appeals to Mr. Trump to use his authority to halt any additional enforcement against the bank. In 2018, Mr. Erdogan told reporters in Turkey that Mr. Trump had promised to instruct cabinet members to follow through on the matter."

Because Trump has personal financial interests in Turkey. And his daughter does, in China.

The Trumpeteers will somehow find a way to discredit these mushrooming reports as part of a Trump-hating scheme by the liberal media, whose ranks hardcore conservative John Bolton has now, evidently, joined. Another newcomer to the vile prejudice of the American press is Trump's former White House chief of staff, John Kelly: "I believe John Bolton."

Trump's "defense" team?

I'm not sure what has heaved me into my emetic predicament this morning, but I suspect it was yesterday's hourslong, Trump-defense-team freakshow.

I do recall that the first acute sign of gastrointestinal disruption came when attorney Eric Herschmann argued that President Obama, for having whispered to then-Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, should have been impeached.

John Bolton? The defense team had never heard of him, excepting one dismissive reference by former scholar Alan Dershowitz, who, sadly, appears to have suffered some sort of psychotic break.

It does however seem that a few Republican senators have heard of Bolton, whose manuscript "revelations … appeared to shift the dynamic" for calling witnesses, reports the Times. Oddly, Texas senator John Cornyn, speaking on Fox News, had it right: "[Bolton's story] is nothing different from what we have already heard" — which should have already bounced Trump from office.

So far the most rewarding aspect of the Bolton nonshocker is that Mitch McConnell is "angry at having been blindsided by the White House," which had sat, like a guileful toddler by the broken cookie jar, on the manuscript for a month.

Bolton's impeachment-reinforcement had even Lindsey Graham, for Pete's sake, saying that the mustachioed neocon "may be a relevant witness."

Adding to the defense team's meltdown was that its star client, the extraordinarily guilty Donald J. Trump, "complained to associates that [its] presentations … were boring." Not that that stopped him from going on one of his manic Twitter rampages, which by themselves demonstrate his unprecedented unfitness for high office.

My gastro-complaining head must now return to the toilet, which isn't so bad, since there I can most clearly see and hear Trump's defense team.

Ken Starr's argument in a nutshell

The Republican House was correct in prosecuting a Democratic president for lying about sex — which scarcely one federal prosecutor, at the time, agreed would be prosecutable in any other court — but the Democratic House is vastly, grossly and irresponsibly incorrect in prosecuting a Republican president for seeking to corrupt the next election by recruiting a foreign power to investigate his likely opponent.

And this argument represents judicial fairness.

Brazil and the U.S.: Who's teaching whom?

I missed this story last week, whose "public importance" pertains here as well as there:

On Tuesday, Brazilian federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and founding editor at the Intercept Brazil, for his explosive reporting on corruption at the very highest levels of Brazil’s government.

The public importance of these stories was staggering. For example, one of the revelations exposed how a well-known judge named Sergio Moro had rigged a trial to jail the country’s most popular political figure in the run-up to the presidential election, clearing a path to victory for Jair Bolsonaro, who then promptly rewarded Moro with control of the Ministry of Justice and Public Security….

Yet as ridiculous as these charges are, they are also dangerous — and not only to Greenwald: They are a threat to press freedom everywhere.

If Trump wins reelection, we should expect similar, politically motivated prosecutions of concocted charges in the United States.

Trump's secret weapon: Bernie Sanders

From an upcoming documentary:

Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.

— Hillary Clinton, on Bernie Sanders

Yesterday, at a rally in Sioux City, Ia., joined by mainstream vote-getters AOC and Michael Moore, Bernie equated "the Republican establishment" and "the Democratic establishment."

Third Way's Matt Bennett complained to Politico that the media "let [Sanders] get away with murder." Unlike the media's damaging interrogations of Elizabeth Warren over her Medicare-for-all financing, "they let him bluster past hard questions."

"The Democratic establishment" should sit on this demagogic windbag, making it clear that if he's the Democratic nominee he won't be seeing any Democratic establishment money should he persist in bashing the party.

The odds of Independent Sen. Sanders ever winning the Democratic nomination are still slim, so I'm not worried. Not much, anyway. But to have this self-aggrandizing assclown running around the country and bashing the party that its eventual nominee is a part of, is just too much.